Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the thirty-first day of the month is "Activity."
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This is the first year I've tracked a whole bunch of stuff about my reading. Last year, I was jealous of Stephany's end-of-year reading stats and she sent me her spreadsheet and I've been using it faithfully ever since. Here are the highlights.
Number of books read: 179 (average 14.9/month)
Total number of pages read: 67,918 (5660/month)
Average star rating: 3.5/5 stars
Format: 16 (8.9%) audiobooks, 67 (37.4%) ebooks, 96 (53.6%) physical books
I was a little surprised that I'm still reading majority physical books. I would have thought I read more on my Kindle than it turns out that I do.
Source of books: 1 bookstore purchase, 4 (2.2%) Kindle purchases, 170 (95%) public library loans, 3 (1.7%) already on my bookshelf and owned, 1 university library loan
It should not surprise anyone that the vast majority of my books come from the public library. Libraries rule!
Big Four Genres:
|
Genre |
Percentage |
Average
star rating |
|
Fantasy |
26.8% |
3.7/5 |
|
Romance |
26.8% |
3.05/5 |
|
Non-fiction |
10.6% |
4.05/5 |
|
Historical
fiction |
7.3% |
3.85/5 |
Star Breakdown:
Money spent: $53.75 in total for 5 books, the majority of which was a hardcover purchase of Cloud Cuckoo Land that I needed for book club before my library loan came in.
- 14% of books I read were debut novels
- 54.7% of books were part of a series
- 9 (5%) books were written by men, another 4 (2.2%) were written by a man/woman pair, and the rest were written by women or non-binary people (well, there was one author when I literally could find nothing about sex or gender, so I lumped him/her/them into the women/non-binary group)
- Fewest number of pages: Heating & Cooling (108 pages)
- Most number of pages: The Ink Black Heart (1012 pages)
- Oldest: Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
- Newest: Even Though I Knew the End (Nov 2022)
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To see what Bestest Friend has to say about the theme of the day, go visit her at Too Legit to Quit.
Okay, I am also very jealous of your/Stephany's reading stats. Especially the DNFs -- I don't track those but would be very curious about where they stand. I just don't know that I could consistently track everything though. Hmmmm. Sheesh, that Galbraith book was LONG, wasn't it? It was my longest book too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I have a question about what you consider a DNF. Like... I read half of a nonfiction book about the Mayflower in 2021, and then didn't pick it up at all in 2022, but fully intend to go back to it (when????). Would you count that as a DNF? Or like The Overnight Guest -- I checked it out from the library, couldn't stand it, returned it. But then downloaded the audiobook several months later and managed to finish that. I realize these are highly specific scenarios but I am so curious what other people count!
A DNF is a book I don't finish. I mean, I might return to it later, but it gets a DNF if I didn't finish it that month. So, the book about the Mayflower would be a DNF. If I went back and finished it later, it would go in my stats for the month I finished it. Same with The Overnight Guest - DNF the month you return it to the library the first time, but go to a complete when you finish the audiobook. I don't usually have trouble figuring out DNFs, but sometimes I skim and then I don't know how to categorize that. This mostly happens with book club books that are not for me for one reason or another. Those can be challenging.
DeleteWhat amazing stats. AND CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW MUCH THIS WOULD HAVE COST without a library?! I love libraries so, so much and you are the poster child for how incredible they are; I think it's your library that gives a printout of how much you have saved by using the library year-to-date?
ReplyDeleteYes! I would go broke if I paid for all my books. Libraries are the best! I checked on some books on 12/30 and it said I saved $3868.83 in 2022. Almost $4000!
DeleteEchoing what Elizabeth said, I cannot even begin to quantify how much value that I personally have gotten from libraries in my lifetime. Books, movies, and for a good ten years the library was my internet access.
ReplyDeleteYes, I definitely use the library for so much more than books. Games, CDs, magazines, expertise from librarians. I was without a computer for a few days and I used their computers. Libraries are magical!
DeleteOh, gosh. I hate the library. I don't like having to give books back. I don't like having to read on a schedule. I adore the whole idea of the library, and I was an avid library user as a kid. My favourite person in the whole world was Miss Mamie, the librarian, who recommended the best books to me and let me take out waaaaaay above the limit. Without the library, I'd have been lost as a child.
ReplyDeleteLibraries are wonderful, and when I was teaching, I revered and spoiled our school librarians. But I am not a fan of them for my reading sources. I buy books, period. I have to. And then I give them away or donate them if I don't want to keep them. For me, that's just the way it has to be.
Oh, man, I could not afford to pay for all the books I read. I just wouldn't. And I definitely could not scour used book stores regularly enough to find all the books I want to read. I guess I don't really worry about having a due date because I can just check books out again if I want to! But, of course, as long as there are people like you not using the library, there are more books available for people like me to check out, so it all works out in the end!
DeleteI love those stats. I remember being impressed by Stephany's recap last year and tried to track my reading a bit more. But getting a spreadsheet is such a genius thing. I have had a lot of dnf books this year too. I think in 2023 I will be tracking them as well.
ReplyDeleteI am also very impressed by the amount you read. I may be a b it jealous because you obviously are much faster reader than I am.
Yes, I'm a fast reader, don't have any children, and spend the last six months un- or under-employed! I can read lots that way!
DeleteThis was so fun to read! I love hearing about others reading habits since it is such a huge passion of mine. I'll be posting something similar on my blog this month! I haven't looked but I am going to guess that 95% of my books were ebooks. Physical books just don't work for this stage of life and I like that ebook holds are very easy to manage since I can always defer them!
ReplyDeleteWe only get 10 holds on ebooks in our library system, so I just can't get books from the library fast enough for me to move to exclusively reading ebooks. I absolutely would if I could because reading a Kindle is so much more physically comfortable than reading a physical book, but if I'm going to be reading three books a week, I can't rely on ebooks from the library. And I definitely can't afford to buy all those books!
DeleteYay! I'm glad you used my spreadsheet this year and that it was helpful. I really like how you averaged out your ratings for your top genres - I'm going to do that, too, when I do my book stats post next week. That's such a good idea, especially to figure out if some genres just don't work for me! I'm really intrigued by your low (to me; maybe not low to you?!) average rating for romances. Do you think you will try to read less romances this year, since that genre is your lowest-rated by FAR? Or maybe you don't think 3.04 star average is low and, in that case, ignore me! Hehe.
ReplyDeleteI do buy a lot of books and that's mainly because I love the aesthetic of books in my home. It's so comforting to be surrounded by books at all times! But I also use the library a lot, and I love that I have that option.