Another year, another roundup of how I spent all my free time reading. I don't think I'm going to finish another book in 2025, so this should be relatively accurate. Everyone should account for the fact that this 100% assumes my spreadsheet is correct, so....who knows?! Stephany sent me her spreadsheet template a few years ago and I have been following it ever since, so blame her for the nitty-gritty details below. This is ridiculously long, so feel free to skip this if the number don't interest you.
Total number of books: 105
Total number of pages: 38,303 pages (about 3190 pages/month) - If I take out audiobooks, this goes down to 29,061 pages (2420 pages/month)
Average star rating: 3.55/5
Format: 22.9% audiobooks, 49.5% physical books, and 27.6% ebooks
I was curious if format changed my star ratings and it really did! That's interesting. I think I DNF physical books more because I always have another one to read, but I almost never have an audiobook or ebook lined up.
Audiobook stats: I listened to 24 audiobooks this year. That seems like a lot. That was nearly 319 hours of listening. (Yes, I'm basically always listening to audiobooks or podcasts.)
Book source: As with previous years, the vast majority of books I read are from libraries. I borrowed 99 of these books from the public library (94%) and owned/was gifted 6 (6%). (Interesting that none of these were borrowed from the university library. I have two holds at the university library now!)
Genre: So many genres this year! I'm pretty proud of myself for this.
The Big Five Genre:
Lord knows I can't afford my own reading habit. Yay for libraries!
Books by month:
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I just figured out how to change the fill color in a chart in Google sheets. I feel like a fucking genius.
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Historical data
I now have enough years to be able to track some patterns. First up, my overall reading is going down. I still read a lot, though. I'm never going to be able to read as much as I did when I was under/unemployed. *sigh* Those were the days, weren't they? (No. No, they were not.)
My average star rating is pretty consistent through the years.
- I mostly read women (80%). I did read 18% men and 2 books (2%) that were written by a husband and wife pair.
- The shortest book I read was The Most (135 pages) and the longest was, of course, Gone With the Wind (1037 pages).
- The oldest book I read was Moby-Dick! So much whaling!
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| I legitimately can't stop looking at Moby Dick memes. Should I be worried? |
- There's a lot of recency bias in my reading.
- I DNFed 24 books this year. Or at least 24 made it to the spreadsheet. Just because I gave up on them doesn't mean you have to!
- I read 21 debuts this year. The average star rating for them was 3.43, so it's slightly below my total average.
- The lowest star rating I gave was 1.5 and that was to The Berry Pickers, which was a book I should have DNFed, but stubbornly thought was going to get good. Sorry, fans of that book.
- I'm still over here tracking what countries authors come from. It's still mostly the US. Do I sort of hate that? Yes. Is it going to change? Probably not. (NOTE: Some books have multiple authors, so this has more than the number of books I read this year.)
And that's it, folks. Are you dying for a stat I didn't include? Burning hat questions? How was your reading year this year?
I love all the pretty charts!!!!
ReplyDeleteI read a lot this year and I definitely plan to read less next year. I scratched a "reading itch" but I also feel a bit burned out on reading (a scandalous announcement, I know). That said, I am already starting my first book for 2026 (I won't finish it until then), so I know my "read less in 2026" won't exactly signal that much of a decline in reading.
That's... a lot of hats.
I'm definitely not burned out on reading, but I just don't have the time I used to. *sigh* Maybe someday in my retirement I'll be at those highs from the early 2020s.
DeleteSo many hats. I have considered whether or not I should stop counting hats and now I don't know if I can. Is it pathological? Should I seek help about this?
I never think to track pages, maybe I'll do that for 2026!
ReplyDeleteYour top genre breakdown is exactly what I thought it would be!
I also spend a lot of free time reading - not all, but a lot of it - and I kind of love that about us.
The library here does that "you saved x dollars" and I love seeing those big numbers. The Calgary library didn't, and I wish I knew how much I saved all those years I lived there.
My top four genres have been pretty consistent. I always tell myself I read fewer romances, but then I just can't stop myself!
DeleteYes! Saving $4K is really something. That's real money, you know? Plus, where would I store all those books?
I will laud you every single time you hate on The Berry Pickers. I, too, wanted to DNF that book, but I
ReplyDeleteA) was so sure it was going to get better; B)was influenced by all the other people who loved it and felt bad; C)bought it, so I really wanted it to be better. I give that book HALF A STAR, simply because, hey! the author wrote a book and I didn't.
I am here for all your Moby-Dick memes. As a matter of fact, please devote one post a week? every two weeks? a month? to them. They are terrific.
Finally, have you read any Edith Wharton?
Plenty of people liked The Berry Pickers and I respect that. It just wasn't for us! And that's fine - I learned a valuable lesson about the power of the DNF.
DeleteI am hoping the Moby-Dick obsession ends soon. Imagine if I designated the third day of every month as Moby-Dick Meme day? It could end up being as longstanding a weird quirk as the hat thing.
I've never read Edith Wharton, but when I say her name, I like to really emphasize the "wh." Do you think I'd like her? Where should I start?
I wonder if you'd like her. She wrote "The Age of Innocence", "House of Mirth", and "Ethan Frome". She was famous for writing romances about the very mannered upper classes whose romantic and sexual urges had to be stifled because of the rigidity of society. The novels usually have very sad and ironic twists. They're wonderful. I think you'd like them. I'd start with any of the three I mentioned, but keep in mind that of the three, "Ethan Frome" is kind of the odd one out; it's set in New England, is quite short, and contains more symbolism.
DeleteI like the Monthly Moby-Dick Meme Day. And I always pronounce the WH with the H in there in all WH words. WHy wouldn't you?
Okay, I'll consider Edith Wharton for my classic read this year.
DeleteI like how you include "hats" as a stat. I'm here for all the Moby Dick memes- make fun of that book all you want! As you may remember, I didn't like it. I love the amount of money you saved by getting your books from the library. I get most of my books from the library, but I do like buying them sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI didn't NOT like Moby-Dick, but I do enjoy all the memes. I just feel like I'm part of some inside joke everyone else has been part of for years.
DeleteI have never noticed if my library tallies how much it's saved me! I would love to know that number.
ReplyDeleteThese statistics are so fun. I really enjoy seeing the breakdown of your reading year. I would love to do such detailed statistics for my own reading life, but I am terrible at keeping a log. Sometimes I will forget to mark that I am reading or have finished a book on Goodreads, and that feels like the easiest possible way to track my reading. Sigh.
I DNFed Berry Pickers. It was... not for me. I'm really glad I'm not alone because so many people loooooved it.
Your obsession with Moby Dick memes is cracking me up. I would be here for an entire post of your favorites.
I actually find Goodreads to be hard to remember, to be fair. And I don't know if I want my uncle who follows me on Goodreads to know about some of the things I read! Ha! What if he ever stumbled on this blog?
DeleteI track my reading in an excel spreadsheet too! Our genres are so different but I would know that without looking at a spreadsheet. I don’t read much fantasy, dystopian or Sci Fi. And you don’t read as much lit fic as I do. But it’s good to be exposed to readers who read differently. It does occasionally push me to try something outside my preferred genres!
ReplyDeleteI mostly read lit fic if it's getting a lot of buzz or my IRL book club reads it. I mostly read for escape and sometimes that stuff is too real, you know?
DeleteThis is amazing. I am all about the pie charts and graphs. Sadly, my charts for 2025 would look really sad. I am in awe of all the reading you get done. Truly.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's what I do for fun! I would never track my movie/tv watching, though, because that would be dismal.
DeleteWe read the same number of books in 2025! Every year, I read fewer books than the year before and I really want 2026 to be the year when I stop that trend. I am trying to figure out ways to add more reading time to my life because I felt I really struggled with that some months.
ReplyDeleteI think if I'm going to read more, I'd need to give up some podcasts and replace them with audiobooks. I'm not sure I'm willing to do that!
DeleteSo much reading. Yeah. I had rather sad reading year. I am just trying to work through my stats and I even wonder if I want to make an¥ reading goals for 2026. what is happening!.
ReplyDeleteLove your hat stats. Fun.
Also I rate audiobooks lower than read books. I personally am not as involved in the story and I think that leads to not rating them as much.
Oh, interesting. Why aren't you as involved when you listen to audiobooks? I think I'm more involved because they're in my ears!
DeleteSpeaking for myself, my brain just locks on to the written word better than the spoken. If I'm listening to an audiobook my mind often wanders and I miss parts. The only time this doesn't happen as much is if I'm driving, but i prefer listening to music then.
DeleteI get it. I am usually pretty locked into audiobooks, so I don't lose focus. I think I'm a good listener because I trained with NPR and podcasts.
DeleteI'm not sure I ever realized how many hats there were in so many books. I think I now need to set a goal of being able to put my reading stats in anything other than list form for next year. I've never even HEARD of google sheets, so you ARE a fucking genius as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDeleteHa! I refuse to pay for Microsoft Office on my home computer, so I use the Google spreadsheet, Sheets, which is free. I'm not a genius - I'm cheap!
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