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?