This post was inspired by Angie who used to blog at Pinkindle, who actually stopped blogging not too long ago and that makes me so sad because I loved her content! But she's still over on Goodreads, so that's good! Lol. Anyway, I complied some statistics over the last year of some bookish things and I thought they would be interesting to share!
First up, excluding novellas/short stories and omnibus, I read 40 books this year, and this is what my reading looked like over the year. You can see that I constantly fluctuate between reading a lot and then falling into a reading slump death trap... it is the worst! And a vicious cycle! In March I read NOTHING and then in July I only read 1 book (but I also read 2 novellas this month). I wish I read more consistently, but these reading slumps always sneak up on me! *sigh*
I read a lot of novellas this year, and I think that's what helped me reach my Goodreads goal. Lol. And this year I did less rereading than the last.
For a reviewer, I actually don't read very many review books anymore! 10 review books this year compared to the 40ish books that I either bought myself or found free on Amazon. The reason for this is that over the years I found that I am a big time mood reader, and if I force myself to read something when I don't feel like it, well, no one is gonna have fun. So that's why I've been taking less and less review books. But Netgalley is still a dangerous place and I have to limit myself on my requests 'cause that can get insane! Lol.
In my mind, I always thought I preferred physical copies over e-books. But as you can see from this image, they are pretty close! I read 26 physical books vs 29 electronic books. 21 of those I read on my Kindle, and the 8 online were short stories I read for free on Jennifer Estep's website. Ever since I got my new Kindle paperwhite, I've been really keen to read on my Kindle just that much more. Lol. Though physical books still litter my room at every corner... and I love it!
Not surprisingly, I read a lot of books published in 2017, a good chunk of those review books for sure. The next big publishing year is 2011, and that's because that's when Jennifer Estep published all her short stories and novellas, and I pretty much read them all. Lol. Something that may (or may not) surprise you is that I read a ton (18!) of books from the 1990s, the best decade ever *wink wink*! Those 90s books are pretty much all Fear Street books... I read a lot of Fear Street this year. Lol.
Not surprisingly, most of the books I read were in the female POV, as are most YA books. I'm always excited when I find a book in the male perspective, because as you can see, I don't read very many of those!
And something else that's probably not that surprising, most of the POVs were in 1st person. 1st person POV is my favorite because it just feels more personal. But of course, there were some 3rd, some 1st with 3rd thrown in, and a first for me: 2nd and 3rd POV, which was actually a lot of fun! We had a very self-aware narrator in Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales and I loved it!
YA is, of course, the winner, because that is pretty much all I read. Lol. Those 9 adult ones are the Elemental Assassin novellas I mentioned earlier by Jennifer Estep. And then the general fiction are just books that can pretty much be read by anyone but don't actually belong to any of the other YA/NA/Adult genres.
Check me out, all positive and stuff. Lol. I do tend to rate quite high... or I'm just really good at picking out books I'll like?? Lol. That one 2 star book... I can tell you immediately which one it was... my least favorite book of the year, Roar. I HATED the love interests, but I liked the world well enough to not give it a 1 star rating.
I love my series, guys. But lately I've been getting into standalones a bit more. Now 5 is pretty much nothing compared to nearly 50, but I really do want to read more standalones now!
This graph doesn't make much sense, if I'm being honest. Lol. But I wanted to showcase that I finished reading 3 series this year! Finishing up series I start has been a goal of mine for YEARS! I'm hoping to finish up more series this year. And that middle bar just refers to mostly Fear Street books, which are part of the Fear Street series, but have a self-contained story in each individual book.
My 2 biggest sources of books were ones I bought myself and, again, the free novellas I read online. The rest are mostly review books from all different sources!
Almost 50/50 for the traditionally published vs self published books this year! Gotta support my indie authors! They actually write some of my favorite stuff, so I am more than happy to read their work!
This actually surprised me. I read a lot of YA, and a lot of YA is written my women. But there's actually more red in the graph and that's because of all the Fear Street I read this year, which is written by good ol' R.L. Stine. I mean, these aren't ALL Fear Street, but they definitely helped!
This year I only read 7 book by author's whose stuff I have never read before. I actually hope to change that in this coming year!
Anyway, I like numbers, so this was really fun for me to do. I'm definitely planning on doing it again next year and maybe adding some more categories.
That's interesting it fluctuates so much what you read each month. I also tracked how many books and novella's I read, it's fun to see. I also am a big moodreader, so I get what you're saying. I am trying to do better balancing my review and non-review books. That's interesting to see how closely matched your physical and e-format copies were this year, I almost only read e-format nowadays. I also read a lot of female point of views this year, in some genres male pov seems very rare. That's great you enjoy most of the books you read! Great post!
ReplyDeleteThank you! :) Male POV is most definitely rare in YA! I need to find some more of those, honestly! lol
DeleteI love that you tracked POVs and the actual years that things were written. i'm going to try to track more this year. And yay fr reading 4 & 5 star books!!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I found that tracking the years was very interesting! I knew 2017 published books would win, but I was happy to see all those 90s books in there too!
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