Welcome to my giant post of 2019 reading stats! I don’t know how interesting this post will be to other people, but these graphs help me figure out what I want to change about my reading. If you’re the kind of nerd who wants to know more about my reading year, check out my favorite books of 2019. Let’s get into this. Prepare your scrolling fingers. They are about to get a workout.
2019 Quick Facts
Total number of books finished:
77
Number of rereads: 2
Total number of pages read: 23,126
Approximate pages read per day:
64
Number of books given up on: 9
Number of translations read: 6
Number of unread books owned at
the beginning of 2019: 43
Number of unread books owned at
the end of 2019: 54
Average amount of time a new
book sat on my shelf before I read it: 262
days
Goodreads Stats
(Esther @ BiteIntoBooks tagged me to post this.)
Pie Charts From My Ridiculous Spreadsheets
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| 3 stars = average. 4 stars = above average. 2 stars = below average. DNF = did not finish. It was too horrible. I quit to save myself. |
Analysis: I enjoyed most of the books I read last year! I fully embraced the DNF. If I wasn't enjoying a book, I quit, even if I was almost finished with it. I don't rate DNFs on Goodreads. Because of my DNFing, I had only one 1-star book. That book was so stunningly awful that I was shocked into finishing it. It's one of the worst books I've read in my entire life. (I'm old, and I read a lot, so that's an achievement. Nicely done, book.)
Analysis: I only read 2 books that were published in 2019, so obviously I love the backlist. I want to get back to reading classics. Every year, I read fewer of them.
 | |
|
Analysis: For the first time in years, I read more children's books than adult books. This is probably because I acquired a human child in 2019. I've been reading her picture books.
Analysis: This isn't too shocking. I love hardcovers and dislike e-books. I am surprised by how many audiobooks I listened to. I must have exercised a lot and been bored at work a lot in 2019. Those are the only times I listen to audiobooks.
Analysis: I tried to read more books from small publishers this year, and I succeeded! Penguin Random House is still my favorite publisher. I still have no idea why. Am I drawn to their books? Do they just publish a ton of stuff? Are they better at promoting their products than other publishers? Are their books easier to find? It’s a mystery.
Analysis: Well, I solved the mystery of why my TBR shelf never gets smaller. I read the library's books instead of my own damn books. In 2019, I added 79 books to my TBR shelf and spent $175.20 on books for myself. That means I paid about $2.22 per book. Many of those books aren’t included on this graph. Over half of my 2019 purchases are sitting unread on
my shelf. This graph only shows books I read. Most of the books on this graph are 2018 purchases.
The Diversity Stuff
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| This graph only tracks the presence of diverse casts of characters. It does not track if those characters are portrayed accurately. |
Analysis: Every year it gets easier to find books that meet my definition of "diverse." That's cool, right? But, I am still terrible at reading books that aren't written by white ladies.
Here’s how a book ends up in
the “Yes” category:
It’s #OwnVoices
And/Or
It’s a work in translation
And/Or
It features a point-of-view character who is a member of a
minority community
And/Or
It discusses issues that disproportionately impact minority
communities
Analysis: Every year I say I'm going to fix this, and every year I don't. Why is it so hard for me to read books by people who aren't from North America?
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| "Multiple" = books by more than 1 author. |
Analysis: This happens every year. I tend to read
books by female authors who are writing about female characters. Probably
because I’m a woman. My graphs have never been this lopsided before. I read a lot of ladies in 2019. That wasn't intentional.
Did this blog actually grow?
Blogs
sometimes grow so slowly that it seems like they’re not growing at all. Here’s
how mine grew in 2019. I barely posted during the summer, so the blog grew more slowly than in past years. I’m honestly surprised that I didn’t lose
followers. I was a terrible blogger for half of the year.
Gained
230 Twitter followers.
Gained
125 Goodreads followers.
Gained
106 Bloglovin’ followers.
Gained
108 Instagram followers.
Gained
499 Pinterest followers.
The Posts You Clicked The Most
Thank you to
everyone who reads my nonsense or shares it on social media! These posts were
uncommonly successful in 2019.
- Discussion: Nonfiction November Recommendations
- Discussion: Best Books Of 2019 (So Far)
- Discussion: 10 Things Authors Get Wrong About High School
- Discussion: The 15 Best Books I’ve Read In The Past 5 Years
- Discussion: Did I Actually Keep My 2018 Resolutions?
- Discussion: My 2019 Resolutions
- Top Ten Tuesday: Most-Anticipated 2019 Adult Book Releases
- Top Ten Tuesday: Truly Terrible Book Covers
- Top Ten Tuesday: How I’d Die In A Love Story
- Top Ten Tuesday: Upcoming Adult Book Releases
- Top Ten Tuesday: Best Modern Dystopian Books
- Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books Published In The Past Decade
- Top Ten Tuesday: Intriguing Quotes From Recent Reads
- Top Ten Tuesday: For The Love Of Books
- Top Ten Tuesday: How I’d Die In A Fantasy Story
- Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books Of 2018
- Top Ten Tuesday: Most-Anticipated 2019 Young Adult Book Releases
Someday I too will learn how to get pie chart graphics to post on my blog. I love looking at everyone elses 🙌🙌🙌
ReplyDeleteI love that you read a bug book to Brooklyn! I was all the bugs all the time when I was a kid, and dinosaurs. 🐌🐛🐜🐝🐞
I have been slowly honing down my physical books. I have even donated books I haven't read yet and plan on either borrowing them from Hoopla, or looking for ebooks on sale. I'm also thinking of selling some of my YA hardcovers. 📚
How did you get the star rating graphic? ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Adding your pages per day, translations, and how long books were on your shelves stats was great. I love seeing those types of numbers! 👍✨
Happy reading in the new year. 🎉🎉🎉
I am exactly the nerd who loves this kind of post! I had a lot of three star books last year as well and I'd have liked a few more 5 stars! It's nice to see someone who still reads a lot of real books! I can cheerfully report that all my books read were books I own as I never go to the library these days. At the end of this year I must remember to add pie charts for the ebook v real book, maybe non fiction categories, star ratings, maybe something to do with publisher. Thanks for sharing the cool stats!
ReplyDeleteI don't keep stats, but I like seeing everyone else's. And I think it's easy to read more books from authors in North American because they tend to be the most "popular" or "pushed" books. I do like reading books from other countries though - set there, written by an author outside of N.America, etc.
ReplyDelete-Lauren
www.shootingstarsmag.net
This post has to be the most awesomeness I've ever seen. I love stats and keeping records of everything. I may have a tiny little problem 😆 over it.
ReplyDeleteHope you have a lovely New Year
Muah 💋 Helena
This is really awesome!!!!!!!!! How fun to look back on <3
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on such a great year in reading! Your pie charts are awesome. After seeing this post, I'm inspired to do more book stat tracking just to see what my tendencies are (I suspect I also read more female authors and recently published books, but I'd like to know if I lean towards any specific publishing houses). I'm also hoping to read Little Women this year! Thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteclaire @ clairefy
WOW, I don't even keep those kinds of statistics at work (although I have a finance mgr who does). This is amazing!
ReplyDeletewww.thepulpitandthepen.com
I don't actively track it, but I know I read more library books than my own books - I guess that's why my TBR shelf never gets smaller.
ReplyDeleteYou track some interesting information. I am pretty much opposite you in many categories. I read mostly big press (but not much Penguin, as they usually reject my requests), almost all ebooks, and a LOT of new releases. I think your ratio of new releases to previous years releases impressed me the most.
ReplyDeleteLove your stats. Hmm I like the idea of tracking publishers, must add that to my list. I found the years published was also interesting. Mine would be more from the later years I think. Mostly USA because so many publishers in USA I do believe is my theory!
ReplyDeleteYAY GRAPHS! I love this so much! Honestly would it be possible to get a copy of your spreadsheet because I'd love to track my reading like this! I'm also cracking up that you read so much backlist but ended up with more unread books on your TBR than you started with. I can totally relate!
ReplyDeleteHoly graphs! I don't have the patience for all of that, but that's super cool. I wish I had something like that lol.
ReplyDeleteYay for new followers! Seems like a pretty great year!
It took me forever to find my 2019 books, but I found it.
So in case you're interested...
I finished 173 books. I read 37,353 pages. My shortest was Bookstore Babies, my longest was Fangirl. The most popular one I read was If I Stay. Least popular was Finn the Seal.
My average rating was 3.8 stars.
Ash @ JennReneeRead
I read more backlist titles this year too. I've actually been reading more adult books in the past year, but I don't have a human child to read with. Penguin Random House is my favorite YA publisher :)
ReplyDeleteI find it so interesting that people have favorite publishers! I don't think I do...although I really do like Berkley (PRH).
ReplyDeleteGreat job reading, I think my hardcover reading is up and audio is probably VERY high up there now!
Gosh I love this! It's so fun! So I don't know what my stats are because I mean, if I tracked them I'd never actually be able to read, so hahah. But I DO really want to know what the publisher breakdown is now! I am actually the opposite of you- I read more adult books this year than ever before! (I also only counted chapter books that I read with my kids, not picture books, but if you counted those, then I reread a book about Stephen Curry 382748 times. I win the Goodreads, right? 😂)
ReplyDeleteI also definitely read more books by women, though I am not sure why? Especially since my favorite authors aren't overwhelmingly women. Also, I have to ask- did you not read any books by non-binary authors? Also I am AMAZED that you have a tally on how much you spend, because I promise if you asked me, I would answer "somewhere between $1 and $2k" 😂
Ah congratulations on such a good reading year and... well, on making these charts, honestly I don't keep track of my reading like that and make pie charts because I would lose my mind with it all I think 😂😂 I hope you'll have a fantastic reading year!!
ReplyDeleteSeems that you had a great year! :D I read about the same amount of books too but reread more. It was a good one for me too.
ReplyDeleteI really love the way you collect data. Do you use Excel to make your spreadsheets, and from there the graphs? I am going to temporarily be hosting State of the ARC and graphs are giving me a headache.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on acquiring a human child, and a most excellent reading year.
I love stats! You did a lot of reading and I think you mixed things up pretty well. Your blog grew quite a bit as well. You had a great year of reading!
ReplyDeleteI'm another one who logs these stats and puts them into pie charts, but I'm fascinated to see that you chart a whole bunch of attributes that I don't - in fact we only overlapped on author gender and book format. I hope the coming year is also a great one, reading-wise:))
ReplyDeleteI LOVE reading these wrap-up posts! Yours made me wish I'd reported on more stuff (I track almost all of these same things but didn't put them in my wrap-up. Which means I also didn't ponder them thoroughly---I'm going to at least do that right now...)
ReplyDeleteNicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction
YAY for stats! I prefer Hardcovers as well. They are so pretty. I also tend to read more female authors too. Not because I am a female myself that is just how it ends up happening.... I should have included my owned books that I have unread by the end of 2019 in my post... that would have been super interesting to see. I have a bad book buying habit lol.
ReplyDeleteemilythebooknerdxo.blogspot.com
I love reading stats, you have so much good data here. I've noticed more readers are tracking spending, I want to give that a try to see how much is going in. It's interesting that you can look at your graph and tell your library use is what is keeping your TBR so high.
ReplyDeleteLove me some graphs and charts. And also some white American women authors. Every year I resolve to do better, but every year my pie charts look the same.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea Little Women was so long, and I was zooming in to try to see what book you hated, then realized I could just go to Goodreads to find out.
I LOVE your charts and graphs!!!! This rules!!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAs I said in an earlier comment today, I've been meaning to get to this since seeing you mention it recently. So here goes: I like that you keep track of the number of books you have given up on. Last year, I had a lot and hope to be more selective in my reading this year. I love the backlist too. I usually don't get to the current year's book until the following year or even the year after that. Or sometimes never. I'm the opposite on hardcovers vs. e-books, in that I don't read as many hardcovers. As I get older, I like the ability to be able to increase the size of the font and also adjust the type of the font too. Like you, I purchase a lot but then have them left unread. I've gotten slightly more diverse with my reading, mostly with more female writers than in the past, but still a lot of old, white men. One Nonfiction November post on my blog was my most successful too, but I think that's also because people clicked directly through to it.
You put a lot of time into this post--I love pie charts and pie--all kinds. I too prefer hardcovers and made the unfortunate discovery of Book Outlet this year and before I knew it, many of my backlist books I had on my wishlist were in my cart and now wait for me to read them. I have promised myself to try audio books this year--I hestitate because what if I tune them out? I always enjoy your sense of humor.
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