In July, inspired by a similar post Book Riot did where they polled their readers’ reading habits, I wrote this post, in which I detailed my own reading habits for the first six months of 2015. I knew I had to go back to that post and finish it to include all of 2015!
This was the first year I actually kept a detailed spreadsheet about what I read and I really, really loved doing so. I am such a stats nerd, so it was fun to see how much reading tastes evolved throughout the year and to keep track of my reading this way.
So, with all that said, let’s jump into my reading habits survey for 2015!
How many books read? 91
How many pages read? 29,938
What percentage of books read was in print? E-books? Audiobooks?
- 52% e-books
- 41% print books
- 5% audiobooks
It’s interesting to compare these numbers to my numbers at the halfway point because my print book vs e-book percentage was just about even, but towards the latter half of 2015, I read way more e-books than print books. (Probably due to my voracious appetite for romance novels in November/December!)
How many books were bought? 25, which amounts to 27%. Not all of these books actually cost money (for some, they were either free on Kindle or I used a gift card), but I’m still counting them as books I have in my possession.
How much money was spent? $97.23, which means I spent a little more than $8 per month or $1.07 per book. I would say reading is a pretty cheap hobby for me!
What are the percentage breakdowns for genres read?
- Fiction – 25%
- Romance – 23%
- YA – 15%
- Nonfiction – 14%
- Mystery – 11%
- Chick lit – 9%
- Poetry – 1%
- Science fiction – 1%
It’s interesting to see where I ended up at the end of the year, especially in comparison to my report six months in. Fiction is still my most-read category, but the romance genre jumped up from last place to second place over the second half of 2015. I imagine those two categories will continue to battle throughout 2016.
My YA reading jumped up a bit to hold steady at third place while my nonfiction reading dropped (I was at 20% halfway through the year). I can’t remember the last nonfiction book I read, so that’s a good indicator of how little nonfiction I read in the second half of the year.
I also added two new categories – poetry and science fiction, all thanks to the Book Riot Read Harder Reading Challenge!
How many diverse reads? 17, which works out to be 19%. That’s not too impressive, but it’s better than years past.
Where did I get my books?
- Amazon: 28
- Overdrive (e-books and audiobooks): 23
- Library (physical copies of books): 23
- Free, in exchange for a review on my blog: 11
- Through postal book club: 3
- As gifts: 3
Once again, I am a super user of the library. Half of my books came from the library and added together with the books I received as gifts and the ones I received for free in exchange for a review, 66% of my books this year cost me not a damn thing.
The other 43% came from Amazon (usually romance novels because I like reading those on my Kindle, heh) and then books for the postal book club (since I have to send them in the mail, those aren’t exactly free).
Some other random stats:
- Most books read in one month: March and December (10)
- Least books read in one month: October (5)
- Book with the most pages: What Alice Forget by Liane Moriarty (487 pages)
- Book with the least pages: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (50 pages)
- Book that took me the longest to finish: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (14 days)
- Number of books I finished in less than a day: 5
A few thoughts on the Book Riot Read Harder Reading Challenge
In the end, I read 21 of the 23 books required to complete this challenge. I rated 10 of the books four or five stars, the rest of which I either didn’t like or just didn’t feel too strongly about. Two of the books (The Martian and Pointe) ended up being my top two books of the year!
Book challenges can be fun and they can be a great way to get you to start reading books you would normally pass on. But they can also be very stressful. They can make you keep slogging through a book you don’t actually like but want to mark it as complete for the challenge. I slogged through a handful of books for this challenge, and that doesn’t count the books I eventually abandoned. (I tried three different books for the “microhistory” category and couldn’t make it through any of them!)
So, I’ve decided against completing any reading challenges in 2016. I both enjoyed and didn’t enjoy doing a reading challenge in 2015 and I decided that, this year, I need a break. I want to get back to my romance novels and my to-read list. I just don’t want a thing I do for fun to feel like work. We’re all different, but for me, reading challenges make reading feel like work. So I just won’t do one… but I’m totally waving my pom-poms and cheering on those who are tackling reading challenges in 2016!
So, that’s that! My goal for 2016 when it comes to reading is to re-read Harry Potter, read 75 books, and up my romance novel game, so I am inspired when it comes to writing my novel.
Do you have any reading goals for 2016?
My goal is to read 68 books! I read 66 this past year so I should be able to do it, but we’ll see how we do 🙂 I tend to get the most reading done now through April and October-December, so if I can read, read, read and get a little ahead, that will compensate for the summer when I have less time to devote to reading.
I think I bought more books for the girls last year than myself; pretty sure I just bought 3 or 4 books last year and all with gift cards!
91 books! That’s fantastic. I love the idea of using a spreadsheet to track what you’ve read, how you acquired the book, what format it was in, etc. Brilliant.
I’m a super user of the library as well, haha. Being closer to my little city’s biggest library was a factor in our decision to move downtown a few months ago. Now I live about a block away and it is the BEST.
I kept a spreadsheet of my reading as well although not in as great of detail as you did! I haven’t gotten around to sharing it yet and was thinking it might be too late to talk about 2015 reading since we are half through January but since you just shared yours, I am going to find time to share mine next week!
I have 3 different reading goals for 2016, 2 of which are kind of in line with ‘decluttering’:
– complete the 2016 read harder challenge (I really like the categories this year so am excited to tackle it, plus a lot of the books I am planning to read for it as things I’ve been wanting to read anyways so hopefully I won’t have many duds!
– read all the books on my nook so I can get donate it
– read 12 physical books that I own.
I’m rereading HP this year, too! 🙂
Reading is definitely supposed to be for pleasure…not work ;).
I don’t have an exact number of books I want to read this year, but I am aiming to step it up from previous years. Ever since graduating from university, I hadn’t read as many books as I used to, but over the past few months I’ve been voraciously pouring through books again. Historical fiction, some science fiction, some non-fiction…I’d like to read a wide variety this year.
So interesting! I cannot get library books on my kindle in Canada so I think the amount of print books I read is still way higher than most people. I did not complete the Read Harder Challenge either, I think I missed 4 or 5 books? I am going to tackle the 2016 challenge just because it’s fun to diversify my reading but I’m not going to be too crazy about it. If I don’t complete it again I know it’s not a big deal.