Best of 2018 | Reading Stats

It’s my last “Best of 2018” post! I can’t believe I’ve finished another round of this series and now it’s truly time to think about 2019 and exactly what I want from it (which is a lot, if you saw my post about the goals I want to achieve this year!)

Today, I want to take the time to look back on my year in reading in the form of my reading stats. I keep a very detailed spreadsheet about my reading, something I’ve been doing for a few years now, and it’s one of my favorite nerdy things to do. It also makes putting together this yearly post very easy as I can just look through that spreadsheet to pull out the important stats from the year. (Happy to share this spreadsheet with anyone who wants it – just let me know!)

So, here we go! 2018 in reading:

1) How many books did you read?

134 (+17 from 2017)

2) How many pages did you read?

43,853 (+4,138 from 2017)

3) What percentage of books did you read in print, e-book, and audiobook formats?

• Print: 41% (-10% from 2017)
• E-book: 43% (+2% from 2017)
• Audiobook: 16% (+8% from 2017)

4) How much money did you spend on reading this year?

$298.45 (+$193.63). Yowza. It feels a little crazy to realize I spent nearly $300 on books this year (and, um, that’s only counting the books I read. There are also books I bought and are sitting unread on my bookshelf, which aren’t included in this total).

5) What were the percentages by genre?

As always, romance is my most-read genre, although I dropped off a little bit this year at 40% (last year, I was at 43%). Fiction came in second at 19% (a steep decline of 6% from last year) with nonfiction right behind it at 18% (up from 14.5% in 2017). Two other semi-popular genres for me this year were thrillers at 9% and YA at 8%.

6) How many diverse books did you read?

36, which amounts to 27% (up by only 1% from 2017). I try to read diversely as much as I can, but I need to be even more diligent about reading books by and about people of color, the queer community, etc.

7) Where did you source your books from?

As always, I get most of my books from the library (70%) and this category has even increased from 2017 by 4%. After that, Amazon came in second at 16%, an increase of 2% from 2017 (which honestly surprised me because I thought it would be much higher!) And the third highest category is Book of the Month at 6%.

8) What month did you read the most? The least?

I read the most in January and July (13 books) and the least in November (9 books).

9) What was the longest book you read? The shortest?

The longest book was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which was 530 pages. The shortest book was Never, Never: Part 3, which was 119 pages.

10) How many books did you finish in 24 hours or less?

6 (+1 from 2017)

11) What book you took the longest to read, and how long did it take you?

Persuasion by Jane Austen, which took me 22 days to read. That book was a slog.

12) How many books did you abandon?

12 (+1 from 2017)

13) How did you rate your books?

As this chart plainly shows, I gave most of my books 4 or 5 stars (67%), which is actually up from 2017 by 5%. My 3-star reads dropped to 21%, down from 29% in 2017. And I actually read a few more 1- and 2-star reads than usual this year, 12% as compared to 9.5% in 2017.

Star ratings can be a controversial topic, I think, but I’m not very stingy with my ratings. If a book is well-written and makes me feel something, it gets an easy 4 or 5 stars from me. A book that has some problems with its plotting or characters but still engages me will get 3 stars. Books I didn’t like get 2 stars while books I vehemently hated (looking at you, Persuasion) will get 1 star.

14) How many books published in 2017 or 2018 did you read compared to books published earlier?

This was an interesting stat – exactly 50%! An even split between new books (67) and backlist titles (67). Ha! Who knew?

How do you keep track of your reading?