Happy Thursday! For my last “Best of 2019” post, I’m taking you on a journey through my reading stats. This is one of my favorite posts to put together because it’s so fun to see how my reading broke down throughout the year. I keep a spreadsheet that I diligently fill out whenever I start and finish a book that helps me pull this post together in record time. (Happy to send out my spreadsheet to anyone who wants it!) Here’s how the stats broke down for my reading in 2019:
Books Read
130 (-4 from 2018)
Pages Read
45,348 pages (+1,495 from 2018)
Money Spent
$433.16 (+134.71) on books + $100 on a library card. It sounds like a lot but it works out to $4 a book so that’s not a bad rate at all. (FYI, in Florida, library cards have to be renewed every three years and you can only renew a library card if you have proof you live in that county. My county’s Overdrive system is paltry and it actually saves me money to buy a library card in a different county so I can use their very robust Overdrive system. Next year, I might tabulate how much I end up saving because it’s significant!)
Diverse Books
24, which is only 18%. This is down by 9% from 2018, which is startling to find out. I need to be much better about seeking out diverse reads in 2020.
Longest & Shortest Books Read
The longest book I read was Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan, which was 587 pages (and, surprisingly, the only middle-grade book I read). The shortest book was The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, which was 126 pages.
Book That Took Me the Longest to Read
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Ann Fowler, which took me 17 days to read.
Books Abandoned
10 (-2 from 2018)
Format Breakdown
As usual, print is my most popular format (42%, which is up by 1% from last year). E-books fell by 6% from 2018, to 37%. And I listened to way more audiobooks this year – 21%, which is up by 5% from 2018.
Genre Breakdown
As always, my most-read genre was romance at 39.2% (-.9% from 2018). My fiction reading was way up this year at 30% (+11% from 2018). I read much less nonfiction this year (10.8%, compared to 18% in 2018) and less YA (5.4%, compared to 8.2% in 2018). Other smaller categories include thrillers, mysteries, middle grade, and fantasy.
Source Breakdown
As always, Overdrive and the library were my biggest book sources – 45.4% for Overdrive and 15.4% for the library. But, surprisingly, this is down about 10% from last year! Amazon was my second biggest source at nearly 21% and Book of the Month came in third at almost 7%. Lastly, I bought books from some indie bookstores, Barnes & Noble, and Target. Other book sources come from Goodreads (won a giveaway) and my library’s book sale.
Month Breakdown
- January – 15
- February – 8
- March – 9
- April – 10
- May – 11
- June – 12
- July – 14
- August – 10
- September – 12
- October – 9
- November – 9
- December – 11
Rating Breakdown
It was another great reading year, as I rated the large majority of my books (66%) 4 or 5 stars. Another 27% were rated 3 stars, which is up from 21% in 2018. Only 9 of the 130 books I read this year were rated 1 or 2 stars, and the percentage (7%) is much better than the 12% I had last year. Yay!
Publishing Year Breakdown
It’s not surprising that my biggest two categories were books published in 2019 and 2018. It is surprising that the next biggest category was books published between 2011-2015 (not labeled on the graph, but it’s the orange slice). I also read a good amount of books published in 2017. Smaller categories include books published in 2016, books published between 2000-2010 (also not labeled, it’s the red slice), and books published before 2000 (the unlabeled blue slice).
Yay! I have been looking forward to this post! 🙂 I have mine ready for tomorrow 🙂
Do you want to try to read more non-fiction this year? I really got in to fiction this year and last year. I used to almost only read non-fiction except for this historical fiction author I liked, but I am really in to fiction now 🙂
How do those BOTM things work? I see them advertised a lot. You just get a book sent to you each month? And you sometimes get to pick? Did someone gift it to you?
Happy reading in 2020! I think we both already are one book toward our 2020 reading goals?! Yay! I look forward to following your reads here and on Goodreads. Thanks for encouraging me and being my reading specialist!
I also have a library card for a better neighboring county’s library Overdrive offerings! Totally worth the extra $60. I’m impressed at your commitment to buying books.
This is a fun breakdown! I used to track my reading in an excel spreadsheet but never did anything with the data so I gave up on it. It would be fun to have this data though! I don’t think I bought any books for myself this year. I used to do BOTM but I stopped doing it as I wasn’t reading the books right away so I felt like I could just request them from the library instead. So all my books came from my shelf or the library. I really focused on reading books I owned this year and got rid of ones I never felt like reading.
This was my best reading year ever, since I read over 100 books!
I love these posts from you! I have to say, though, that I am always flabbergasted to learn of other states’ & counties’ library card stipulations. Across the state of Ohio, library cards are free, & you can get a library card for any county, city, or library, no matter what. I was SHOCKED when I moved to New Jersey & learned that it would be $100 for me to get a library card at the county library; the town I lived in had its own library, separate from the county system, & while it was an adorable spot, it was seriously lacking in most books, & it wasn’t connected to any larger system… so I had to pay for a county library card, if I wanted one, despite living in that county! Let’s just say I refused, hard, & complained to my librarian mother A LOT, haha.
I need to go back to “Z.” I really liked it a couple years ago when I was reading it for book club, but I didn’t finish it before the meeting & then just never went back to it, which is a thing I occasionally do (& hate doing). Here’s to more reading for me in 2020 – though 130 is a heckuva an impressive number I can’t even dream of matching! Happy reading, friend.