Happy Monday, friends! It’s time for my last “Best of 2021” post. Today, I’m digging into my reading stats. As a reminder, I keep a very detailed spreadsheet of everything I read. 2021 was the seventh year of keeping this spreadsheet, and it’s truly become a regular part of my reading life. Each book has its own line where I list the title, author, start and finish dates, format, rating, diversity metrics, genre, source, publishing date, and a few other stats. It makes it really easy to pull together this post every year, and it’s just a fun way to look back on my reading!
So, let’s dive in to my 2021 reading stats!
Nitty-Gritty Details
- Number of books read: 133 (-20 from 2020)
- Number of pages read: 46,653 (-4,566 from 2020)
- Money spent on books I read this year: $502.24 (+29.83). This amounts to $3.78 per book.
- Percentage of books by and about BIPOC and the LGBTQIA+ community: 49, or 37% (+11% from 2020)
- Number of books abandoned: 8 (-3 from 2020)
Format Breakdown
Last year, e-books were my most-popular format, but my e-book reading seriously fell to the wayside this year! Print reading was up 9%, e-books were down almost 17% (!), and audiobooks were up 7.5%. With the libraries closed and then functioning at greatly reduced capacity for most of 2020, I relied on e-books a lot more heavily than usual. Things are mostly back to normal now with the library, which is why my print reading bumped back up. In 2020, I also lost my commute in mid-March when we started working from home, which is when I mostly listened to audiobooks. But I’ve readjusted myself to this “new normal,” so I was able to get my audiobook listening time back in. I try to listen to at least two audiobooks a month, more if the audiobooks are short.
Genre Breakdown
Like every year, romance was my most popular category, although the percentage keeps falling every year (2% from 2020, 4% from 2019). My fiction reading took a real beating this year, so much so that my fiction/nonfiction reading is nearly neck and neck! My fiction reading was down 7.6% from 2020 and nonfiction also fell by a little over 1%. I read a bit more YA (up 3% from 2020) and mysteries/thrillers (up 4% from 2020). And this year, I added two new categories to my list that weren’t there in 2020: middle grade (1.5%) and science fiction/fantasy (3.7%). I can’t believe I read nearly 4% of the SFF genre. WHAT IS HAPPENING!
Source Breakdown
The majority of my books came from the library—around 59%, but that percentage is down 2% from last year. I read wayyy more print books from the library (+7.7%) than e-books from Libby (-9.1%). My next highest category is Amazon, which was up 2% from 2020. Coming in third is Book of the Month, which was also up 2% from 2020. Barnes & Noble, Thriftbooks, Target, and my local indie (Tombolo Books) followed behind (last year, I listed all of my bookstores as one line item, so I’m guessing I read slightly more books from bookstores). And rounding out the list are books I read using the Serial Reader app and that I got from a Little Free Library.
Month Breakdown
For the most part, I read 10-11 books per month. I had two months where I “only” read 9 books (as opposed to 2020, when I never read less than 11 books in a month). My best reading month was February—I read 15 books (it was also the month I did a readathon, so that helped!)
Ratings Breakdown
My 4- and 5-star ratings went up by 4% this year to 68.4%! Was I just more lenient with my ratings? Or am I getting really good at picking books I know I’ll love (and quickly abandoning those that aren’t working for me)? Who knows. My 5-star ratings went up by nearly 7%! My 4-star ratings stayed about the same, as did my 3-star ratings. My 2-star and 1-star ratings went down a bit. My average rating was 3.9 (last year, my average rating was 3.7).
Days to Read
Seven days is about my sweet spot when it comes to finishing books these days, mostly because I’m usually reading multiple books at one time. Twice, I was able to finish a book within 24 hours, but that’s very much an anomaly. I don’t consider myself a particularly fast reader (and I can easily get distracted by my phone); I just devote a lot of time to reading.
New Releases vs. Backlist
Last year, I read about the same number of new releases vs backlist books. This year, I read way more backlist! That feels much more normal to me, as I’m not the person always reading the latest new releases. I love backlist books!
Publishing Years
I like to keep track of publishing years, but I’m still not exactly sure how to use this info. This year, I listed out the past 5 years and then combined anything 2016 or beyond into one data point. The biggest number of books I read was from 2020, which makes sense, and 2021 books weren’t too far behind.
Odds and Ends
- Oldest book (by pub date): The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas (1844)
- Newest book (by pub date): The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang (August 31, 2021)
- Author I read the most: Louise Penny (5 books)
- Book I spent the most money on: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune ($25)
- Time spent listening to audiobooks: 247 hours, 35 minutes (but since I listen at 1.5x or 1.75x speed, my actual listening time is much less than that!)
- Longest book: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas (1,275 pages)
- Shortest book: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson (178 pages)
- Book that took me the longest to read: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas (214 days)
How many books did you read in 2021? Did you read more e-books, audiobooks, or print books?
Oh my goodness – this is INTENSE!! But awesome.
I read 88 books in 2021; all of them in hardcopy/print.
I have only ever read a handful of ebooks and just don’t love that medium. I love the break from screens and how I take notes from books etc all is more conducive to using print versions.
My kids listen to audiobooks constantly, but my days just seem too interrupted to start and stop audiobooks, where I don’t mind picking up a book for 5-10 minutes. That said I really feel like I am missing out because so many of my friends adore audiobooks and I think it would help me get through more books. But maybe I don’t need to get through more books, right!?
I think I’ve finished 4 books already in 2022, so off to a good start. It really comes in waves, though. I went almost a whole month – between November and December of 2021 without finishing a book.
Such a detailed record! It’s very impressive. Your spreadsheet sounds inspiring. Do you keep track of other things, too, like where you heard about books or anything like that?
What I noticed is that your 4-5 star ratings are so high. I read a lot of books, but I’d say my 4-5 star rating is much, much lower. Some of this is because I try not to do too much research into books before I read them (because I end up with preconceived notions and that will sometimes put me off a book – for instance, I ADORE Pillars of the Earth, but if someone had said “hey, want to read about building a church in medieval times” I would never have read it), but maybe I should start doing more research and be more thoughtful about what books I’m reading. Hmmmm…something to ponder.
This is such a fun breakdown to see!
Cool! You read a LOT of books- you’re inspiring me to up my reading game! After your last post, I put library holds on Know My Name and The House in the Cerulean Sea. I’m looking forward to those!
I am using the Sarah’s Bookshelves Live spreadsheet to track my reading this year. Previously I only used goodreads but that doesn’t give me much information! I would say over 75% of my books were ebooks. That is my preferred way of reading in this stage of life and maybe always will be? And I’d say 80%+ came from the library. Maybe even higher? I rarely buy books for myself unless it’s something that I need for book club and can’t get at the library in time. I buy a lot of books for the boys, though!
My 4-5 star books %s are probably way lower, too, as my average was in the 3s for 2021. I feel like I read a lot of 3 star books which can be ‘just ok’ to ‘pretty good’. I wish goodreads had half stars!
I can’t believe you read 133 books. So impressive! I used to track all my data, but it felt like it was weighing me down & making me too anxious/competitive, so I stopped. But I love reading other people’s!
I love seeing the stats, the pie charts and graphs! I am a nerd like you 🙂
133 books is really impressive. I am trying not to get hung up no the number of books (as I’ve been reading longer books lately), but it is nice to hit a certain number if you set yourself a reading goal 🙂