2024 Reading Stats!

The time has come to go through my 2024 reading stats! This is the last of my 'end of year' posts (you can find part one and part two of my best books of 2024 lists here and here, respectively!) and it's usually one of my favorite s to make because it's really fun to just get a broad look at what my reading year was like as a whole and be able to pinpoint certain trends and even better understand my reading. To obtain these stats, I take a few graphics from the Goodreads year in review, and the rest are from my personal Excel spreadsheet where I keep track of the books I read throughout the year and some additional information about them like page counts, format, publisher, etc. I do this every year, and last year's post can be found here.

Before I get into the stats, just a quick note to say I apologize for not getting this up last week as I had planned! I live in the Los Angeles area and the recent fires definitely impacted my ability to focus and get some things done. I fortunately live a little outside of the evacuation zones and am safe here with my husband and dog, but it's been really heartbreaking to see all of the devastation occurring around us. I'm hoping this post can be a little bit of a reprieve where I can just focus on books and reading and you can also just focus on books and reading, so let's get into it!

Yearly Totals:

The funniest part is that I think I read less pages than last year, yet more books! I think this is because for some reason, there were a lot more novellas and just slightly shorter books that were published this year and I happened to read a lot of them, I guess. Has anyone else noticed that the average page count of new releases seems a bit shorter than they used to be, or is it just me?

The average page length was 377 last year, so definitely lower this year and my reading hasn't changed too much.

This almost always ends up being my average rating because it's usually a little inflated since I typically round up my ratings on Goodreads (for instance, I do a lot of .25, .5, and .75 star ratings).

Unsurprising top book (not the best, but I'm committed to the series at this point), but ya'll, go read Baby Bird for all your body horror needs and give it some love!


So this is the book that came up in the my end of year review, but I went to my shelf on Goodreads to verify and there were actually two books with a 4.57 average rating at the time so I'm taking that as a tie and I'm including both books! Both of these make sense for having really high ratings because one, of course they are great reads, but two, they are later books in different series and typically people who have made it that far in a series are already enjoying and are likely to keep enjoying it. That being said, both of these reviews are a blast and I recommend both. 

I just wanted to include this because I loved this book so much. I don't think I did a full length review for it, though, only shared my thoughts here on Goodreads. 

Stats:
Alright, now it's time to get to the nitty-gritty details of what I read this year. In this section, I'll take a look at genres, page count, format, etc. I tend to compare it to my previous year's post to see how things change year to year. So, let's have a look:

Genre

Some of these numbers are ridiculously similar to last year, so I guess I can be fairly consistent. This year, my fantasy slice (38.3%) is just about the same as last year (38.6%), and my historical fiction is also about the same as last year (6%). I did mean to read more historical fiction this year because I really do love it, but I guess that didn't really happen, haha. I thought my horror slice (22.8%) would be bigger this year because I felt like I read a lot of horror, but it was actually slightly lower than last year (25%), and I am wondering if I included any thrillers in the horror section last year. This year I have a general 'fiction' category (9.4%) that includes general fiction and literary fiction, and that is relatively the same. My science fiction slice (8.7%) declined a bit, but my nonfiction is probably what increased the most–from 2.3% last year to 11.4% this year! I really did read a decent bit of nonfiction this year, and that's something I'd love to keep up this year. 

Target Audience

This, as usual, is no surprise. I mainly read books in the adult category (94.2%), and very seldom pick up young adult books (3.9%) these days. I am a bit surprised my middle grade category (1.9%) is so low, though, as I really do love some good middle grade, so I'll have to pay more attention to that one this year!

Format

These are surprisingly stable, as well. The biggest change is hardcover, which was 6.7% last year and is up to 14.9% this year. I chose not to separate out finished copies sent from publishers from library/owned copies, so that could account for it a bit this year as well.  Physical ARCs also decreased slightly to 20%, though I feel like I got more finished copies than ARCs this year for some reason from publishers. Audiobooks only went up one percent (37%) from last year, and eARCs went down to 15.6%. It's still wild to me sometimes that audiobooks make up such a big part of my reading considering how much I struggled with them in the past, but now I really enjoy them. 

Book Source

There are definitely some changes on this one! One change I made this year was I combined gifts that I have purchased and books that I've received as gifts into one 'owned' category. Still, I read more in the owned slice (25.3%) than last year's gifted and purchased combined (2.3%+11.5%), so it's always good to see I'm reading books off my shelves, haha. NetGalley is down a little this year at 17.5% (23.8% last year), but I do think I made it through ebooks a bit more slowly this year for some reason. My library usage (31.2%) apparently doubled this year, so hooray for that! I love my library, and I also love being able to use the Libby app to more easily access audiobooks. Publisher (24.7%) also decreased slightly, but I think that's because I tried to focus on some of the books I already owned as well last year. I also included author (1.3%) as a source, since I do still occasionally review books from authors who directly request a review! I used to do a lot more of these, but it's tapered off a bit in recent years. 

Page Count

Most of my page counts are similar to last year, with the only noticeable increases being in the 1-200 page range, which tracks with what I mentioned earlier about somehow ending up reading a lot of shorter books that were published this year. I have a feeling this year might get me back into higher amounts of chunkier books due to some fantasy reading plans, among other, but time will tell!

Tell me about your year in books! Do you keep track of information for stats like this? If you do and you made a post that I haven't seen–or any type end of year post–leave me a link below because I love checking them out!

2021 End of Year Book Stats & Overview

 

Well, this post took far longer than I expected to finally post, but it's here! This is one of my favorite yearly posts to make because I love getting to step back and see how my overall year of reading went and what sort of books I gravitated to over the year. 2021 in particular was a weird year where I felt like my reading was a bit more unpredictable, and being a mood reader I never know what to expect from any year. There's a lot I could say about last year, but I think we should just skip that and move into the stats, starting with some information provided from Goodreads' annual Year in Review!

I am so surprised that I ended up reading 167 books this past year! Last year was truly crazy, between finishing up my Master's, searching for a new job, moving, and adopting a dog... let's just say there were a lot of days where I barely read anything. Three things I think I'd credit somewhat for still having read so much was that I really leaned into just letting myself read what I felt like rather than forcing myself to read things, reading more audiobooks, and maybe even reading more horror (I seem to speed through horror far quicker than others... I just have to know what's happening!). I'm really glad I was able to get in so many books last year, but I definitely don't plan to try to match that number next year (though I wouldn't complain if I can!). 

My average book length was a bit shorter this year, but it's still pretty on point for the type of books I read. I felt like I read a lot of pretty fat tomes this year, but I also recall that there seemed to be more shorter books I read as well, so I guess it all evens out. The Stormlight Archives books almost always seem to take the prize for longest book if I read one that year, so that makes sense. And The Drowned is a horror graphic novel from Laini Taylor and Jim DiBartolo, which was a fun look into some early work of theirs. 

I don't really take too much stock in these average Goodreads ratings, but I always like to share them anyway. Mine are always inflated because I tend to round up on Goodreads, and I do a lot .5 or .75s. I guess I'm either somewhat easy to please or I'm good at picking books I'll like. Still, it seems overly high!

This is one of those years where I sort of wish I had taken out the least popular book to see what it really was because I am literally the only person on Goodreads to have read it. It's a personal family ancestry-related thing, and I added it to Goodreads in order to add it to my books for the year, so yeah, it's pretty obvious it'd be the least popular, haha. I think Alice's Adventures in Wonderland being most popular is not that surprising, either. I re-read it this year via audio for the first time and it was a really fun new experience to read the story. Alice is a favorite!

In case you can't read that tiny font, that's a 4.72 average, which is crazy high! In all fairness, Jade Legacy is the final book in a trilogy which often predisposes books to higher ratings, but that's still exceptionally high and all the kudos to Fonda Lee for writing such a fantastic finale. I absolutely loved it and think it more than deserves that high average rating. 

Stats:
And lastly, my favorite section: the stats! I keep a running spreadsheet throughout the year with some basic info about the books I read, and then I create some fun graphs with some of that info every year to see what I'm reading, where it's from, who it's for, etc. I love doing this, and I also love seeing other peoples' stats, so if you have your own end of year post, do let me know. Without further ado, let's jump into the stats!

Genre

In a surprise to no one, I read a lot of fantasy (48.8%) this year! I would say the biggest change this year is how much horror (15.2%)  this year. I really got into horror this year and I'm excited to keep exploring the genre–I don't think I ever realized how much I really seem to enjoy it until the last couple of years. I also read a bit more nonfiction (6.7%) this year which I'm happy about because I've been wanting to incorporate more into my reading. I also read more sci-fi (9.8%) than last year (yay!) and quite a bit less historical fiction (5.5%), but for some reason I just wasn't feeling it as much last year? Hopefully this year I get back into that more .

Target Audience

And yet other obvious one, the majority of my reading was comprised of adult books (87.4%). I surprisingly read more young adult (7.8%) than middle grade (4.8%), and I'm hoping to find more middle grade this year to check out. I've struggled a lot with young adult lately, so I didn't expect it to be very high.

Format

This one is pretty evenly spread out overall, with one new category–audiobooks! 2021 is the year I really ran with audiobooks, and I'm glad I've finally been able to figure out that I can really enjoy some! I'm a little surprised at how close eARCs( 20.3%), physical ARCs (20.3%), paperbacks (22.2%), and hardcovers (27.8%) are! I actually find reading hardcovers more uncomfortable than paperback so that's also interesting, but libraries and new releases tend to be hardcover. I feel pretty good about these stats.

Book Source

This was an interesting one! I'm so glad that I was able to read so many books that I already owned this year (28.8%)–it's nice to actually work on that TBR, haha. Library usage (17.1%) was down a little as well because of various library closures and the fact that I was reading more of my own books. I also got quite a large number of books from the publisher (33.5%) and NetGalley (15.9%), so that makes up a good portion. I'm just glad it means I'm not spending that much on books... right?

Page Count

This year had more books on the lower range than there usually are and I have no idea why! Maybe there were just more smaller books published or something? Who's to say? Still, the majority of those pages came in between 300-500, which makes sense since that's the most average page count size. 

Tell me about your year in books! Do you keep track of information for stats like this? (If you do and you made a post that I haven't seen, leave me a link because I love looking at them! Or if you have any 'end of year' sort of post, link that also so I can check it out!)

2020 End of Year Book Stats & Overview

Now that we've covered the most important end of year posts with the best books lists, it's time to jump into one of my favorite posts of the year--yearly stats! I am once again using some information from the Goodreads 'Year in Review,' since it does a fairly good job of capturing some finer details (which also means that some of these, such as my average star rating and the highest rated book are unique to the Goodreads community only and not reflective of other sources), and I am also still keeping a spreadsheet of the books I read and some info about genres, author info, formats, sources, etc. If you have any end of year posts/surveys/best books lists that I haven't seen yet, please do leave them in the comments so I can come visit!

 

Previous end of year stats & overview posts: 2018, 2019

 

Much like last year, I've opted not to include most of the books I read for grad school so as to keep them separate from my pleasure reading, although I did enjoy most of what I read so perhaps I should revise that one day... Nonetheless, 160 is far beyond anything I expected to read this year! This year was busy and anxiety-inducing as hell and there were so many times where I felt I was barely getting through any books, so I'm very excited about that. It beats last year's 150, but I have no intentions to try to beat 160 next year. I also think 65,000 pages is a bit mind-boggling to consider in the grand scheme of things, especially when I then factor in the sheer number of articles I had to read for school and... I think I need to give my eyes a break.  

I am a little surprised that 112 pages was the smallest book I read this year, but then I really didn't read very many novellas so I suppose it does make sense. It's also hard to believe that it was this year that I read Silver in the Wood when it feels like ages ago because I read it in our old apartment before we moved, haha. Imaginary Friend was indeed quite chunky, and since I didn't end up getting to my usual special 1,000+ page book of the year, I suppose it can take that place. The average book length also seems pretty on par with average book lengths in general and similar to last year's (405). 

This rating is always inflated on Goodreads since I can't do half or quarter stars, and I did a lot of those this year. Still, it's fun to see!

 

This feels unsurprising, I'm almost more curious what the most popular would be if I hadn't re-read The Fellowship of the Ring.  Also, Gatekeeper was a delight and I'd highly recommend it!

In case you can't read that tiny font, that's a 4.67 average, which is pretty damn good! I'm glad this trilogy is getting the love it deserves.

Stats:
Now we can dive into some of the fun (to me, anyway) stats! As with previous years, I'd like to apologize for some of the font/color sizes on these--Google Sheets remains my free option of use, and it's frustrating to use sometimes. I started keeping track of stats about two years ago and I've enjoyed it so much! I'm very much a mood reader and can't necessarily plan out too much of what I intend to read, so I always find these an interesting way of seeing where my moods lead me each year and if there are any big changes.

Genre

This is probably the first time that straight fantasy (48.8%) has been more than half of my reading. Speculative fiction as a whole, however, including horror (9.4%) and science fiction (6.3%) does reach over the halfway mark, though, which makes more sense. I am pleased to see that I managed to read more historical fiction (15.6%) this year, which was something I wanted to do since I am a big fan of historical fiction in general. This was partly due to the fact that when my anxiety was skyrocketing when my husband and I were moving earlier this year historical fiction turned into my comfort read genre for the time? It was a surprise to me as well, but I ran with it. I'm glad to see more horror this year, and I'd really like to check out even more next year, as well as more sci-fi, perhaps. 

Target Audience

There aren't too many surprises on here. I enjoy a young adult book here and there, but overall I tend to read mostly adult (80%) books. I do still love my middle grade, though, and I'd almost prefer to read more middle grade (6.3%) than young adult (13.8%) these days! I mainly read middle grade at night, which is why that percentage tends to stay low. I've really been struggling with young adult fantasy these past two years or so, and I keep finding myself disappointed more often than not, so I'm not sure if it's just me or something else. 

Format

This is such a close mix this year of formats! I have concluded that paperback (31.9%) is probably the most comfortable to read, and that makes up about half total (including Physical ARCs). I am not a huge fan of reading on my Kindle (eARCs, 20%), but since that is how I am able to read NetGalley books and the like, I am happy to do so! Those also tend to the be the only books I read on my Kindle, though I do occasionally snatch up some Kindle deals now and then.

Book Source

This was one of the stats that I was most interested to see this year since all my local libraries were closed for eight (!) months year due to COVID. It was rough, but it also made me thankful for how many books I've accumulated over the years and was able to dip into (purchased category)--and in the end, I'm really glad I've had the opportunity to focus on the books I already owned, plus some I bought to try to support authors this year. It also gave me an opportunity to read a lot of older ARCs that I, uh, hadn't gotten around to... so that's why the publisher category is a bit bigger, since publishers weren't sending out as many physical ARCs this year. 

Page Count

This feels pretty on par with the fact that most books (especially in fantasy) tend to average 300-500 pages (63.7% together). That tiny sliver there is 900+, in which I only read one book this year. I don't have too much to say about this chart because it feels very reasonable and a bit predictable, haha. Is it just me, or do fantasy books these days often seem bigger in general or is it just me??

Tell me about your year in books! Do you keep track of information for stats like this? (If you do and you made a post that I haven't seen, leave me a link because I love looking at them! Or if you have any 'end of year' sort of post, link that also so I can check it out!)