I’ve done these in previous years but for whatever reason skipped it for 2021. I thought it would be fun to do again this year just to track progress (or lack thereof…). Here are my charts!
Books Read
31 Read + 0 Rereads + 1 DNF
10,643 pages read
As I’ve said a million times, my goal every year is to try to read less than 50% contemporary fiction/romance. I’m achieving this so far! I’ve seen a major uptick in mysteries in the past few years and it’s been really fun. The rest of these numbers don’t surprise me. Nonfiction has only increased because of cookbooks and I’m also not mad about that.
Not super surprising here either – contemporary is my most-read genre and generally speaking will equate to the most pages I’ve read. One interesting segment is that paranormal pages is increased here and nonfiction pages are a bit decreased – probably because paranormal books are longer and nonfiction/cookbooks are typically around the same shorter length.
Interesting breakdown here! I’d really have to go in and see how this compares to previous years. I’m not shocked that I’ve read mostly egalleys because they’re the ones I’m “obligated” to read. I love seeing that physical non-review copies are getting love too!
With a lot of egalleys comes a lot of digital reading. I don’t read a ton of straight-up ebooks that I purchased – chances are if I’ve purchased and read something, it’s physical.
This chart usually looks the same each year. Most books I read fall in the 300 page range. It’s nice to see some higher than 400 pages though – that’s rare.
I usually see more Hachette books because of Forever Romance titles but this year I haven’t read as many! A lot are publishing in the second half of the year too. Fairly equal between Macmillan and Penguin, followed closely by Harper Collins. Not a big surprise there either.
As discussed earlier, many of the books I read are review copies. This chart makes sense. Also happy to see I’ve kept up on purchased books and preordered books too! I don’t usually get a BOTM every month so it’s not surprising to see that number low – it’s not like I’ve acquired 6 so far this year and have only read 1-2. I typically skip a lot of months. I need to get my butt to the library too, clearly!
Kindle is always most popular since it includes review copies and purchased ebooks. I’m doing a good job of reading physical books too. I think Scribd is a little lower this year since I don’t listen to as many audiobooks or audio combos anymore.
Woof – big difference here. Not a shock but still. I have definitely kept up with review copies better than usual, I think.
4 stars is always my most popular rating, so that makes sense. I love seeing that this is skewed 4 stars and higher. I also realized when I was reviewing and fixing the chart that I don’t have any books under 3 stars this year! Usually I see something in the 2-2.5 star range by this point in the year. I did DNF a book or two this year so that always increases my overall rating average too.
I typically start the year really hot because I’m excited for a fresh start and new challenges, so this is pretty normal. Please ignore July on some of these – not sure how that made it on here when I restricted through June. I definitely need to increase my numbers for the second half of the year though if I want to make my reading challenge work. I need an average of 7 books per month at this point thanks to months like February and April!
Yes, this makes sense for the most part based on the chart above. Interesting that May has the most pages when January had the most books – I think this is because I read my longest book of the year in May while January had some quicker reads.
I never showed this one before because I didn’t understand it the first time but I decided to get it on here this time! It shows how many books I need to read per month in order to keep up my goal. As of now, I’m a few books behind pace.
Always the least shocking chart on here – I read primarily books by women for a ton of reasons, so this makes sense.
Often books written by women feature female main characters – who woulda thought?? I also got a few ensemble casts in here which makes sense. I like reading two POVs (one male, one female).
It’s so funny seeing how this has understandably changed over the years. I’ve seen more adult-oriented books tick up over the years as I get older, for obvious reasons. I am a little bit surprised at the huge difference here though… I kind of expected more of a 60-40 split!
Adding more diverse reads has been a goal of mine over the years and I try to actively seek them out. I’m reading 60% of books with some amount of diversity in them but I know this could and should be much larger. Always an eye-opening one for me to put more thought into!
I feel like this is a somewhat common occurrence for me – since I read mostly contemporary and there aren’t as many series in that genre, this makes sense. I do read some companion contemporary series though.
I thought this was a funny one at first and wasn’t formatted properly, but it is! Of the series I’ve read, most of them are “ongoing,” meaning I’m in the middle of it or already started it. No series-starters for me this year so far apparently.
I have completed some series and caught up on them though! This looks pretty good but I’m sure the actual numbers are smaller just based on the limited number of series I actually read these days.
Books Acquired
63 Books Acquired, $218.75 Spent
In a surprise to no one, I mostly acquired contemporary books. Mystery is the next largest category, which is also not surprising at all.
I feel like this is better than previous years (even just the last couple) because I’ve acquired more physical copies than usual. I’ve also had subscriptions to Libro.fm and Audible this year on and off, which is why there are some good audio numbers on here.
Again not the most shocking here. I usually read books on my Kindle so this lines up in terms of acquiring Kindle books, regardless of source!
This usually lines up with egalley breakdowns. I tend to acquire/download more egalleys from publishers like Hachette and Penguin because of their romance imprints I love (Forever and Berkley). Macmillan is a close second to Penguin just because they tend to be one of my favorite publishers with a lot of authors I love.
As I mentioned, BOTM isn’t huge for me since I don’t usually get one book per month and skip a lot of them. Review copies are usually my highest acquisition because I don’t have a ton of shelf space. I have made a concerted effort to buy more books lately though.
Again, this aligns with the above chart. Free would include review copies, gifts, and library checkouts.
May was clearly a big month for me. I know this is because I had a lot of review copies downloaded AND did a lot of purchasing of books too. I went on some trips and supported indie bookstores.
I haven’t shown this one either before but thought it was fun. Clearly I acquire more books than I can reasonably read at this point in my shitty reading life. If I were reading 10+ books per month like I used to, this would probably look a lot different.
Definitely downloading or buying more adult books than YA at this point, which makes sense. I don’t even feel like I have my finger on the pulse of new YA books coming out anymore. I typically focus on my favorite authors and that’s it.
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