Monday, January 31, 2022

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!)

2 comments:

  1. I've also had issues with YA lately and haven't been reading as much. That's interesting how high the fantasy percentage was! Happy reading in 2022!

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  2. I have always loved horror, but I'm really getting into it more lately too. I'm also backing off fantasy as I'm not really into epic fantasy these days. I love seeing these stats! And wow, 167 books is awesome😁

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