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!
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.

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:
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!
Hooray for reading from our own shelves! I love that your stats are pretty consistent year to year, it shows you've found a good system for yourself!
ReplyDelete