Hello!

I’m really not sure if the title of this blog post sounds too formal, when realistically I just wanted to share some of the cool pie charts from my Storygraph account of everything I’ve been reading so far this year. And I love being nosy with this sort of thing on other people’s reading habits, so I might as well share my own!

In the first three months of 2023, I have read 17 books – three of those are from the collection of books we received as part of our wedding gifts, two of them are audiobooks, thirteen were from the backlog of my physical tbr and I also bought 32 new books.

This is why I’m back on a book buying ban – because I cannot be trusted.

I forgot to get screenshots before I finished my first book of April, so these stats are skewed slightly by the 18th book I finished yesterday, but we can overlook that (please).

First thing’s first, I just wanted to share that I am absolutely smashing my reading goal – I’m only three books away from the halfway mark of my goal for the year, which means if I continue reading at this rate I’ll be done by August! And I’ve got a two week holiday to Greece where I plan on doing nothing but reading so maybe even sooner. But I am very cautious of putting too much pressure on myself and if I don’t keep up this momentum, that’s absolutely fine.

I’ve read a whole bunch of different ‘moods’ but adventurous, mysterious and lighthearted appear to be my go to! I think this is due to starting the year finishing the Alex Rider series and then getting back into reading more of the fantasy genre, which tends to have more adventurous plot lines. Lighthearted is definitely my favourite and I consider them almost my palette cleanser books – something easy that I don’t have to think to hard about that I can devour.

Most of the books I read are (what I consider) average length books – below 400 pages is my ideal book for not feeling too intimidating, but honestly page numbers can be confusing because The Atlas Six was over 500 pages, but it’s sequel The Atlas Paradox was only 399 but felt about the same length, which I think was something to do with the paperback vs hardback formatting with the height and width of the books. So in a way, I prefer looking at audiobooks for the length of books because it’s still the same amount of words! (Six is 16h51m and Paradox is 17h35m, so point proven!).

Honestly, I don’t think I need to say anything.

I think YA, Romance and Fantasy being at the top of my genres is pretty accurate (though I would argue that YA isn’t a genre but an audience category – ‘Adult’ and ‘Middle-Grade’ aren’t considered genres!). I’ve read more science fiction than I would have expected for this year, but then that is only four books and so many books cover different genres that it probably muddles in with the others.

I really enjoyed rediscovering the Dystopian genre by reading Ready Player One and I’d like to read more of it in the rest of the year but 1) I honestly don’t know how many dystopian books I have and 2) I choose what I’m reading based on bits of paper in my tbr jar, so I don’t really choose what I read next.

My formats would definitely be more balanced if I still had a two hour daily commute to work, but as I don’t have the opportunity to listen and drive as much as I used to, I take more time to finish audiobooks than most physical books. But I am getting better at finding opportunities at home to listen to audiobooks – I was sorting my wardrobe the other day and it was the perfect time to listen and I really enjoy listening while doing creative relaxing tasks like colouring or cross stitching, but I also just started watching Gilmore Girls and honestly, I’m a little bit obsessed so audiobooks have taken a back seat.

Now, Storygraph doesn’t always get the number of pages right (which is part of the reason I also have my own spreadsheet for data tracking) but I love the way this graph shows books read in relation to pages and minutes listened. Though I definitely listened to audiobooks in both January and February so I’m not sure where this data has gone. It’s still pretty satisfying though.

And last but not least (of the Storygraph data) – my average star ratings. I’ve been pretty lucky to only have 3+ star reads so far this year, but there’s definitely been a couple that have been borderline 2 stars and several that have been reluctant ratings due to having one amazing aspects (characters or world building, etc) and being let down by other aspects. But I do think I’m pretty generous with my ratings so that average ratings of the books I read were probably lower than my ratings.

And from my personal spreadsheet, here’s everything I’ve read so far this year including how many days it took me to read, how I would classify their genres, audience age, format, actual number of pages and ratings. I intend to make my own graphs at the end of the year and I’m unreasonably excited about it.

These are arguably not my best statistics, but this is how many books I had on my physical tbr at the beginning of the year, then a tracker of how many I’ve bought, how many of the backlog I’ve read, total I’ve read (including non-backlog books) and the consequent total of unread books on my physical tbr. The fact that it’s nearly 20 books higher than it was at the beginning of the year is the reason I put myself on a book buying ban.

Recently I’ve been having a real internal debate about whether I actually enjoy reading or if I’m making myself do it because I love the numbers and the statistics. I think it’s both and I think that’s okay? I do really love statistics and I also really love reading and getting lost in stories.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx