This year I’ve done a dorky book stats review at 20 books and at six months. Since I just hit both 80 books and nine months, it seemed like a good time for another one. Yay number crunching!
September was a pretty good reading month for me – I read eight books for 2,224 pages. That’s much less than June, July, and especially August, but I started out the month on a little bit of a slump and needed to recover. I think this is a manageable number of books to read and still try to review most of them.
Books and Pages Read Per Month
Getting out of school has still been awesome for my reading. I read a lot in June, July, and August, but slowed down a bit in September. My goal is probably going to be 10 books a month for the rest of the year, which seems like a manageable number to balance reading/blogging/life.
| Month | Books Read | Pages Read |
| January | 5 | 1751 |
| February | 4 | 1324 |
| March | 8 | 2864 |
| April | 6 | 1729 |
| May | 9 | 2395 |
| June | 13 | 3079 |
| July | 13 | 2605 |
| August | 14 | 4551 |
| September | 8 | 2224 |
| 80 | 22,872 |
Breakdown by Genre
When I break it out by the genres I read, fiction is the biggest single category. The YA fiction number went up thanks to pushes from the book blogging community – re-reading the Hunger Games trilogy, Diana Wynne Jones Week, and Love is the Higher Law.
| Genre | Books | Percent |
| Fiction | 24 | 30% |
| YA Fiction | 8 | 10% |
| Nonfiction | 12 | 15% |
| Literary Journalism | 18 | 23% |
| Memoir | 18 | 23% |
Breakdown of Fiction versus Nonfiction
When bring the categories together, my split gets a lot more noticeable. At six months, I’d read 16 fiction books and 29 nonfiction books. At 80 books, the split looks like this:
| Genre | Books | Percent |
| Fiction | 32 | 40% |
| Nonfiction | 48 | 60% |
I’ve read more nonfiction than fiction in the last three months, but only by a little bit, so my percentage of fiction versus nonfiction is actually closer together than it was three months ago. Interesting!
Books by Acquisition Type
Where my books come from remains a big concern for me. My goal at six months was to get my percentage of owned books read close to 50 percent (at the time it was 40 %).
| Book Type | Books | Percent |
| Owned | 29 | 36% |
| Review Copy | 25 | 31% |
| Borrowed | 26 | 33 |
Unfortunately, it looks like the percentage has actually gone down rather than gone up. I’m not sure if I can get it any higher over the next three months, since I have quite a few review and library books that I’m excited about reading. I guess we’ll see what happens.
Books by Author
When I re-crunched the numbers, the percentages for male versus female authors was almost exactly the same as it was at six months. That’s interesting too.
| Male Author | 42 | 53% |
| Female Author | 37 | 46% |
| Both | 1 | 1% |
Randoms
- 3 ebook — I need to read more on my nook!
- 7 audio books
- 3 graphic novels — Again, not a lot. I want to read more!
- 65 books reviewed, 15 left unreviewed (but a few are books I decided I’m not going to review, so the pending reviews number is more like 11-ish. That’s still bad…)
That’s where I’m at after nine months of reading? How was your September? Any favorite books so far this year? What are your goals for the rest of the year?
Photo by flickr user josef.stuefer.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
I love reading stats! And I think I need to add an ebook category to my stats. I’ve just been including them as text when I read them on my kindle, which is admittedly a very small amount of time. Like I can only remember one book I’ve read on it this year, though it might be two if I really think…
Amanda: I just have a section in my spreadsheet called ‘Format’ where I record hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, etc. That makes it pretty easy to keep track. I was surprised the number was so low, actually.
Oh man, Kim, I love this soooo much. You should revel in the glory of your stats! And don’t use them as a stick to beat yourself with at all.
Lyndsey: Oh no worries, I love doing these posts. I like having the stats to think more carefully about my reading – it helps me set goals, too. I’m a little disappointed by the review copy/owned ratio, but not too upset about it.
I love reading statistics of others. I guess I shoud start keeping track of my own.
I admire the amount of non-fiction reading you get done. I am still hoping that that will improve once I’m done with my studies.
Iris: I only started doing it this year, but I like having a spreadsheet of books and stats. Some people are a lot more meticulous than I am, too. A lot of my nonfiction is narrative nonfiction, which reads easily for me. That’s part of the reason I can read so much, I think.
I love reading other people’s reading stats! I’ve just started really tracking mine, so I don’t have much to report yet. I’ve loved gathering inspiration over the past few days, though, as everyone posts the stats they track. I especially like that you keep track of books by acquisition type in order to make sure you’re reading from what you own — I really need to watch that myself!
I think my favorite from September was One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I also loved listening to The Great Gatsby on audio, as read by Frank Muller.
Erin: I only started this year, and always keep adding more categories to keep track of. People have some great ideas. I think The Great Gatsby on audio would be great!
Thanks for sharing your statistics again! I love seeing them. And Istill can’t understand the reading more male than female authors thing, but I wonder if the extra young adult books is possibly what pushes my numbers up… I’m going to have to check on that
Amy: I’m not sure about the male to female ratio either. It surprises me. It must be that a lot of the nonfiction I read is by male authors, but that seems unlikely. I need a better stats program to work on figuring that out.
I love bookish stats! I like to hear you want to read more graphic novels as I think they are a wonderful format to read: I’m blanking right now on which you’ve read, but due to the fact you like nonfiction, I’d like to recommend Fun Home by Bechdel, The Alcoholic by Ames, and Maus by Spiegelman if you haven’t already read them. I also think you might enjoy Incognegro about a light-skinned African-American infiltrating the racist south.
Ooooo – these look good.
Trisha: Those all sound good! I need some graphic novels for the readathon this weekend – I’m off to the library!
I love reading stats! You’ve done some hefty reading this year. I love it that you’ve read more nonfiction than fiction. (I personally think the world would be a better place if people read more nonfiction.)
I haven’t kept track of any stats this year… planning to next year. I’m interested to see how much I can realistically read.
Kate: I have done a lot of reading – more than years previous, that’s for sure. I actually think outside blogging, nonfiction is more popular than fiction, but can’t remember where I read those stats. But I’d love more bloggers to read nonfiction.
I am woefully behind in my updating page counts and other geeky stat stuff. GOOD job. I also think I have been pitiful at reading more NF which is a bit odd for me. I just got a bio of Virginia Woolf and it is 755 pages!?!?!!! I am realizing that my book count will likely not exceed last year but maybe pg count will?
Care: I haven’t fallen behind, which surprises me. I guess I just like adding books to the list of finished books. Wow, that is a huge bio!
I love dorky book stats! And I’m always envious of those who keep track of pages read. I could go back and add, but that’s way too much math for me.
softdrink: Thank goodness for my Excel spreadsheet, it does all the adding for me!
What fun! The numbers for my September are misleading because August was the month of reading-but-not-finishing, and I only completed many of those neglected reads on September’s long weekend. I’m looking forward to another long weekend this weekend and hope that my first 24-Hour Read-a-thon nudges me closer-to-finished with at least one of the challenges that I’ve been avoiding!
BuriedInPrint: Yeah, sometimes I start a book right at the end of the month and finish it in the next, which throws the numbers off a little bit. I can’t wait to read some books over the Read-a-Thon this weekend!
I love statistics like these! I am struggling with reading on my nook as well! I get so many review books, books from the library, books I own etc. that I neglect my nook. I’m taking a trip over winter though and I’m planning on using only my nook for those two and a half weeks.
Ash: I think that’s exactly it – there are so many books on my shelves, it seems more prudent to read those than to read on the nook. I think if I start traveling more it will get some more use, but for now it ends up being a device I mostly use at the gym. It’s great for that, but not great for reading a ton of books since I only go a couple times a week.
I need to make my stats as snazzy as yours!
Gwen: Yay for snazzy stats