It’s taken until January 22, 2012, but I finally managed to put together my book stats from 2011. Geek joy!
Doing book stats is one of my favorite things. It’s always interesting to me to compare what I thought I read over the year to what I actually read. Often, I find out that my impressions of my reading are pretty different from the reality. But anyway, onward!
The Basics
- 109 books read
- 34,127 pages read
- 656 pages per week
- 93.5 pages per day
Longest Book: A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin – 788 pages
Honorable Mention: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee – 608 pages
Shortest Book: Scenes from an Impending Marriage by Adrian Tomine – 56 pages
Most Common Book Length: 352 pages (9), 320 pages (9), 416 pages (8)
Oldest Book: House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)
Books Published in 2011: 47/109 (43 percent)
Books by Genre
In the past, I’ve broken this out with more specific genres, but I’m in the mood to keep things simple. Of the 109 books I read, 39 were fiction and 70 were nonfiction.
Books by Acquisition Type
This is always one of my favorite charts. I always set a goal to read more of my own books, rather than library books or review copies, but I rarely succeed. But, this year I was closer! Of the 109 books, 29 were my own, 30 were from the library, and 50 were review copies.
Books by Format
I also keep track of what format I read my books in. I don’t really make much of an effort to read books in a particular format, but I like looking back to see how the year worked out.
Author Gender
The last couple years, I’ve read far more male authors that female authors. I don’t know what the reason for that is, but this year things have changed and my female author number is just slightly higher. Awesome!
That’s what I’ve got for book stats in 2011. Overall, I think it was a good year in reading and I’m glad I finally got the stats put together too look back.
And now, back to the really important activities for Sunday: reading and football. Happy Sunday everyone!
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{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Love stats and love the pie charts! I copped out on genre this year, just doing fiction v. nonfiction as well, in part because I can’t really figure out the best classifications.
I struggled with that too, especially because I like to try and distinguish “nonfiction” and “narrative nonfiction”… but that’s getting hard because so much “straight” nonfiction is written so well. It’s a little bit of a cop out on my part too
You are a very balanced reader!!! Love the male/female ratio especially with the gender discussions that burst loose on Twitter pretty regularly. lol I think I’m gonna keep up a little better this year so I can do more stats. I used to keep meticulous stats and then I let off of it, but it was fun!
Congrats on a great 2011!
That one surprised me! I normally skew pretty heavily male (at least, I have in the past). I’m not quite sure what was different this year.
I can show you the Google Form I developed if you want? It’s really easy to use and then everything is in a nice spreadsheet when I want to mess around it.
How fun! I enjoy these posts when the end of the year comes.
I don’t go into as much detail with my own, but maybe this year I will…
I just have a big Google Form where I enter everything in, then pull out the stuff that seems most interesting at the end of the year. Getting in the habit of putting books in the form when I’m done has been nice, and then I don’t have to struggle to figure out book info at the end of the year!
You kicked my behind with the male versus female ratio. Like you, I tried to be more conscious of it this year, but I didn’t succeed at all.
I think I must have read more nonfiction by female authors this year… maybe more memoirs? I think a lot of the fiction I grabbed was by male authors. That’d be sort of fun to break down too.
I love the pie charts! I did mine a few weeks ago, but I didn’t even think of breaking down by format read, or figuring out how many pages I read each day. Or of which book was shortest/longest/etc. Now I kind of want to go back and do that post all over again!
I didn’t think of doing any of those until I was playing around with sorting the columns in my spreadsheet. I’ve never done pages per day or anything, although that number is inflated since I count page numbers from the listing on Amazon, and in nonfiction that includes the works cited and whatnot. I don’t “read” those exactly, so counting that skews the numbers up a bit.
I love seeing your stats! Like Andi said, you are a very balanced reader!
Loved seeing your stats Kim! I’ve still got to do mine too. Always makes me so excited seeing the breakdowns
It’s always fun, especially since I don’t think I really broke them down for like six months before this. I do enter everything using a Google Form, so I can check some stats on that easily, but usually not the “longest book” and whatnot.
I lurrrrrve stats, and stats about books and reading are the best kind. Really interesting break down of your 2011 reading. Just a wee question – does your ‘other’ category in author gender denote books co-authored by a man and a woman or a book by someone of non-traditional gender?
Thanks for sharing
No, “other” is just for books that have multiple authors. To be honest, I can’t think of the last book I read by someone with a non-traditional gender that I made note of. That should be something to change in 2012.
Ah right, thanks! Yeah, that made me think too. I haven’t read anything by someone of non traditional gender possibly ever.
Geek joy, indeed! Love that you read a relatively equal number of male and female authors; my own reading is always disproportionately authored by women. I want to change that in coming years. And 2011 was an awesome reading year for you!
In 2009 or 2010, that stat skewed pretty heavily towards male authors. I don’t normally pay attention to author gender when I pick a book, so it just happened to be pretty balanced this year!
congratulations! I love your graphics, I plan to use some more also next year, I have only 2 this year. here is my 2011 recap: http://wordsandpeace.com/2011/12/30/year-of-reading-2011/
You make me want to make pie charts!
Pie charts are easy! I just do mine in Excel (well, the Open Office version of Excel) and save them in Photoshop. Easy-peasy.
(pppppssst…… remind me of this next year?)
I will try. You try to remember and then I’ll show you!
I second Jill’s comment. I don’t track this stuff anymore but your pretty pictures make me want to!
Borrowed come from the library?
This year, yes. On the spreadsheet, I differentiate between library and borrowed from friends, but in 2011 they were all just from the library.
LOVE the pie charts. I love the fact that I see trends over the course of years and it’s not something I’m trying. Like the fact that I always seem to have 17% of the books I read being rated 5 stars.
yay stats! yay math!
That’s funny! I actually never saved ratings in the spreadsheet, so I can’t easily figure that one out. I added it for 2012, so I’ll know next year
Impressive stats! I didn’t read nearly as many books as you did, but I had pretty much the exact same fiction/nonfiction ratio. Love the pie charts!
Very cool! It seems like lots of bloggers read more fiction than nonfiction, so it’s nice to find other nonfiction readers