I started book blogging in 2008. At the end of the year, I fell in love with posts where bloggers would break down their year in reading. Beginning in 2010, I started to keep detailed statistics about each book I read so I could look back on my year in reading that way too. I love being able to look back at those numbers and use them to assess the current year too.
I know that there are still a couple of days left in 2014, but I’m in the middle of a few chunky books and don’t really see myself finishing them before the new year begins. And that’s ok, I’m feeling ready to wrap up 2014 and get started in 2015.
The Basics
- 102 books read (104 in 2013 | 110 in 2012 | 109 in 2011 | 108 in 2010)
- 28,888 pages read (33,839 in 2013 | 34,883 in 2012 | 34,127 in 2011 | 31,210 in 2010)
- 126 hours listened (104.5 in 2013 | 93.5 in 2012 | 58 in 2011)
This all averages out to about 555 pages per week (650 in 2013) or 79 pages per day (93 in 2013).
Longest Book: Elizabeth the Queen by Sally Bedell Smith (720 pages). Honorable mentions include Console Wars by Blake Harris (576 pages), The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (576 pages), and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (548 pages).
Shortest Books: Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson (120 pages) and I Don’t Know by Leah Hager Cohen (128 pages).
Most Common Book Length: 320 pages (10 books)
Oldest Book: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (1995). This is a little sad. I should read more classics in 2015.
Books Published in 2014: 53 of 102
Author Gender: 54 women, 36 men, 12 other (multiple authors)
Number of Comics: 13 of 102, although this doesn’t count single issues because I didn’t track them. Nine of these were written by Brian K. Vaughn (Saga and Y:The Last Man Standing).
A new stat for this year was the author’s race. My average before this year was about 10 percent books by authors of color. This year, about 14 percent of the books I read were by authors of color. I’m hoping to up that to 20 to 25 percent in 2015.
Books by Genre
And now, the charts! This first graph shows fiction versus nonfiction for the year. Normally, I read more nonfiction than fiction. This year, it was pretty close to even. I attribute this to finishing three trilogies I was excited about, and reading more comics.
Books by Acquisition Type
This chart looks at where my books come from. Generally, I try to balance review copies with other reading material. In the past, I’ve still skewed pretty heavily towards review copies — not this year! In 2014, more than half of the books I read were books I owned. I’m really excited about this.
Books by Format
This last chart looks at what format I read my books in. As you can see, I read a lot of hardcovers (about 33 percent), followed by paperbacks and ARCs. My percentage for audiobooks went up a bit this year (9 percent in 2013 to 12 percent in 2014), but my percentage of ebooks went down.
Tackling by TBR in 2014
I only set one goal for 2014: getting my TBR under control. While I wasn’t entirely successful in completing the tasks I set for myself – catalog my library in LibraryThing, track every book I acquire, buy fewer books, and choose ebooks – I did manage to read more of my own books that review copies and library copies combined. That is so exciting, and a trend I hope I can continue in 2015.
What’s it All Mean?
In taking all of that in, I think it’s safe to say that my reading was a little bit off this year. While I read about as many total books as I’ve read in the past, the breakdown of the type of book must be different – I read significantly fewer pages, but increased my time listening to audiobooks by a pretty big margin too. I’d also venture to guess that I read many more comics this year, adding to my total books but not to total pages.
The breakdown of fiction and nonfiction seemed weird, at first, but as I reflect back I can see how I was a bit disconnected from the “big” nonfiction books of the year. I also don’t review fiction as thoroughly as nonfiction, so when I need “no pressure” reading I turn to fiction — I recall doing a lot of that this year too.
I’m not sure what 2015 will bring. I hope I’ll continue reading from my own bookshelves, and I hope I’ll get to read more nonfiction. I hope I can squeeze in more audiobooks and I hope I can utilize my ereader more. Whatever the new year is going to bring, I’m ready!
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I started out the year keeping a detailed spreadsheet so I could do a stats post but it didn’t last long at all. I’m amazed that you managed to read 555 pages a week!
I was impressed with that number too! I think the two Readathons help bump that number up a bit.
I love your stats! I should start a spreadsheet so I can keep track of things like this. I try to use GoodReads but that isn’t always so reliable. Happy New Year!
I use Goodreads as a quick way to track when I finish a book, then go back and fill in the spreadsheet in batches about once a week. It’s not the most efficient system, but it seems to work for me.
Wow, your book numbers year over year are so consistent! I forgot to check how many books I read this year, but it’s not the real number anyway because I don’t track academic nonfiction or romance novels. For whatever reason. :p
Last year, I think, I got into a summer reading binge and thought I was going to smash my record for books in a year. Then I went into a huge slump and ended up at average. I think this 100ish books, 30K pages is a comfortable number that I just tend to — I’m curious if there’s any chance to my life/reading style that would change that.
I love posts like this one, but I’ve yet to keep a detailed spreadsheet of my reading. I’ll throw something together, but I love the detail of your’s.
Love it! Looks like a fun year. 🙂
I always love your stats posts so much! I kept really detailed stats from 2011-2013, but this year I just didn’t have the time, I quit updating my spreadsheet in March.
But I’m hoping to get back to it in 2015, so that I can write an awesome post like this next year! 🙂
I put a repeating reminder in Todoist to update my spreadsheet every Wednesday. Even if I skip a week, it reminds me a week later so I don’t get too far behind. That seems to work for me right now.
I love your pretty stats! Fun to look back and see what the year was like, isn’t it? Here’s to a great 2015!
I love seeing these stats! I think I need to set up a spreadsheet – but then again, I probably wouldn’t be very good about keeping it updated. But the data is so interesting! I’d love to read more from my own shelves this year. Also more from the library, because I tend to borrow books and then return them, unread.
I am terrible about checking out books from the library and returning them unread. I don’t even want to know how many — I just tell myself I’m helping to up their circulation numbers 🙂
Wow, it looks so cool displayed like this. I need to do something like this! Just to blow away all the people in my real life circle…they already think I’m “pretty far gone.” Lol!
Nice job on reading books you own. I have a huge problem with this. Why are unpurchased books so much sexier than the ones on your shelves? So weird.
It’s so weird. I think this year I bought a lot of books I was excited about reading, which meant I was technically reading from my shelves even though they were new.
Great year, and beautiful graphs 🙂 Here’s hoping 2015 is a great success, too. I clearly need to get back on my TBR list since I am HORRIBLE at this and it appears that everyone else is way better.
This is the first year since I started blogging that I managed to do that — you are definitely not alone!
Your graph looks like you had a good balance between fiction and nonfiction. I’m shooting for a good mix of both in 2015. cheers!
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Wow, I’m impressed by how much reading your own books you did this year! I’m pretty sure I read fewer than ten books that I already owned at the beginning of the year. Only about a third of reading was nonfiction, but I’m alright with it, especially since nonfiction takes enough longer that I probably spent at least half of my reading time on nonfiction books.
One thing I didn’t track was whether the owned books were books on my shelves prior to 2014 or books that I bought in 2014 and then read right away… I suspect that was a big part of it 🙂
I know what you mean about reading more classics… or just books published before 2000! I’m always reading books from the last 10 years or so and not branching out. I really need to read more broadly. I totally forgot to track format beyond audiobook or print, which I’m bummed out about, because I always think that number is fascinating. I’m very impressed by the amount of books you read from your own shelves. Hoping to do more of that this year. 🙂 Happy 2015!!!
I knew I read a lot of new books this year… but I didn’t realize how many until I tallied it up. I feel like I *should* read more older books, but I don’t know if I have the motivation to focus on that in the upcoming year 🙂
Wow, I’m impressed that 52 of the books you read were published in 2014. I rarely read books published in the year I’m tracking. Just too many good ones from previous years that I haven’t gotten to yet.
I hope you can continue to read books from your TBR stack. That’s my goal for the year as well.
Ooh, I love these posts too, Kim — and you’ve inspired me to start my own spreadsheet for 2015! I’m changing up the way I keep track of my reading from now on — and as I’m a stats geek, I’m looking forward to filling it in. You had a great reading year, even if things felt different!
Spreadsheets! Yay! Part of me thinks keeping a bit spreadsheet with reading stats is crazy, but the rest of me think it is awesome and loves looking at everyone’s end of the year posts. It’s a weird book nerd thing, I suppose 🙂
This is the first year I’ve kept a spreadsheet. I finally committed to it because I do charts every year, but it’s SUCH a pain counting every stat manually! I think what really helped was that I did it as a Google Form, so a lot of the info gets automatically filled in when I start typing. (I’m lazy. lol)
I use a Google Form too. I love that I can see the calculations without having to do math!