In 2022 my reading total dipped to 300, whereas in 2023 I was back up to what seems to be my natural limit of 340 books (as 2019–21 also proved).
The statistics
Fiction: 52.1%
Nonfiction: 31.2%
Poetry: 16.8%
(Poetry is up by nearly 3% and fiction and nonfiction down by a percent or so each compared to last year. I attribute this to specializing in poetry reviews for Shelf Awareness.)
Female author: 69.7%
Male author: 27.6%
Nonbinary author: 2.1%
Multiple genders (anthologies): 0.6%
(I always read more from women than from men, but was surprised to see that the percentage by men rose by 4.6% last year.)
BIPOC author: 22.4%
(The third time I have specifically tracked this figure. I’m pleased that it’s increased year on year: 18.5%, then 20.7%. I will continue to aim at 25% or more.)
LGBTQ: 18.2%
(This is a new category for me. I define it by the identity of the author and/or a major theme in the work; just having a secondary character who is gay wouldn’t count. I retrospectively looked at 2021 and 2022, which would have been at 11.8% and 8.8%.)
Work in translation: 10.6%!
(I’m delighted with this figure because the past two years were at just 5% and 8.7% and my aim was to be close to 10%. Most popular languages: Spanish (10), French (9) and Swedish (4); German (3), Italian (3), Danish (2), Dutch (2), Korean (1), Polish (1) and Welsh (1) were also represented.)
Backlist: 55.3%
2023 (or 2024 pre-release) books: 44.7%
(This is not too bad, although 17.9% of the ‘backlist’ stuff was from 2021 or 2022, so fairly recent releases I was catching up on from review copies, the library or in e-book form. My oldest reads were both from 1897, Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham and De Profundis by Oscar Wilde.)
E-books: 27.4%
Print books: 72.6%
(On par with last year. I almost exclusively read e-books for BookBrowse, Foreword and Shelf Awareness reviews.)
Rereads: 9
(Compared to 12 each of the past two years; at least one per month would be a good aim.)
Where my books came from for the whole year, compared to last year:
- Free print or e-copy from publisher: 43.5% (↑1.5%)
- Public library: 24.1% (↓5.9%)
- Secondhand purchase: 10% (↑3.3%)
- Downloaded from NetGalley or Edelweiss: 6.8% (↓0.2%)
- Free (giveaways, Little Free Library/free bookshop, from friends or neighbours): 5.9% (↑3.3%)
- Gifts: 4.1% (↑0.1%)
- University library: 3.2% (↑0.9%)
- New purchase (often at a bargain price): 2.1% (↓2.6%)
- Borrowed: 0.3% (↓0.4%)
So nearly a quarter of my reading (22.1%) was from my own shelves. I’d like to make it more like 33–50%, achieved by a drop in review copies rather than library borrowing.
Additional statistics courtesy of Goodreads:
73,861 pages read
Average book length: 217 pages (down from 225 last year; thank you, novellas and poetry)
Average rating for 2022: 3.6 (identical to last year)
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Awesome that you work out the statistics.
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Thanks — since I moved over to using Excel spreadsheets in 2021, it’s been a cinch to work the numbers out!
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340? THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY? I thought I was doing brilliantly at 120 odd. Like you I’m trying to up my Works in Translation though I’m not doing TOO badly. No statistics are available. I don’t do stats. Well done Rebecca – keep up the good work.
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And you are doing brilliantly! You have a very busy and active life. Reading is part work and part obsessive (nearly only) hobby for me.
Excel does all the work of spitting out the numbers for me at the end of the year; it couldn’t be easier!
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Excel is not easy for types like me …
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I only know and use the very basics, for this, and for my treasurer duty for a local charity.
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Wow – how do you manage to read that many books? And work out all those statistics? Well done!
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The stats: Excel. The books: I have no children, television or smartphone; I work from home; I am a freelance book reviewer but reading is also my primary hobby.
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I’m always wildly envious of your reading quantity—which is silly of me—but this seems like a good year! Lots of translated work and how lovely to see BIPOC/LGBTQ+ stats rising year on year as well.
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No need to be envious; you read a ton for someone who also works and studies! And you read many more big books and proper classics than I do. I love novellas, poetry, graphic novels and the occasional children’s or YA novel, but they do inflate my totals rather.
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Love reading the stats! Our percentage of books by women is more or less the same. And hurrah for being back to your usual book total. This year mine went down, after years of getting higher each year.
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Maybe you’ve found your peak? Or do you think illness, work or travel had anything to do with it?
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Issues with my eyes didn’t help. Though also watching a lot more films than usual!
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Right, I was trying to remember if your eye issue was last year. Films are another valuable art form! I hardly ever get to see any as I don’t have a telly or any streaming services. This Christmas was unusual for me in that I was staying with family in both the USA and UK and watched loads of Christmas movies, some better than others. I also saw Wonka in the theatre the other day, it was a neighbourhood outing.
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I love stats!
340 books is incredible. I didn’t even manage to get to 3 figures in 2023, and read just 86.
I’ve just worked out some of my stats.
Non fiction – 96.5%
Fiction – 3.5%
No surprise there!
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Wow, that is a very high proportion of nonfiction. Maybe even higher than Paul’s! What induces you to try a novel?
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I’d actually like to read more fiction and I try books that sound up my street. But I frequently end up bailing! I do love Murakami, Susanna Clarke and Sarah Waters, so I wish any of that trio would get cracking with something new.
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Have you tried reading authors who are a bit like those three? There’s lots of surrealist Japanese stuff out there. For Clarke you might try Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book or R.F. Kuang’s Babel; for Waters maybe These Days by Lucy Caldwell or something by Patrick Gale.
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Well done!
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Thanks, Laila!
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That’s a lot of reading, almost a book a day. I thought I read a lot. Hah!
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And you do! I think my habit of reading many books at a time (pretty much always 5+, often 10-20, even 20-30 at some points) gives me an advantage in that respect. I never wait for one book to catch my interest but instead keep switching back and forth between loads, making what seems like slow progress in each but eventually finishing a bunch at once.
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I usually only do that if I bog down in one book. Then I pick another one to unstick me a bit and usually end up finishing it first.
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It must feel comfortable and reassuring to be back to your usual position in terms of how and how much you read. And I really like the little up-arrows and down-arrows you’ve included in your stats (better than my bolding the previous year, so I will look for arrows too, thanks for that)! If I didn’t track my reading, I know I would be reading much more homogenously and I do enjoy the challenge of keeping selections varied, as do you.
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It would feel a little heartless to say, “mother’s death = 40 fewer books,” so that’s not how I wanted to frame it. It was more that it threw me off for the whole rest of 2022.
Your spreadsheet template is in its third year and has served me very well! I compiled all the stats this year without any help from my husband 🙂
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🙂
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Your backlist percentage it really good. Overall that’s a great amount of reading.
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Thanks, Cathy!
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Nice stats. I read someone criticising keeping diversity stats on another blog, but I think it shows intention and also inspires others to know that you can read diversely relatively easily. I hope you’re having a good 2024 of reading so far. I have a great serendipity to share soon!
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What was their reasoning? It’s a way of keeping myself accountable about reading BIPOC authors and literature in translation. If I didn’t monitor it, those categories could easily dwindle to nil.
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They said it could be seen as virtue-signalling. I use it to measure and keep track and I use my blog to share Global Majority Community writers as I don’t have another platform.
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