I can’t believe we’re already halfway through 2020! I always like to look over my reading spreadsheets at the end of June to see what my reading has looked like so far. This year I’m finally (very slowly) learning how to amend the spreadsheet I got from someone else to make it track more of what I want to track. So seeing as I’ve been looking through my stats I thought it would be fun to share them.

I set my reading goal at 250 this year based on the fact that I had a phenomenal reading year in 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that illness and then a pandemic were going to derail my reading for a few weeks. Thankfully my reading slump is over now and I’m slowly catching up to where I would like to be. As you can see above I’m 8 books behind my target but I started June 24 books behind so I’m getting there!

The longest book that I’ve read this year so far was Truth, Lies and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster by Allan J. McDonald (at 656 pages) and the shortest was Picky Eaters by S. J. Higbee (at 68 pages). The average page length of the books I’ve read is 337, which I’m happy about.

I’m reasonably happy with the breakdown of the genres I’ve read this year so far. I’m pleased that there is a good variety and even some genres that I normally avoid (horror, sci fi and fantasy). I’m a bit disappointed at the ratio of fiction to non-fiction with only 22.9% of my reading being non-fiction. Having said that it has been such a strange year that I’ve needed more escapism and it’s not really a surprise that I’ve been picking up much more fiction. Hopefully the rest of the year will balance this out a bit.

As seems to be the norm for me I’ve read way more female authors than male and I’m okay with that. I don’t consciously chose a book based on gender but ever since I’ve been tracking my reading I’ve noticed that it’s a pattern for me to read more by women.

This is the picture of which format I read the most and it doesn’t surprise me that it looks like this at the moment. I’ve been reading more on my Kindle as I physically struggle to hold print books so I always read less of them, and my audio book listening has been reduced whilst my husband has been on furlough (although I have now bought some new wireless headphones so that I can listen when in the same room as him without forcing him to listen along with me!).

I’m really pleased with this breakdown. It shows that I’m dividing my reading time fairly evenly between catching on on review copies and reading books I’ve bought but it also shows that I’m making use of my library’s BorrowBox app. I think this is the most satisfied I’ve been with how my reading breakdown is.

To add balance to the previous chart this one shows where I’ve been acquiring books this year. I like to show this chart as it shows that even though I’m a blogger I do buy most of my books with just over a quarter of the books I’ve got this year have been for review.

I’ve completely lost control of my TBR again this year. My excuse for January is that it was my birthday and I got a lot of books. My excuse for February is that I had book tokens from my birthday to spend (and spend them I did!). I don’t have an excuse for the rest of the year, although in April I did get a lot of review books from NetGalley so that perhaps explains that spike. The end result is the following graph…

You can see the black line is the planned gentle reduction in my TBR for this year and the blue line is where I am! Ooops! I’ve even had an unhaul of my books but still there is a big gap between the plan and the reality. I do need to curb my book buying in the coming months so hopefully my TBR will be in a better state by the end of the year. Just for reference my TBR is all the print books, ebooks and audio books I own but haven’t read yet and it currently stands at 2811 (yep two thousand, eight hundred and eleven!)!!

This graph shows what my TBR was at the very start of the year and this part of my spreadsheet tracks how many of those pre-2020 books I’ve read, DNF or unhauled. I’m really pleased that 52 of the 115 books I’ve read so far this year were off my TBR from before this year but it shows how big my TBR is when the slice of pie is still so tiny. I like this chart as it makes me face up to just how many books I own and it makes me want to read more of them.

I’m still tracking the diversity in my reading as I’m so aware that I need to make a conscious effort to be better in this area. The above chart is a simplified version of my tracking which shows 36% of the books I’ve read this year so far were either diverse or own voices books, which is okay but I want to do better. At the moment I’m reading a lot of books by BIPOC authors as I want to educate myself as much as I possibly can. I also want to read more books by or about people with disabilities as I don’t often see myself reflected in books and realise I need to make more effort to seek these books out. Hopefully the diversity in my reading by the end of the year when I look at these stats again will be better.

This graph isn’t really about reading stats but I wanted to include it as this year I had space on my spreadsheet to track my reading speed. As people often ask me how I read so much this chart shows how many pages I read in an hour (averaged out per month). I don’t speed read but I am naturally a relatively fast reader.

So that’s my 2020 reading so far in statistics! I’m pleased with the books I’ve read and the variety in my reading. I know I need to work on my TBR but I suspect I’m never going to get control of that. I’m a bookaholic, what can I say?! 😉

How is your reading going this year? I hope you’re reading lots of lovely books. 🙂