Tag Archives: Reading Stats

My 2021 Reading Stats!

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Happy New Year! Over the last few days I’ve shared my favourite novels read in 2021, my favourite non-fiction read in 2021, and my Reading Bingo posts so today it’s time for my reading statistics post! I love going through my Goodreads, Storygraph and my spreadsheet to see the patterns in my reading and I hope you enjoy reading this post.

2021 was a much better reading year for me than 2021 and I found that my books gave me the escapism and solace that I needed from them.

I’m really happy that I read 265 books in 2021. I feel like this is a normal pace of reading for me so it was good to have something that felt normal in a world that still feels upside down.

The longest book I read in 2021 was The Romanovs at 784 pages and it was such a fascinating read, I’m so glad that I finally picked it up. My shortest read was my annual re-read of The Night Before Christmas with just 32 pages.

This chart is the breakdown of genres that I’ve read in 2021. It doesn’t surprise me that general fiction and thrillers make up the biggest chunks on the chart as I mostly read for escapism and I am happy that I found books that provided me with that when reality has been so stressful at times. I’m sad that, like last year, I didn’t read as much non-fiction as I usually do. When you add non-fiction, memoir and true crime together they make up around a quarter of my reading, which isn’t bad but I would have liked it to have been more like a third or even half. I hope to rectify this in 2022 but I’m not going to pressure myself as just reading at all is the important thing for me.

I don’t ever choose books by the gender of the author but every year I read more books by women than men, and the percentage always seems to fall around three quarters. I’m happy with this stat.

This chart is no real surprise to me as I pick my Kindle up way more than a print book these days. I have problems with my vision in one eye so being able to change the size of the font and the colour of the screen is vital to me. Also being disabled a Kindle is so much easier to hold than a book. I am surprised that the percentage of audio books isn’t higher as I feel like I listen to a lot of audio books but I think I maybe listen to longer books on audio and so they take longer to get through.

This chart shows how I acquired the books I actually read this year. I’m really pleased that my ARC number is as high as it is as I’ve been really focused on reading my way through my NetGalley shelf. I did really well but right before Christmas I requested more books so now have fifteen to read and review but that feels like a manageable number. I’m also very happy that I read nearly as many books that I either bought myself or was given as a gift as I really wanted to make more effort to read books I own and to balance that with books for review.

To balance the previous chart this one shows how I’ve been acquiring books over 2021 and I’m very pleased that the biggest section by a long way is purchased. I love getting advanced copies of books to read and review but it’s so important to support authors by buying their books too and I’m pleased that I’ve been doing this.

I debated whether to share this chart because I’m a little bit ashamed but I want to hold myself accountable so here it is. The blue bars are the number of books I read every month in 2021 and the red bars are the number of books I bought in 2021. As is very glaringly apparent the numbers aren’t even close to balancing! Ooops! Towards the end of the year I decided to have a huge clear out of my print books, Kindle books and Audio books though and I literally halved my book collection so overall that’s a win in terms of the size of my TBR. In 2022 I really want to read more of the books that I owned before this year so that’s my aim. I’ll still be buying books and requesting on NetGalley but I want to make sure that now I’ve sorted my books down to only the ones I still want to read that I actually do make a start on reading them.

So to hold myself accountable… the total number of books I own is 2192! 145 are print books, 312 are audio books and the other 1735 are Kindle books. Obviously I own way more books than I can read in a year but I’d like to make a decent dent in the number I own before the end of 2022.

So that’s 2021 in statistics and some plans for 2022! I love seeing how my reading breaks down over a year and spotting patterns, it helps me see what I want to aim for in the coming year. Do you like looking back on your reading?

Happy New Year!

My 2021 Reading Stats (so far)!

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I can’t believe that we’re halfway through 2021 already, I really don’t know where the time has gone. I always love looking at my reading spreadsheets at this point in the year to see how my reading looks like so far.

I set my reading goal at 100 books for this year and I’ve already completed my Goodreads challenge. I set my goal to less than normal as I was hoping to focus on reading some bigger books this year but so far that hasn’t really happened. I’m happy to have finished 116 books already though and am looking forward to reading lots more books over the second half of the year.

The longest book that I’ve read so far this year is The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer by Joel Dicker – my edition had 640 pages. The shortest book I’ve read was one I grabbed on a whim while I have a free trial of Kindle Unlimited – Suzy Lamplugh: Missing by Netta Newbound which had 49 pages. The average page count of books I’ve read this year is 344, which I’m very happy with.

This is the breakdown of genres that I’ve read this year. I’m fairly happy with the spread of what I’m reading although I’m a little disappointed that the nonfiction reads amount to a combined total of just 19.1% as I usually read more. I think it’s down to life being stressful and my anxiety levels being high and so I’ve sought out escapism in thrillers and general fiction. I hope as life begins to feel more normal that my reading tastes will start to go back to how they used to be and I might get more nonfiction read then.

As is definitely the norm for me I’ve read far more female authors than male this year. I’ve never consciously picked more books by female authors it’s just how my reading naturally seems to fall and I’m happy with this.

This chart shows the format of books that I’ve been reading this year. I’m surprised that the audiobook percentage is so low but I think this is because my husband only went back to work (after being on furlough) a month or so ago so up until then I didn’t have as much chance to listen to books. I have still been buying audiobooks though so I have lots to look forward to listening to over the rest of the year. My ebook reading percentage is very high but I’ve been reading my way through my NetGalley books and also due to my new eye problem I struggle to read print books now and need to be able to adjust the size of font. I think going forward my reading will be pretty much all ebooks and audiobooks, with the occasional print book in the mix as I do still have print books on my bookcase that I’d like to read if I can.

This chart shows where I acquired the books that I’ve been reading in 2021. This breakdown is about what I expected it to be as I’ve really been focusing on reading NetGalley books this year as I try to catch up on ARCs. A lot of my review copies were acquired last year so it’s been good to finally get those read and reviewed.

This chart shows where I’ve been getting my books from in 2021. I always like to look at this chart in my spreadsheet as it shows that while I am lucky to receive and read ARCs I do still buy the vast majority of my books. I always want to support authors and publishers so I’m really pleased with how my acquisitions breakdown.

So that’s my 2021 reading so far in statistics!

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

My 2020 Half-Year Reading Stats!

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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. 🙂

Weekly Wrap-Up (5 Jan 20)!

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This week has been a quiet one for me due to additional medical issues so I’ve been escaping into books.

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I’ve developed something of a superstition in recent times around the first book I read in a new year – being that if it’s a fabulous read then I’m going to have a great reading year. Thankfully my first read of 2020 was Wham! George and Me by Andrew Ridgeley and I really enjoyed it. I read it all in one afternoon on New Year’s Day and it was a perfect start to the year.

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I then read the final third of a book I’d been reading on and off since Christmas – It’s A Wonderful Night by Jaimie Admans and I also really enjoyed this one. It’s festive but not so much so that I couldn’t still enjoy it after Christmas. This is definitely one I’d re-read one year over the festive period.

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The next book I finished was also one I’d started at the end of 2019 and I loved getting lost in the world of The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale. I’d had this on my TBR ever since it was first published and I’m so glad I finally got to it, it really is a gorgeous read.

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After finishing that I picked up The Choice by Claire Wade and I pretty much read it in one sitting. It’s a really gripping, thought-provoking novel. I’ll be reviewing it this week so look out for that!

 

 

 

As for blogging I always love the first week of a new year when I share all my favourite books of the past year and reflect on my reading.

 

 

First I posted my Christmas Book Haul as I was very spoilt with books over the festive period.

Then I shared my Reading Bingo post. I always enjoy putting this post together every year as it’s a chance to reflect on my reading and to share some of the books I’ve read.

Up next was the start of my Favourite Novels of 2019 countdown (I had to split it into two) with the first half of my Top 40 books!

I followed that with my final Top 20 Novels of 2019.

After that I shared my Top 20 NonFiction books that I read in 2019.

On Friday I posted my 2019 Reading Stats post. I love putting this post together and getting the chance to really look at the breakdown of my reading over the year. It’s always so interesting to me to see how my bookish year went.

Yesterday I shared a book haul of the books that I’ve managed to acquire since the beginning of the year!

 

So health-wise it could have been a better week but I’m thrilled with the books I’ve read and the posts I’ve written and shared on my blog so all-in-all I’m happy with how 2020 is going so far! 🙂 How has your week been?

 

My 2019 Reading in Statistics!

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Best Books of 2019 So far!

This week I’ve shared my Reading Bingo post, my runner ups for books of the year, my favourite fiction of 2019 and my favourite nonfiction of 2019. Today it’s time to look back over my reading in 2019! I’ve used a spreadsheet for the last couple of years to track my reading, alongside Goodreads, and I love being able to see the breakdown of what I was reading over the year.

My Goodreads goal for 2019 was 200 books… I’m still not sure how it happened but in 2019 I read 375 books in total, which is the most books I’ve ever read in twelve months! I don’t expect to ever reach this number again but it has been wonderful to read so many books!

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The longest book I read in 2019 was George Eliot’s Middlemarch – my edition had 923 pages! The shortest book I read was a recent read – The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore and had just 32 pages. I read quite a few longer books in 2019 but then over Christmas I read all my favourite festive reads which are short so that brought my page average down a little. I still averaged 345 pages per book though which I’m delighted about. It shows that overall I haven’t been reading short books just to attain a goal! According to Goodreads I read 127,454 pages in total in 2019!

 

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The above picture shows all of my four and five star reads from 2019. It’s lovely to have read so many great books over a year. I have rated some books lower than that but I just wanted to show the books that I’ve really loved.

 

Alongside Goodreads I also track my reading on a spreadsheet and I do love seeing all my stats for the year.

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Out of the 375 books I read in 2019 274 were by women and 94 were by men. The rest were co-authored by male and female authors. I don’t intentionally seek out books by female authors but ever since I’ve been tracking my reading on a spreadsheet it always works out that I’ve read more by women than men. I’m okay with this though and just find it interesting to note it.

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I read fairly steadily through the year but April was a quieter month on the reading front, I’m not sure why. Then August was full of books and I had an incredible reading month!

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I’m really pleased with the mix of genres that I read in 2019. It was definitely a year where I was very drawn to thrillers and I didn’t read as much nonfiction as I would have liked but overall I’m happy with the spread of genres my reading took.

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I’m intrigued by the diversity of my reading and a little disappointed that I didn’t read more that was diverse. Having said that almost half of my reading counted as diverse and that is something! In 2020 I definitely want to read more about experiences outside of my own so this is something I will focus on a bit more in my reading.

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The above pie chart shows the break down of where the books I read in 2019 were from. I made a real effort in the final quarter of last year to catch up on reading as many ARCs as I could so I’m really happy that the chart shows that half of my reading over the year were books from publishers directly or from NetGalley.

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Alongside the above pie chart it seems right to share this one which shows what percentage of books I read where acquired in 2019 and which had been on my TBR for longer. It worked out that I read 238 of the books that I acquired in 2019 and 125 books that had been on my TBR before the start of the year. I also re-read 12 books last year. I did have quite a few ARCs that I’d owned since before the start of last year so I was really pleased to get those read and reviewed before the end of the year.

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This chart shows the breakdown of where I acquired my books from in 2019. I wanted to share this chart really to show that whilst I am very lucky to receive books from publishers I do actually buy the majority of my books. I know Amazon is a problematic place to buy books but the vast majority of books I read are on my Kindle so it’s just the way it is for me. I joined my local library in the summer and whilst I can’t really use the actual library for borrowing books (the building isn’t accessible enough for me) I do love the BorrowBox app where I am now borrowing loads of audio books. I’m sure the percentage of borrowed books will increase in 2020!

I lost all control of my TBR in 2019 and gave up tracking it on my blog. I did still track it on my spreadsheet though so the above images show what happened…! I hoped to reduce my TBR a little each month but instead I increased it in all but one month. Oops! My TBR is now at 2618 (and this is books that I already own, it doesn’t include wish list books) so I have a lot of reading to do!

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In terms of my blog I’ve had my best year in terms of number of posts. I managed to write 237 blog posts, which is the most I’ve ever managed to publish in a year. I feel like I finally got back to a place where I’m reviewing books quite soon after I read them rather than letting them build up and because of that I’m enjoying blogging so much more. I hope I can keep that up in 2020 and I’d also like to try and review every book that I read, even if it’s only a mini review.

On the 1st January 2019 I had the most ever views on my blog in a 24 hour period so that was a lovely way to start last year. I shared my favourite books of 2018 on that day and it was fab to share the book love and have people share their favourite books with me.

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I was also thrilled beyond words to get an email from Reedsy in early October telling me that I’d made their list of Top 100 book bloggers for 2019. I’d been struggling a little with blogging when I got that email and it really gave me a boost to keep going and now I’m really back in the swing of things!

So all in all it’s been a wonderful year of reading for me in 2019 and I’m really excited to see what 2020 has in store.  I’m still pondering on what my plans are for blogging and reading in 2020 so I may write a post about that another day.

I hope 2019 was a fabulous reading year for you too! Happy New Year! 🙂

 

 

 

My 2019 Half-Year Reading Stats and Reflections!

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I keep track of my reading in a spreadsheet as well as on Goodreads and usually share my stats at the end of each year but I’ve been looking through my 2019 stats so far and decided to do a half-year post as well!

 

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I set my Goodreads reading challenge to 200 books, which is the same as my goal for 2018. I’ve read 162 books up to the end of June so 2019 has been one of my best ever reading years so far! My average page count per book is 353 so I’m very happy with that as it shows me that I’m reading what I want to read rather than focusing on shorter books.

 

The longest book that I’ve read so far this year is Middlemarch by George Eliot (my edition has 923 pages) and the shortest book is a poetry collection called The Sea Refuses No River by Bethany Rivers (it has 42 pages).

 

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I’m reasonably happy with the variety of genres that I’ve been reading in 2019 so far. I’m just a little disappointed that I haven’t read more non-fiction. When I add up memoir, true crime, essay collections and general non-fiction it comes to around a third of my reading in total and I would like to have done better with that. This is one benefit to looking at my stats mid-way through the year though as it means I know where I want to focus my reading more over the second half of the year.

 

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I’m still reading a lot more books by women than men. This stat has remained roughly the same ever since I started tracking my reading in more detail. I don’t consciously look to read more books by female authors so it’s interesting that I naturally seem to lean that way.

 

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I do try to read as diversely as possible and I’m doing okay with this but would like to do better. I think the problem is that when I read ARCs it’s usually to a timeframe and when I read my own books I’m trying to focus on books that I’ve owned for a longer time rather than just recent purchases so diversity in my reading is a bit limited by these factors. I will keep being aware though and hopefully this will be reflected throughout the rest of the year. I would like to read more books where disability is featured as it would be good to see myself reflected more in what I read so this might be where I try to focus initially.

 

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This is the first year ever in my life that audio books have become my main way of reading. I should just say that around half of the time when I listen to an audio book I also part-read the physical or ebook so while I’ve noted it as audio there has been an element of reading the print too. I would say this change to audio happened gradually over recent years as due to my physical disability I often struggle to hold a print book and to turn the pages, and with ebooks holding a kindle can be hard work. I can’t bend my head forward so even propping my kindle on a cushion I still can struggle. So audio books have become the way I can enjoy books and not aggravate my pain and other symptoms. They’re also a great distraction when I’m doing my physio exercises, or when I need to relax.

 

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I’m delighted to see this breakdown from my spreadsheet as it shows I’ve been reading more ARCS this year, which is what I wanted to do as I was getting a bit behind. I like that there is a nice balance with a reasonable percentage of books that I’ve bought and books I’ve borrowed in the mix too. I want to be reading more ARCs as I’d like to catch up and keep up with the books that I’m sent from publishers but it’s nice to read a few of my own books in amongst them.

 

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Just to give some balance to the previous breakdown, this chart shows the percentage of books that I’ve either bought myself or borrowed versus the ones that I’ve been sent from publishers and authors. I buy more books than I get sent and that is how I want it to remain as I want to continue to support authors and book shops.

 

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My TBR has spiralled out of control again this year so I need to get back on track with this. I think part of the problem is that a lot of my books are physical and I can’t always manage to turn the pages, or they’re ebooks and I can’t hold my kindle so they don’t get read. I’m now using Scribd and I’ve re-joined my local library and now have their BorrowBox app so I’ve been looking for audio versions of books that I own in order to read some of my TBR. Fingers crossed that this helps me get through some of the older books on my TBR mountain! As you can see from the above graphic, I also need to stop acquiring books faster than I could ever read them! I shall attempt to work on this.

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I’m also very overdue a sort through of my bookcases so getting rid of books that I know I won’t read will also help. My TBR currently stands at 2575 books (this is books that I already own) and I genuinely wanted to reduce it this year so I need to get myself back on track.

 

So that’s my 2019 so far in statistics! I’m really happy with how much I’ve read and how much I’ve enjoyed what I’ve been reading. I’m also pleased with the variety of books I’ve read. I need to work on my TBR but I suspect that’s going to always be out of control to some degree! Ah well! 😉

 

That Was The Month That Was… January 2019!

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January is a month that I’ve struggled with in recent years but actually this January didn’t weigh on me quite as much so I feel like I’ve made progress in coming to terms with some things. I also turned 40 this month so am determined that my 40s will be fabulous!

I always plan ahead to keep my mind occupied in January so this time my plan was simple… read lots of good books! And I definitely succeeded with this! I read more books in January then ever before (since I started keeping record of what I read) and ended up finishing 34 books over the month! I can’t pick a single favourite as pretty much every book was really good but I have to give a special mention to Ideal Angels by Robert Welbourn because that book was incredible and it won’t let go of my thoughts!

I also managed a lot more blogging in January than I’ve done for a while and I’m really enjoying it. It feels like my blogging mojo is fully back now after the wobble I had over the summer so hopefully it will stick around now!

 

Here are the books I read in January:

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

This was a Christmas present from my husband. I’ve been wanting to read it for a while and it was worth the wait because I loved it. I already feel that this will make my favourite books of the year so 2019 was off to an amazing start!

Ivy and Abe by Elizabeth Enfield

I had an ARC of this book but I decided to listen to the audio book while I was feeling unwell and I very much enjoyed it. I’m fascinated by the idea of fate so this book was right up my street. I do plan on reviewing it when I get a chance.

The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard

This was another excellent book that I just couldn’t put down! I’ve already reviewed this so you can see my full thoughts here if you’d like to.

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

This book a really good way to pass a cold, wintery day when I needed some escapism! My review is here if you’d like to know more.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

I’ve had this book on my TBR for ages and so I decided to part listen to the audio and part read it and I adored it. It was everything I hoped it would be and more!

The Rumour by Lesley Kara

This book was brilliant, it more than lived up to my expectations for it and is another book that I think may well be on my top books of the year! My review is here if you’d like to read it.

The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola

This book is so atmospheric and had me gripped from start to finish. Find out more in my review here.

No More Plastic by Martin Dorey

This was an interesting introduction to reducing plastic but I was hoping to learn more. I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking for somewhere to start though.

The Perfect Girlfriend by Karen Hamilton

I’d had an ARC of this on my TBR for quite a while and I finally picked it up in January and I ended up reading it in one sitting, it was so good! Here’s my full review!

The Second Sister by Claire Kendall

I bought this book sometime last year and I spotted it when I was tidying up my shelves last month so kept it out to read. It was a good thriller, it kept me turning the pages!

Ideal Angels by Robert Welbourn

This book is incredible. I loved it, even though it broke my heart. I know this book will be in my favourite reads of 2019, it just won’t let go of me. My full review is here if you’d like to know more.

The Party by Lisa Hall

This book was an okay read, it was one I read over the space of a couple of hours but it wasn’t as thrilling as I’d hoped.

Storyteller: The Authorised Biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock 

I’ve had the audio book of this for ages and it caught my eye when I was going through my Audible app recently. I very much enjoyed learning more about Roald Dahl, and I now want to read all my favourite of his books!

The Language of Kindness by Christie Watson

I’ve wanted to read this ever since I first heard about it so when I spotted it on an Audible deal recently I snapped it up. I listened to it over a couple of days and found it really interesting. It didn’t have the same lasting impression as Adam Kay’s book but it was a good listen.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

I was lucky to receive an ARC of this last year and finally picked it up a couple of weeks ago and I devoured it in one sitting. It is such a brilliant novel, I loved it! My review is here if you’d like to know more.

Into the Silent Sea by Claire Stibbe

This was a really good thriller and another book that I flew through as I simply had to know how it would all end. Here’s my review!

The Suspect by Fiona Barton

I’ve read and enjoyed Fiona Barton’s previous two novels so I was delighted to receive a copy of this one. This is a brilliant novel, definitely Fiona’s best yet and I loved it. My full review is here if you’d like to know more.

Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall

This is another ARC that has been on my TBR longer than it should but when I did pick it up I devoured it. I was gripped from start to finish. I hope to get my review finished and posted soon.

Only Child by Rhiannon Navin

This was a really good read, although I struggled at times with the child narrator. Here’s my review.

Need to Know by Karen Cleveland

I read this novel in one sitting over the course of an afternoon and I loved it. I was intrigued from the opening chapter and it had me hooked right to the end. I’ll be reviewing this one soon.

Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce

I had an ARC of this so I read it while also listening to the audio book and I really enjoyed it. It’s such a wonderful novel, one that I think I might re-read in the future. I hope to get my review posted soon.

Bring me Back by BA Paris

Sadly I didn’t really get on with this book, it was too far-fetched to me and it just didn’t gel at all. I have enjoyed a previous book by the author so maybe this just wasn’t the right book for me.

The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer

This book has been on my TBR since it was first published but I’ve put off reading it because it felt like it was no longer for me. I’m so glad that I gave it a go though as I got a lot more out of it than I was expecting to so I recommend it.

Diversify by June Sarpong

This book was hit and miss for me. There were chapters that really struck a chord and others that didn’t. I’m glad I read it though, it was interesting for the most part.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

I finally read this book and I can totally see why it got so much praise last year! I loved it too, it was so different to other books in this genre and I really appreciate how much work it must have taken.

Dead Girls by Graeme Cameron

This was a good read, it wasn’t as good as the previous book Normal but it was still a book that I read in just two sittings.

Notes on A Nervous Planet by Matt Haig

This was another Christmas present and I’m glad I picked it up when I did. I found it even more useful than I was expecting to and I think it is a book that I will go back to in the future.

A Very English Scandal by John Preston

This audio book was fascinating, shocking but really interesting. I already knew some things about this case but there was so much I didn’t know. I was hooked all the way through this book, it left me reeling!

Senseless by Anna Lickley

This is such a good novel. It’s got a great storyline, which I really enjoyed and it also has excellent disability representation, which I very much appreciate in a novel. I’ll be reviewing this in February for the blog tour!

Tilly and the Bookwanderers: Pages & Co. by Anna James

I got this book for Christmas and I saved it to read on the anniversary of my mum’s death when I knew I would need a comforting read. This book was everything I hope it would be and so much more besides, I adored it! I’m hoping to get a chance to re-read A Little Princess soon as it’s reminded me how much I loved that novel as a child.

The Six Loves of Billy Binns by Richard Lumsden

This book was beautiful, so much more more than I was expecting it to be and I loved it. I’ve already reviewed this so you can see that here if you’d like to know more.

The Cactus by Sarah Hayward

This book is gorgeous! I read it in one sitting and I completely and utterly fell in love with it. I’ll definitely be reviewing this one soon but in the meantime I highly recommend it!

Someone Like Me by MR Carey

I was sent an ARC of this and was told it was a thriller so I was a bit discombobulated when I started reading it. I’m still not sure what I think of it but I did read it in just a couple of sittings so it definitely gripped me!

Spare Room by Dreda Say Mitchell

I read this book in one sitting and it kept me up way past my bed time as I just couldn’t put it down! I reviewed this one yesterday so you can find that here if you’d like to know more.

 

January Blog Posts & Reviews:

My Favourite Novels Read in 2018

My Favourite Non-Fiction Read in 2018

Reading Bingo for 2018! Was it a full house for me??

2018 Reading Reflections, Statistics and Plans for Tackling the TBR

 

Stacking the Shelves (5th Jan)

Mini Crime and Thriller Book Reviews featuring A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay, The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah, All The Hidden Truths by Claire Askew and Bluebird Bluebird by Attica Locke)

Review of The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Hyde

New Year Book Tag

This Week in Books (9 Jan)

Review of The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola

Review of The Perfect Girlfriend by Karen Hamilton

Review of The Rumour by Lesley Kara

Stacking the Shelves (12 Jan)

Review of The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Review of The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

This Week in Books (16 Jan)

Review of Only Child by Rhiannon Navin

Review of Ideal Angels by Robert Welbourn

Stacking the Shelves (19 Jan)

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up and How the #KonMari Method Changed My Life!

This was a much more personal post than I normally share on my blog but I wanted to share how following Marie Kondo’s de-cluttering methods had actually made a huge difference to my life!

Music Monday: In My Life by The Beatles

Review of Into the Silent Sea by Claire Stibbe

Review of The Suspect by Fiona Barton

This Week in Books (23 Jan)

Stacking the Shelves (26 Jan)

The Six Loves of Billy Binns by Richard Lumsden

This Week in Books (30 Jan)

Review of Spare Room by Dreda Say Mitchell

 

The state of my TBR:

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Well, in 2018 I succeeded in reducing my mammoth TBR… but 2019 has been the month with all the books. I started January with 2447 books (this is books that I own, I don’t add books to my TBR if I don’t own them) and have ended the month with 2464 books. Oops! This is in spite of me reading 34 books off my TBR this month, the fact is that I’ve acquired 51 books so overall my TBR has increased by 17 books. My plan is to reduce my TBR by 20 books every month so I need to do some serious reading and/or unhauling (unhauling keeps autocorrecting to unfailing and I was so tempted to leave it at that! Haha!) in February to get back on track! In all seriousness though I’m not worried as last year the reduction of my TBR happened over the course of the year so I feel sure I’ll be back on track come December 31st!

 

 

How was your January? I hope you all had a good month and that you read lots of good books. Did you read many books? What was your favourite book of the month? Please tell me in the comments, I’d love to know. Also, if you have a blog please feel free to leave a link to your month’s wrap-up post and I’ll be sure to read and comment back. 🙂

2018 Reading Reflections, Statistics and Plans for Tackling My TBR in 2019!

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You deserve the best and nothing less. We love you!

So this week I’ve posted my favourite novels read in 2018 and my favourite non-fiction books. Yesterday it was Reading Bingo time so today that means it’s my chance to reflect on my reading through 2018 and to share some of my stats!

I always set a reading goal on Goodreads as I enjoy tracking my reading on there throughout the year. I set my 2018 goal at 200 and I’m gobsmacked that in the end I read 290 books! This is the most I’ve read in a year since I started keeping track of my reading so I’m delighted.

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The longest book I read in 2018 was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke – my copy had 1006 pages in it! It’s not my normal type of book but I very much enjoyed it and I flew through it. The shortest book was a Christmas short story called Once Upon a Christmas Eve by Mary Jane Forbes at just 13 pages. I read quite a lot of longish books in 2018 but a lot of the Christmas books I read were short which brought my average page count down a little. I still averaged 324 pages per book over the year though, which I’m really happy with as it means I’m not reading short books to get my numbers up (something I have done in the past!). I actually read 93,863 pages over the year (Goodreads has a couple of books that don’t seem to have a page count).

 

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The above picture shows all of my four and five star reads from 2018. It’s lovely to have read so many great books over a year. I have rated some books lower than that but I just wanted to show the books that I’ve really loved. 🙂

 

I’m still hooked on tracking my reading on a spreadsheet and actually use two as I found them both online and each one tracks different data (and I’m nowhere near savvy enough to know how to combine them so I shall continue to use them both!).

 

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Out of the 290 books I read last year 222 were by female authors and 60 were by male authors. The remaining 8 were co-authored. In 2017 I read 72% female authors and in 2018 this increase to 78% of my reading. This isn’t conscious and it was a surprise to me that the percentage was so high for female writers. I am wondering if I should try to balance this more this year or whether to carry on just reading as I am and seeing how it goes.

 

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I read fairly steadily throughout the year but my December reading has skewed things a bit. I did read a lot of books in the run up to Christmas but quite a few were really short books or poetry collections so it seems like I read more than I did. Having said that I did read a lot of pages in the month so it’s averaged out.

 

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I am pleased to see that I’ve read a reasonable spread of genres in 2018. I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t read more non-fiction over the year – I did read 79 books but that only makes up 26.5% of my reading. I aim for around a third of my reading to be non-fiction so I want to focus more on this in 2019. I did feel like I’ve read a lot of thrillers last year and on this graph you can definitely see that this was my go-to genre over the year. I am pleased that I did get some other fiction, some poetry and even some science fiction in there though as I’m trying to keep trying different things with my reading. Overall I’m happy with the spread of what I read, and most importantly I enjoyed such a lot of what I read.

 

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I’ve been tracking the diversity of the books I’ve read in 2018 because the spreadsheet I used had it on there. It’s quite interesting to see how diverse (or not) my reading has been. I’m pleased that half of the books I read were diverse in some way but part of me wishes the percentage was greater. I don’t want to become too focused on these stats but I will make more effort to read more widely over the year ahead.

 

My TBR at the start of 2018 was 2757 books (this is print, ebooks and audio combined), which is all the books that I already own but haven’t read yet. I did want to try and be more mindful of my reading to book buying ratio over the year as I wanted to try and get to some of the books that have been on my shelves for a long time. I was hoping to reduce my TBR by around 200 books over the course of the year and so I’m really pleased to see that I ended 2018 with fewer books than I started with! I ended up with 2447 owned books, which is a reduction of 310 so I’m happy with that. This is from a combination of reading so many books over the year but also as part of my decluttering I accepted that there were books on my shelves that had been there for years that just don’t interest me anymore (so they went to the charity shop). In 2019 I think I’ll keep the same approach to my huge TBR – not to be too hard myself but to try and balance reading new books and review books with getting to books that have been languishing on my shelves for a long time.

 

So all-in-all 2018 was a great reading year and I’m really looking forward to reading my way through 2019 (and attempting to reduce my TBR even further)! How was your reading last year? Did you have any goals, and if so did you achieve them? What are your reading plans for 2019? If you’ve written a post about your reading reflections please feel free to leave a link in the comments and I’ll make sure that I read it.

 

 

 

 

 

2017 Reading Reflections, Bookish Plans for 2018 & The State of my TBR!

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I set myself a goal to read 200 books in 2017 and that felt like a good number – one that would push me to read instead of faffing about but also one that would allow me to read some bigger books that have been languishing on my bookcases for a while. I ended up reading 252 books, which is the most books I’ve read in a year since I started my Goodreads account and began tracking my reading in 2010!

 

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According to Goodreads the shortest book that I read was Christmas Poems by Wendy Cope, which was 39 pages long. It’s such a gorgeous book and was a joy to read in the run up to the festive period. The longest book I read was The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton at 849 pages long. I devoured this book over the course of a few days and I loved it. I was expecting it to be a bit of a trudge at times but it it really wasn’t. I do think it’s a book best enjoyed in big chunks though, I don’t think I would have followed it so well if I’d dipped in and out of it over a longer period. My average page count for the year was 325 pages, which I’m really happy with because that’s roughly the length of an average-ish book so it means I wasn’t reading short books to make up numbers.

I took on the Mount TBR 2017 challenge on Goodreads last year and I chose to try and read 100 books from my TBR that I owned before the 31 December 2016 and I’m so pleased that I achieved this. One of the books that made it onto my favourite novels of the year was The Poisonwood Bible, which I had owned unread for around TWENTY YEARS! I’m kicking myself for leaving it so long because I loved it and it’s a book that has really stayed with me. I haven’t signed up for the 2018 Mount TBR Challenge as yet but I probably will do as it’s a good way to give some attention to books that have been on my TBR for a while.

2017 was the first year that I properly tracked my reading in a spreadsheet and I have to say that I have ADORED being able to see how my reading pans out in much more detail and to track things that Goodreads doesn’t really enable me to do.

 

 

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I discovered from my spreadsheet in 2017 that of the 252 books I read over the year 182 of them (72%) were written by women. I didn’t consciously seek to read more female authors over the year so it was interesting that I read so many more women than men. I’m now interested to see if this is usual pattern in my read as I go into my second year of tracking my books on a spreadsheet.

 

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I read more books in December than any other month… 29 books! This is because around Christmas I do like to read some poetry and also some children’s Christmas books, which are often shorter than novels for adults. My page count for December was still high at 8480. Going by page count February was my biggest reading month coming in at 8495 pages spread over 26 books!

 

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It was interesting to see where my reading tastes lie over the course of a year and to see what genres I read the most of too. 31% of my reading was non-fiction (spread over general non-fiction and memoir), which works out at 79 books. I’m pleased with this in the sense that I did push myself out of my comfort zone a bit more with non-fiction and read some harder books. I would like to increase the ratio of non-fiction to fiction in 2018 if I can. My fiction reading is mostly split between general fiction and thriller/crime fiction, which doesn’t surprise me. I love thrillers and knew I’d read a lot of them last year.

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This is a breakdown of my entire owned books TBR by page-length…

As some of you may remember I started tracking my TBR part way through 2017 as I was trying to force myself to get it under control. I thought it would be interesting to do TBR maths on my wrap-up posts to try and stop buying more books than I was reading. This ended in complete and utter failure! I had a couple of months in the summer where I wasn’t really reading or blogging much but I was still buying books to cheer myself up. Then during a de-clutter of my house I found a whole load of books that had never been added to Goodreads so had never been counted on my TBR. It all felt a bit overwhelming so after my blogging break I decided to scrap tracking my TBR but I promised I would start again in 2018 and I will. This year I’m using Portal in the Pages‘ fab spreadsheet again and she has now included a page where you can add your entire TBR of books owned before the start of the year and the spreadsheet will keep a running total. I am excited beyond words at this… Well, I was until I realised just how big my TBR is! My entire TBR of books owned-but-not-read-yet stands at 2756 books! Eeeek! I really am going to curb my book accumulating this year and am going to make a real effort to reduce this number so will be tracking my TBR on my monthly wrap-up posts, and possibly on my weekly posts too.

So all-in-all 2017 was a great reading year and I’m really looking forward to reading my way through 2018 (and attempting to reduce my TBR)! How was your reading last year? Did you have any goals, and if so did you achieve them? What are your reading plans for 2018? If you’ve written a post about your bookish reflections please feel free to leave a link in the comments and I’ll make sure that I read it.