Hello everyone,
Today I am going to share some statistics based on my reading from last year. I will also include some graphs that were generated on the spreadsheet I used to track my reading.
Before I get started, I want to thank BookTuber, Brock Roberts who created the spreadsheet that I have been using for the past few years. It’s a great spreadsheet. However, in 2023 I am going to try my hand at making my own spreadsheet, because I want to learn more about Excel, and by doing this I have a project where I can practically learn some of what I want to know.
Alright, let’s jump into the statistics.
Total Books Read: 246 (7 DNFs)
Total Pages Read: 71,199 pages
Here is a chart that breaks down how many books I read each month:
In this chart you can see that I read 20 + books over 8 months of the year. The exceptions being April, October, November and December. I read the most books in June and August. In June I read 33 books and in August I read 34. I think the reason for this is that in Summer I tend to read a lot of graphic novels and manga, and especially in June and August I found myself reading a lot.
December was my “worst” month. Although, I don’t want to view it that way because I still read 7 books and that is still a big accomplishment. One thing I want to focus on in 2023 is not focusing on the numbers so much because that takes the fun out of both reading and blogging for me.
Next let’s look at the age categories that I read in this year:
Last year I definitely branched out and read a lot more Adult books. Most of the YA books I read were from the manga series that I read last year. However, I’m still surprised that more than half the books I read in 2022 were in the adult age category.
In 2022, half of the books I read were standalones and the other half were part of a series. Most of the books that I read that were part of a series were graphic novels/manga. In the second chart you can see that I have a good amount of ongoing series that I need to complete.
Next, this chart shows the status of books. I DNF’d 7 books, I re-read 36 books, and I read 203 new-to-me books last year. I know that in 2022 I really got into re-reading books, especially with re-reading books that I had already read that year and I loved it and I definitely plan on doing that more as we go into 2023.
The next two charts show where I got the books that I read, whether they were from the library, my shelf, or if I purchased them, etc.
Based on these two charts, I read a lot of library books – both physical and digital (161 books) . Second, was books from my shelf that owned at the beginning of the year (37 books), followed by books I purchased throughout the year (26 books). The rest were all from other categories.
I plan on continuing to use the library a lot this year. However, I also want to read off my TBR some more. As I mentioned in my 2023 reading goals post, I would like to read at least 30 books from physical TBR (as it is at the start of the year).
Next up is format. This doesn’t really matter, but it’s fun to look and see at what formats I predominantly read in. Hardback is number 1, not surprising since a lot of library books are hardcovers. This is followed by trade paperback, which again, isn’t surprising since a lot of the books I own are in trade paperback, as well as a number of books from the library. I think the one that surprised me the most was the percentage of ebooks I read last year. I felt like I didn’t read that much. But I also remember that for at least the first three months of 2022, any library books I checked out were ebooks, and then as soon as I started working in April, that shifted to more physical books.
Page length is not surprising. Most of the books I read were 300-399 pages, followed by 200-299. The books in the 200-299 range were mostly graphic novels and manga, since most mange tend to be roughly 190-200 pages long.
Years that the books were published is probably the more surprising to me because in 2022 I read over 76 books published in 2022. Followed by 52 books published in 2021. Usually I don’t read that many new releases for the current year, but there were a lot of fantastic new releases that caught my eye and that I was able to find at the library.
Lastly, here is a break down by genre of the books I read in 2022.
Of course, the biggest chunk of this chart is graphic novels and manga. However, I also read a lot of general/contemporary fiction (although if I’m being honest there are probably a handful of books in this segment that are there because I wasn’t quite sure how to categorize it). The third biggest segment is Romance, which isn’t surprising since the last month and a half of 2022 I read mainly romance novels. This is still a big shift for me, because before last year I had maybe read the occasional romance, and now I’ve read at least 41 romance novels. I’m also thrilled to see that Horror actually has a sliver on this chart, since that is not a genre I tend to read a lot of. And I also read a good number of fantasy and non-fiction books this year.
And that concludes my reading statistics and charts for 2022. In an upcoming post I will share my 22 favorite books from last year.
Happy Reading,
Janelle L. C.
Meanderings of a BookWorm 