Time for the year-end stats post. Here’s my reading from 2015:
- Books read: 88. I was hoping to get up to 90 — but in the end, who cares? 88 is a great number.
- Audiobooks: 15. Up from the 10 I listened to last year. Using Scribd has made the difference here (although now they give you only one audiobook a month, so my number for next year may be only 12).
- eBooks: 12. Down from the 18 I read last year. I’m discovering that I definitely prefer print, although I continue to read ebooks for various uninteresting reasons. I just read them more slowly than I used to.
- From library: 14. All print books. Because of Scribd, I’ve stopped borrowing ebooks and audiobooks from the library.
- Fiction: 60. About the same percentage of the whole as last year.
- Nonfiction: 26
- Poetry: 2. Same as last year.
- Essay collections: 6
- Biography/autobiography: 13
- Theory/criticism: 4
- Short story collections: 1 (that’s it?)
- Mysteries: 7
- Graphic Novels: 2
- Books in translation: 9 (up quite a bit — good!)
- Books by writers of color: 30 (doubled what I did last year and reached more than 1/3 of total reading)
Gender breakdown:
- Women: 57
- Men: 27
- Collections with men and women: 4
Nationalities:
- Americans: 56 (a lower percentage than last year — but still high)
- British: 13
- French: 3
- Australian: 2
- Indonesian: 2
- One each by authors from Canada, Ethiopia, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, and Portugal.
Year of publication:
- 19th century: 1 (although I’m currently in the middle of Emma)
- First half of 20th century: 1 (really??)
- Second half of 20th century: 7
- 2000-2009: 8
- 2010-2015: 71
The number of recent releases has gone up steadily in recent years, for a number of reasons. One is that I’m reviewing more, so of course I read new releases for those reviews. I also participated in a Booker long-list read through this year, which added 13 new releases to the list. And I’m also currently reading new books for a Goodreads group that is doing an “alternative Tournament of Books” that will take place in January, in anticipation of the real one coming up in March (it’s been super fun — check it out if you want to). All of this reading has been great and I don’t regret it. I just wish I could also read older works as well. But until I figure out how to fit more reading in, that may not happen.
All in all, it was a good reading year, with lots of good books (more on that later!) and, in particular, lots of great bookish company, here on this blog, on Twitter, and on Goodreads. Thanks to everyone who reads here and chats with me in various places online. Happy new year!
Of Books and Bicycles 
88 is definitively a great number!
Best wishes for life & reading in 2016!
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Thank you, Sigrun — you too!
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I also had a much higher number of new releases this year than in prior years. For two of the three reasons you offer. 🙂 Looking forward to the ToB more than I have in a few years. It is a great field of work. Congrats on a great reading year and happy new reading year too! I hope we have the chance to Booker together again in 2016.
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I’ve heard that the short list for the TOB will be released on Jan. 13th — I’m looking forward to it! I’d love to Booker together again in 2016 🙂
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Ooh, yes. Let’s Booker together again!
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When I made up my list, I forgot to post the decades my books were published and I had thrown away my tallies. I do enjoy these book facts. I should add nationalities but mostly they would read British. :<))
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I keep all my stats on LibraryThing, so it’s not hard to find all of them when I’m ready. If my system were harder, I probably wouldn’t have so much info here!
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A very good year! I think 88 is a fine number.
Happy New Year!
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Thanks Stefanie — Happy New Year to you!
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88 is a great number — and as long as you’re enjoying your reading numbers don’t really matter 🙂 I love that you keep stats of pub dates & nationalities, it’s very interesting to see. I think mine would skew heavily Canadian & UK lately. I keep a few stats but not quite so many…as all of my reading notes are scribbled in a notebook, until I’m better at recording these stats would be a bit of a slog to compile. I keep *saying* I’ll start using LibraryThing.
Anyhow, a happy new year to you!
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I rely on LibraryThing heavily, and I love it, but it did take me a long time to get all my books logged onto the site and to figure out what tagging system I want to use. It was a huge project.
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The new releases have been creeping up for me too. In the past, that would have bothered me a lot, but I’ve been enjoying the conversation around them too much to be bothered. I’d love to read more older books as well, but I can only do so much.
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Yes, the conversations about the books make it worth while. I figure I spent much of my teens, 20s, and early 30s reading a lot of classics, so a break now is okay.
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88 is indeed a fabulous number! Congrats on reaching more than 1/3 books by authors of color. That is an area in which I’ve improved this year but still have room for improvement in 2016.
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Making improvements in terms of diverse reading, no matter how large, is great. This year was a very good year for it, as my best-of list will attest!
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I haven’t counted up but I suspect that the percentage of my reads that are new books would be even higher and if it hadn’t been for the Dickens’ course I did and preparing for the one on Dorothy L Sayers anything written before 2000 would have been non-existent. I don’t quite know how I feel about this. I love discovering new authors and new works but I have a feeling that there are writers in the back catalogue that I really should not be neglecting.
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It’s so hard to find a reading balance, or to figure out which reading goals are most important (because we all have a lot of reading goals, of course!). As long as you are enjoying your current reads, then it seems fine to me.
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Happy New Year! What a great reading year. Looks like you had a great variety. Wishing you a great reading year in 2016!
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I wish you a great reading year in 2016 as well, Iliana!
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