2019 Reading Stats

Image by Priscilla  Du Preez

Happy New Year! I'm so glad 2019 is over. I love the start of a new year because it brings about so much hope for bettering your life and for the readers out there - the quantity and quality of books we read. I usually post my reading goals on the first but I didn't get to analyze and post my 2019 reading stats. I think it's important to have these stats up mainly because I want to see what books I want to read more of and look at what types of books I enjoy the most of. That way I can have an even better reading year than the last. 

According to Goodreads:

I'm happy I read 138 books. I believe I put my book goal to 20 or 25 first to relieve pressure on myself. I didn't have a good reading year last year. I had a tough year and even though I had a lot of stress for about six months this year, I was still able to do something I enjoy so much. My average length of book pages and page count is so low because I did the thing I didn't want to and read a ridiculous amount of picture books. I don't know if I just shouldn't count picture books or just not read much of them anymore. I really love picture books though so it seems silly to do either of those things.

I didn't pay attention like I wanted to with the amount of male authors I read. I read very few male authors. I read 38 male authors and 105 female authors. If that math doesn't add up in your head just know I counted coauthors as well. Usually I end up reading male authors mostly with adult books and picture books. I wanted to make it more even this year. I do have a plan but I need to look at my goals regularly or I will completely forget again. I want to read more male authors because I think I'm missing out on some really great books. I read a lot of YA which is female centered. I think it's important for me to read more broadly which will inevitably get me to read more male author's books.

Of course YA dominates. It's not surprising because I did take a YA course and I had to read 30 YA books for that semester. Also, I've always read mostly YA books since I was a teen. I want to read a lot more adult books and less children's books. I do want to read more middle grade too because it's an age group that always has surprisingly great books. But adult books for sure need to be added in more. There was a lot of YA books I enjoyed but I can tell that my reading tastes are shifting. I need to broaden my reading.

Genres are always difficult for me to classify. I read a lot of contemporaries but I never can understand that genre. Shouldn't it just be under fiction? Also a lot of my romance category was technically contemporary romance but I preferred just putting it under romance. That one adventure book was a Carmen Sandiego book. I did not consider it to be a mystery at all. There are lots of crossovers too. There was a historical fiction fantasy book but I put it just as historical fiction. It clearly bothers me how to correctly categorize my book genres. I'm weird, what can I say? 

I'm not surprised by the top three. Fantasy and contemporary romances are my favorite genres always. I was really happy I read so many nonfiction books. I read 10 of them which is a great amount. I've been loving nonfiction more and more throughout the years and I want to read even more this year. I've been wanting to read nature books and I love memoirs so you'll be seeing lots of those on my blog. 

This is the year I got into horror but I only read four horror books. I'm planning on at least doubling that amount. Two of those were my only classics which is sad. I got a lot more interested in classics this year but I didn't put my money where my mouth is. Changing that this year. My mystery/thriller book amount was impressive. I read twelve of them! I read only seven historical fictions but that isn't really my genre anyway. I'm kind of disappointed at my five sci-fi reads. I didn't plan on focusing on sci-fi books this year but maybe I should. Sci-fi (non YA dystopian) and horror are two genres that I feel lost with. I kind of know where to start but not really.

What's not on this list is the amount of graphic novels and manga I read. I added them in their perspective genres. It was mostly fantasy and contemporary. I read 9 graphic novels, 1 comic, and 6 manga. I want to read a crazy amount of manga since I would love to complete at least 1 series this year. As far as graphic novels and comics I think I'll play it by ear. I tend to read manga and graphic novels when I need something in between heavier books or when I get a little bored of what I've been reading. 

The amount of picture books I read was a bit much. I read 24 picture books. I see this as a good thing and bad thing. It's a bad thing because I feel like it messes with my page count stats, I wonder if I should really be adding them to my read list, and they completely overtake my other genres. It's a good thing because I love picture books. I love art so picture books, manga, and graphic novels fulfill that need. I do think I rate them too highly which I'll get into later. I don't know what I should do about them yet. If you have a suggestion please let me know!

I could be completely comfortable with rating an obvious two star read two stars. However, I do think I gave too many books chances with the 2.5 and 3.5 reads. Adding those were a bit unnecessary in some cases. In other cases I think I would rerate books. I gave WAY too many four stars. I usually do but I rather be more critical with my reading. There were a lot of picture books I rated four stars. I don't look at every book and compare them to other four star books and I don't plan to change that. But that many four star picture books? Really? Maybe I'm not giving the books that much credit but I think I need to be more critical with my ratings. I think that I should wait to rate my books. Maybe have an initial one written down and then rate them two weeks to a month later with my actual rating. Or I rate them initially and look back at them a month from reading them. Saying that, there is also a problem with me not DNF'ing enough books. I did DNF a couple but not much. My first book of last year was two stars but it was initially so good and did a 180 so I don't blame myself, I blame the book. Still something needs to change. I want to be more selective with my five star picks but also give up or stop reading three or below star books. Three stars can be still good so I'm not 100% sure on that but I want to be reading fantastic books. If I feel a book is still worth reading than keep going but if not I've got to start stopping even if I read most of the story.

I feel like I have more of an idea in my head of what I want to focus on in 2020. I might have to do a wrap up each month or every quarter to see if I'm doing well with my goals. That way I actually remember what I wanted to accomplish with my reading. Tomorrow I'll be posting my 2020 reading goals. I might add some things on there since I've analyzed my reading. Let me know what you thought of my stats. What do you suggest for the picture books? Also, what were your stats like? Were you satisfied by your reading this past year or do you want to change some things as well?