Yearly Reading Stats | 2020

Image by Daria Khoroshavina

My last post of the year! Wow, what a year. I've had a lot of interesting dives into genres and topics within my books this year. I've had a lot of surprisingly wonderful stories that I've fallen in love with. I love stats and I'm excited to see them all in one place. Hope you enjoy taking a peek at my reading year.

I've read 113 books this year. I originally wanted to read 175 which I've done once before in 2012 but 2020 was such a dumpster fire year that I'll forgive myself. I changed it to good old 100 because I knew I could make it. It was a struggle at the end but I unexpectedly reached 113 books. I'm not doing a yearly goal next year. I don't particularly like the obsessiveness I get when looking at this challenge every time I go on Goodreads.

I read less than last year but I am okay with that. I want to focus on the genres I want to give more of a chance to like horror, sci-fi, adult fantasy, etc. I also want to focus on older series. But out of everything, I want to focus on trying to read the best books possible next year. I want to shoot for five star predictions for every book I read.

According to Goodreads, I read 30,549 pages which is unbelievable to me. When I finally let go and read whatever I wanted and didn't expect myself to read a lot at the end of the year, I was able to read over 30,000 pages. I'm very surprised by that number. I obsess over the number of books I've read and the page count that it's funny that I'm shocked by the results of letting go of that obsessiveness. 

The page count stats for this year is like usual. I would like to add more books over 400 pages in the new year but it isn't a priority. I just like looking at the percentages.

I love the star rating stats on The Storygraph. I got so used to having whole number ratings but I plan to have more 0.5's in the future. So this is the most accurate ratings for this year. My average rating being 3.59 is pretty good. I'd love to get it higher but I don't want to compromise my rating system. But since I plan to read more books that I think will be 5 stars then maybe I can get it to an average of 3.7 stars. Too many 2 star reads this year. And that needs to change.

I got the stats on my genre from The Storygraph. As you can see I've read mostly fantasy, romance, and contemporaries. Historical is surprisingly high and horror, sci-fi, and mystery are pretty good too. I want to get those smaller genres up in percentages in the new year. I also read 14 nonfiction books this year which is like my usual. I'd like to keep it the same. 

My percentage of male authors read has gone up by 3% which is something... I'm not too focused on this but I like to keep a record because I want to eventually and naturally change my reading to a larger percentage of male authors. I think I connect with a lot of female authors being a woman myself but male authors create some great books too. Hopefully in the new year when I am exploring more genres, I will read from some great male authors as well.

The percentage of YA I've read has gone down 3% only haha. But my adult reading has gone up by 10%. Middle grade books went up by 8%. Children's books have gone down by 16%. I was at first disappointed with the percentage of YA I read but 1) I love YA so it makes sense and 2) the adult reading went up 10%. That's so much! If I can get adult books to be 10% more next year I'll be happy. I would like YA to go down by at least 6%. 

I also wanted to figure out how many Hispanic ownvoice stories I read this year and it was 12. That's unbelievably good for me. I'd love to keep it up. I've read in total 47 out of 113 books with minority, lgbtq+, and disabled characters which is 41.5%. Didn't think I did that well. However, I did make an effort in the middle of the year to read diversely. If I want to maintain that for next year then I'll have to read about a third or half of my monthly reading to diverse books. I don't want to necessarily force it. I will look out for books by and about minority, lgbtq+, and disabled authors that I'm really interested in throughout the year. If they are on my tbr then I am more likely to read them. I will make sure I look for Hispanic and disabled reads specifically. Hispanic because I'm Cuban and disabled because those stories aren't told that much.

Overall, I'm happy with my reading year. I see some changes I want to make next year like focusing on diverse specifically Hispanic and disabled characters. Also sci-fi, horror, and mystery/thrillers. As well as adult books. I'm so excited for the new year. It's my favorite time other than Christmas. Hope you all have a wonderful new year!

How was your reading year? 

Are you focusing on anything in the new year?