2023 Yearly Reading Stats

Last year I had the most meh reading year. 

This year my reading was trial and error. 

I was constantly starting and stopping challenges. I started the year by forcing myself to read more children's books and complete the challenges I set for myself. I enjoyed most of my Disney challenge books but I overwhelmed myself with doing activities and making food based on the princess I was reading about. Also, the children's books I was suddenly picking up felt more like a chore since I was too focused on picking a wide variety instead of what I would like. Although being a librarian is my job, I'm more in the mindset now of reading what I love being more important than reading everything. Next year, I plan to come up with reading guides for kids but I don't have to read all the books on the list to do so. 

I think ultimately this trial and error year will get me back to mood reading. I put pressure on myself to read based on a list when I should be mood reading like I used to when my reading obsession was at its pique. 

I see myself mood reading, reading more children's books, and rereading a lot more in 2024. I see myself embarking on challenges as well but either stopping earlier if the challenge stops being fun or realizing before starting that I shouldn't do the challenge. 

I feel like 2024 is the year I will become even more obsessed with reading than I already am.

In 2023 I read...

86 books

DNF'd 5 books

 22,130 pages

24 audiobooks

14 graphic novels

2 manga

3 rereads

1 Spanish book

21 adult books

13 young adult books

32 middle-grade books

20 children's books

68+ picture books

My top 5 genres read are Fantasy, Contemporary / General Fiction, Romance, Mystery / Thriller, and a two-way tie with Horror and Historical Fiction. The second category winner by the way doesn't include romance. My horror reading picked up at the end of the year. Most of them are middle grade but still. I read less sci-fi than I did last year which is the biggest change. Otherwise no surprises here.

• Fantasy - 36 books
• Contemporary / General Fiction - 14 books
• Romance - 11 books
• Mystery / Thriller - 8 books
• Horror and Historical - 7 books

In 2024, I want to emphasize nonfiction books and continue to let fantasy books run my life. I know for a fact contemporary/general fiction is going to continue being a high category because I am adding picture books to my list of books read. I want to balance that out with at least 8% of my reading being from smaller categories. By that, I mean mystery/thriller, historical, etc., not classics. I plan to have my nonfiction category go into subgenres like food and drink, memoir, self-help, science, etc. Overall though I would like those total subcategories to be at 15%. Food and Drink will be tricky though since I'll be including fiction in those categories but future me will figure it out.

I am happy with how my audience breakdown is balanced out this year. I want to emphasize middle-grade and children's books while making sure I read about 25% adult books. I almost got there this year so I am at a good place. I see myself reading more YA in 2024 than in 2023 so I need to keep that in mind so it doesn't take over my adult books read. 

Last year I felt like I read mostly audiobooks so I wanted to see how I did this year. I am happy to see that I am reading mostly physically because I love it so much. It means I am continuing in the right direction and I'm more likely to binge-read amazing books physically than through audiobooks.

Even though I read about 1,000+ pages less than last year, I had more months where I was reading more than 5 books. Those months with higher books read meant I wasn't in a slump and was enjoying my reading time. Last year there were seven months where I was reading less than 5 books (some months barely anything), this year it was five months. This year Spring was my best reading season while last year it was Summer. I stressed over summer programming in 2023 so I see why that happened.

My highest page count read was in May with 3,641 pages read. 

My lowest was 32 pages in October. 

There was a little more balance this year. Last year my highest read was 7,084 pages which I don't see happening again. It was way too much but I had covid and was reading so much manga and rereading loved series. I never want to get that sick again to have the downtime to do that. 

My overall star rating wasn't overinflated by rereads so based on that I had a great reading year. There was a point when I was reading books I really shouldn't have which added some two-star reads but it happens. I didn't rate one book because it was an informational book which I never do but I don't see how it would affect my rating too much. I rated 5 new to me books 5 stars. It would be great if I had more next year. I plan on choosing my reads as wisely as possible next year. I need to DNF and my rating will be high next year too. 

I am 16.3% down in reading diverse characters compared to 2022 which I'm bummed about. I know that basically 40% read is a lot though so I am not going to worry about it too much. I am not going for a certain percentage of diverse characters read in 2024. I want to make a conscious effort though to keep everything balanced. There is one thing I do have a goal of and it's the amount of Hispanic/Latino books I read. I want to read 12 or more since that's the number I read in 2023.

Although it isn't perfect, I thought I would add this graphic from myyearinbooks.com. I loved that it said my reading vibes were daydreaming because that is the most accurate thing ever. 

My top author was a six-way tie with Jennifer Torres, Deanna Raybourn, Christina Soontornvat, Claribel A. Ortega, Gwendolyn Kiste, and Wanda Coven. 

There are 1,440 minutes in a day which means I read for 23.5 days. Love that for me.

Did I achieve my goals?

I added some goals when commenting on my stats in 2022. I was wondering if I achieved them. How hard would that be if I never looked back on them...? 

• "I want to cool it with audiobooks" - 10% less audiobooks than last year ✅
• Fall back in love with reading - halfway there
• Get a reading routine - nope
• Read 10 mystery/thriller books - nope
• Read 6 horror books - I read 7! ✅
• At least 30% adult books read - nope
• YA books read at most 20% - I read 15% ✅
• Have more series I am in the middle and read standalone books vs starting series - wasn't concerned this year
• 25,000 pages read - nope (I changed it on Storygraph early on in the year and met my goal of 20,000 pages read)
• Reflective reading mood to go up (graph not shown) - up by 6! ✅

I didn't make so many goals on this stats post as I did in 2022 so maybe I can actually achieve them.

Overall, I am optimistic about the 2024 reading year. Mood reading will be key to the year's success.

Let me know how you're reading went in 2023.

What are you looking forward to achieving the most in 2024?