A Year In Review...Stats, Charts, and More! | 2022 Wrap-Up Pt. 3

Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog! 

It's day three of my end-of-the-year wrap-up, and so today I'll be going over the entire year of reading. This year I tracked my reading four different ways: through two spreadsheets (CAWPILE and the Book Riot spreadsheet), Goodreads, and StoryGraph. Every one of these tracking devices has stats and charts for the end of the year, so that's what we will be looking at today. 

This year, I read 181 books. Not quite what I wanted to reach (my goal was 200) but I'm still pretty pleased with that number nonetheless. It's a huge step down from last year, but I don't think I'll ever pull off reading over 260 books in a year again...

First, I'll show you the stats and charts from Goodreads and StoryGraph, and then I'll go into my spreadsheets, since those are much more detailed. A reminder that the Book Riot spreadsheet doesn't have the manga I read this year tracked, so those numbers will look a lot different than the CAWPILE or Goodreads numbers. Also, StoryGraph's numbers are going to be a bit off as well, since I only just starting using it a couple of weeks ago and I'm still getting used to it. Hopefully by this time next year, I'll be a pro.

Alright, let's get into it!

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Goodreads "A Year in Books" 

First let's look at Goodreads small amount of stats given to us at the end of every year in their "Year in Books" page. 

As I said before, I managed to read 181 books this year, with a grand total of 52,689 pages. That's about 2/3 of the amount of books and pages I read last year, but again I think last year was a bit of an outlier. I highly doubt I'll ever do that again. 

I still find it funny that I read both the longest and shortest books of the year in the same month. And it's such a difference, too! It looks like I didn't read as many tomes this year as I thought, since the average page count of this year is just under 300 pages. Although looking back at last year's post, it's the same number! Manga is coming for my numbers, once again. 

StoryGraph Stats

Next I have two charts from StoryGraph. However I want to remind you that StoryGraph only has about 175 books registered for this year, so these numbers will be slightly off. I don't know why some books didn't register as 2022 reads, and I also don't know how to find out which ones they are. StoryGraph still doesn't make much sense to me, interface wise. I'm too used to Goodreads horrible interface.

One thing I found fascinating about StoryGraph is the way it tracks moods. As a mood reader, this is a really cool feature to me. Though, it seems like it's similar to how genre is tracked on Goodreads -- if people tag a book as a certain mood, it will show up under that mood. So I don't know how accurate this pie chart really is, but I don't care enough to pick it apart. According to StoryGraph, I mainly pick up dark and adventurous reads, with emotional and mysterious coming in a close second/third. It makes sense since I mostly read fantasy, but the dark actually really surprised me. I wonder what next year's chart will look like. 

Lastly for StoryGraph is the pacing of the books I pick up. Again, this seems to be decided by the people using the app and not an algorithm, so this could be entirely subjective. I don't tend to think about pacing when I read books because I read so quickly anyway, regardless of if the book is slow or fast (when I'm in a good headspace, anyway). So the fact that I read mainly medium-paced books this year doesn't actually mean much to me. Maybe later I'll go in and see what StoryGraph categorizes as a "fast read" versus a "slow read" and see if I agree with their consensus. 

Spreadsheets Stats and Charts

Alright, now for my spreadsheets! I want to be super clear here: I did not come up with these spreadsheets. One is the CAWPILE system which was created by G from Book Roast, and the other was a Book Riot reading log that they stopped making back in 2020, and I've just been editing it to keep it relevant for each year. I'm in no way Excel savvy, I have no idea how to make these charts and graphs, so if you are interested in these then I suggest you download a copy of CAWPILE for yourself (again, the Book Riot log was discontinued). 

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

Books/Pages Per Month: First I have my books read per month and my pages read per month graphs. As you can see, they're nearly identical to each other, which makes sense of course. The only real outlier is February, which has the second most pages read per month of the entire year, even though there is a 10 book difference between February and April, which is the most books and pages read. I'm not sure what the reason is, I went back and looked and the numbers don't add up at all. Well, I never pretended to be good at math. 

From the Book Riot Reading Log

Star Rating: This was a pretty mediocre year for me, star-rating wise. Though, it makes sense that I had the most 3.5 stars, since that's the average of the 5-star system. I also think this was because I started with the CAWPILE system this year, and I was maybe too lenient on some of the books I read. It was easier before to say "this book is a 2-star read" or "this book is 5 stars" because it was all based on feeling. But when inputting the numbers into the CAWPILE system, I found myself being less harsh than I would've been in the past. I'm hoping that this upcoming year I'll be able to fix that to a truer scale. 

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

From the Book Riot Reading Log

Form: I think the format is nothing surprising. Of course I read prose the most with 106 books, and manga comes in second with 40 volumes (though it's only shown on the top chart). I also read 15 novellas, 13 graphic novels, and 8 poetry collections. Short stories and essays are just crumbs. I'm hesitant to pick up short story collections and anthologies, just because I never seem to like them very much, but we'll see if I read more next year. I also am hoping to read more poetry next year, because that number is frankly embarrassing. 

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

Genre: I had a pretty good diversity of genres this year, I think. I read from 14 different genres, with fantasy of course being the largest slice of the pie. Next (at least in this chart) is manga, though that isn't a genre and instead a format, but the CAWPILE system counts it as a genre. If you don't count manga, then next would be horror, which, what a turnaround! I only just starting reading horror last year, and now it's my second most-read genre! Go me, honestly. After horror comes historical fiction, sci-fi, and mythology retellings. I love these my reading tastes expand as the years go on!

From the Book Riot Reading Log

Translated Books: Next I want to talk about translated books. Not counting the manga I read, this year I picked up 19 books translated from a language other than English. This is sadly much less than last year, so I really have to double down next year! I want to complete the "Read Around the World" Challenge, where the goal is to read at least one book from every country in the world. This year I read from 13 different countries, a far cry from the 195 total countries in the world. I've got a long ways to go to complete this challenge! 

From the Book Riot Reading Log

Source: This isn't much of a surprise to me, as last year was almost exactly the same. Over 60% of the books I read this year came from the library. Books I already owned and that I bought this year are tied, which again is very similar to last year (In case you want the numbers, 24 of the books I read this year came from my pre-existing physical TBR, and 25 I bought over the course of the year). And 5 books that I read this year were gifts. Honestly it was probably more than that, but I'm really bad at remembering what books I bought myself and what books were bought for me. Also, I reread 9 books this year, and DNF'd 7 books.

From the Book Riot Reading Log

Publishing Date: Another thing I want to mention is how many books I read this year that were published this year. 49 of the books I read this year were published in 2022, making them "new releases" (this is the green wedge). 29 of the books read were published last year in 2021 (the blue wedge), and the rest are considered backlist, which encompasses all the years of the past. 10 of those backlist titles were published before the 2000s (9 in the 1900s, and 1 in 1864). 

From the Book Riot Reading Log

Fiction v. Nonfiction: I really dropped the ball with my nonfiction reading this year. I only read 9 nonfiction books this year, as opposed to the 24 I read last year. This is especially painful considering it was one of my goals this year to read more nonfiction. It makes me wonder what else I didn't accomplish from my beginning-of-the-year goals...

Okay, I went back to my 2022 Goals and Plans post from January, and it looks like I failed two of my goals: read more translated works, and read more nonfiction. However, I also said I wanted to read more horror, sci-fi, and historical fiction, and I accomplished all of those! I also managed to write at least one book review each month, which was another goal of mine, so overall I'm feeling pretty okay. I also wanted to buy less books than I did last year, which I wholeheartedly accomplished. 

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Alright, I think that's everything I wanted to go over today! I hope I didn't bore you too much with all of the numbers, but I always love looking at my stats at the end of the year and seeing how much I read of any one thing. I find it so fascinating, and it also makes me think about what I want to improve upon the year to come. You'll find out yourselves the first week of 2023 what my reading goals and plans are! 

I'm dying to know: how many books did you read this year, and what was your most read genre? Let me know in the comments down below, or DM on Instagram. 

Until tomorrow, for the last post of 2022!