Stats and Such | 1st Quarter of 2023

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

I've been interested in doing quarterly wrap ups for this year. This is 100% inspired by Kayla (BooksandLala on YouTube) and her quarterlies. I thought it would be a nice way to break up the year into more manageable chunks, for me anyway. I've found in the past few years that I get overwhelmed when it's time to do my yearly wrap ups, and I feel like I'm always missing or forgetting something. Hopefully this will be a little easier. 

Anyway, the stats I'll be looking at are from both Storygraph and my CAWPILE spreadsheet. The CAWPILE system was created by G (Book Roast on YouTube) but I added a few of my own things, like reading challenges and whatnot. 

Some blanket information before we dive in: So far I've read 31 books this year. Not the most I've ever read but honestly that's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I mean, that's an average of 10 books a month, so can I actually complain? Not really. However the CAWPILE stats will say I've read 33 books. This is because the stats include DNFs and books that are not yet finished. Also some books do not have a rating, such as the manga volumes and also some more personal nonfiction/poetry collections. This is either because I have trouble rating each individual manga volume, or because I'm uncomfortable giving something so personal to the author a rating. Like how do you rate someone's life? It's weird and I won't do it.

Alright, let's get into the actual nitty gritty of it all, shall we?

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Book Format

One of my favorite things to compare is the format of which books I've read. By format, I mean two different things: first, the means of how I read it, as in physically, audibly, or on my e-reader; and second, what kind of book it is, novel vs. manga vs. poetry, etc. These stats are super fascinating to me, though I don't think I can exactly explain why? They just make me happy, really.

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

I know it's a little small so you can't really see the numbers, so I'll just tell you what they are. Of the 33 books on my spreadsheet, 20 of them were read via e-reader (my iPad, actually), 10 of them were physical copies, and 3 of them were a mix. The "mixed media" in this case specifically means I read the book physically (as in, with my eyes) while also listening to the audiobook, in tandem. That's the only way I'm able to listen to audiobooks, if I don't have anything grounding me to the words then I zone out and lose my place. I wish I could be one of those girlies that like, knits or plays video games or draws while listening to audiobooks, but I would have no idea about what's happening in the story if I do that.

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

It's no surprise that my two largest slices of the chart are novels and manga volumes. So far in 2023, I've read 12 novels and 9 manga volumes. Then nonfiction and novellas are tied at both 4 books each, and after that poetry and graphic novels are also tied, at 2 books each. I also want to mention that the other formats listed on my spreadsheet (that I just haven't read one of yet) are plays, essay collections, comics, anthologies, and short story collections. 

I've had issues in the past figuring out what classifies as a comic vs. a graphic novel, but I think I've finally figured it out. For me, a graphic novel is a book that is a singular story published in one or two volumes, while comics are serialized and released periodically. So I would consider a book like Anya's Ghost or The Prince and the Dressmaker a graphic novel, while books like Saga or Heartstopper I would file under comics. 

Genre, Mood, and Age Range

Next let's look at the books a little closer. I want to preface this section with saying that the CAWPILE spreadsheet is all categorized by my own interpretations/inputs, while the Storygraph stats are computerized. So there will be some inconsistency here. 

First let's look at genre. 

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

These are the primary genres of each book I've read, selected from a drop down menu (which is completely customizable). The spreadsheet also offers a secondary genre, which you can write in. I try to keep it as concise as possible, but you'll probably notice there is some overlap in a few categories. Aside from manga (which I keep as it's own separate genre so I can easily differentiate how much manga vs. other books I read) my most read genre is fantasy, which isn't much of a surprise. After fantasy, 4 genres are tied: mythology, classics, nonfiction, and historical fiction all have 3 books filed. Then the 2 poetry collections I've read, and the rest are crumbs. 

It looks like I need to step up my horror game! I just haven't been in the mood to read horror lately, since my life has been more horrific than anything I can read about...

From Storygraph

Now, as I said before, Storygraph's stats are all automated, based on the average of reviews and tags and whatnot. So I'm not entirely sure if I fully agree with everything here, but there isn't really anything I can do. According to Storygraph, I've read mainly adventurous and emotional books. It seems like the moods "dark", "lighthearted", "reflective", "mysterious", and "funny" are all tied. It's interesting seeing a more automated take on what I read. 

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

Lastly I just wanted to look at the age range. My initial reaction was surprise at the amount of YA I've read, until I remembered that all of the manga I've read so far has been YA (Shonen or Shojo), and therefore this stat is an outlier and shouldn't be counted. So if we subtract the 9 manga volumes from this chart, then I've read 14 adult books, 7 YA books, and 3 middle-grade books. That definitely seems more accurate. 

Star Rating

The final thing I wanted to look at is my star rating for the books I've read so far in 2023. Remember what I said at the beginning, these numbers will be a little wonky because a fair amount of books I've read are unrated in my spreadsheets. The CAWPILE spreadsheet does not include unrated books, while the Storygraph stats do. 

From the CAWPILE spreadsheet

There are only 24 books in this spreadsheet due to not rating my manga and some nonfiction. I decided to look at full star ratings from the CAWPILE stats, just so I can get a better idea of how my reading is going. I've had the most amount of 3-star reads (with 8 books), which makes sense since that is the average in a star rating system...next is 4 stars, with 7 books. Then I have 5 books that were 5 stars, and 2 books that were 2 stars. That's funny, that they match up!

I do want to point out one more thing: 2 of those 5-star reads were actually rereads, and one of them was a very personal nonfiction that I actually deleted the rating of after I got these charts, so technically I've only had 2 new books this year that have been 5 stars. 

From Storygraph

Of the 25 books that I have reviewed on Storygraph, my average is 3.83 stars, which yeah, that's pretty average if not leaning a bit high. You'll notice that 4 books are listed as unrated - of course there are more, but they don't have any sort of review on Storygraph, which is why they aren't listed in this graph at all. I'm intrigued by the fact that my 3.5-star and 4-star reads are tied. 

(Again, even though it says 4 books have been 5-star reads, only 2 of them are new reads for 2023.)

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Okay, that's all I wanted to look at for this quarterly update. Maybe I'll look at other things for the next quarter? Who knows, I'll have to figure out first and foremost how to rearrange the stats so I'm only looking at the numbers from April to June...that's a problem for future me. 

I hope you enjoyed this kind of wrap up post. If you have any ideas for future posts, please leave them in the comments below, or DM me on Instagram (link in sidebar under "More Media"). 

Until next time!