Hello and welcome to the third edition of what I read in a year told through infographics I spent too much time creating and even more time curating the spreadsheet where all this info gets recorded (yes, the lack of punctuation is intentional)… Nah, just kidding, I LOVE my spreadsheets and I live for those year-end graphs. It’s my own version of the Spotify Wrapped, but for books.
This year, I used book covers as my inspiration for the graphs I created. I hope you enjoy them. I’ll have sources for all images and covers at the end of this post.
2022 was the year I read the most since I started tracking my reading habits in 2011. I read a whooping 144 books, and I only didn’t make it to 145 because number 145 would have been a treatise in philosophy, also known as Sophie’s World, a 400+ page book about a 15 year old girl in Norway receiving a course in philosophy through letters. So yeah, I didn’t manage to finish that one in 2022, but it will feature in my next year’s wrapped.
In 2021, I only read 120 books, so 144 is about 20% more than last year, and an average of 12 books read per month, 3 a week. And I know what you are asking… How does she do it? I usually read multiple books at once, so if one starts putting me to sleep (ahem, Sophie’s World), I can switch up to something that I’m in the mood for. Plus, reading digital books means that I am never without a book. Doctor is late by 45 minutes? No worries, I got a book!
Most of the books I read were pretty short, up to 500 pages. When I tackle something much longer, like this year’s reread of Mists of Avalon, it took me almost three months to finish.
The format of books I read are mostly digital nowadays. Ebooks and audiobooks account for 78% of the format of what I read. The reason for that is, as much as I love physical books, digital books are much easier to read for me. I love the control I have on ebooks to change the font size to accommodate for dry or tired eyes in the evening. Audiobooks make working out and doing chores a lot more bearable. And since most of what I read comes from the library (I’ll talk about this in a minute), the easiest way to borrow books is digitally.
I’m more of a fiction reader, but in the last few years I have discovered what kind of nonfiction I love—history and memoirs—and have been reading a lot more than I used to. The Lady from the Black Lagoon was one of my favorite reads this year, which I borrowed from the library and listened to (read by the author) while painting the ceiling of our living room and kitchen. Now, every time I look at the ceiling in our house I’m reminded of what part of the book I was listening to when I was painting that spot. It’s weird.
If you’re a long-time reader of my blog (thank you, Christy), you know I’ve set a goal to myself to read more of the books I already owned (the famous “TBR pile”) every year, and I’ll talk about it in this post soon, but as you can see by the graphic above, I still mostly read books that I borrow from the library. I cannot resist their temptation. It’s free! It’s right there on my phone! I can read it on my kindle as well! And have I mentioned… free? So, 58% of the books I read this year came from the library, with the other 42% were books I purchased this year or in a previous year.
My most read authors: The top two, Sarah MacLean, one of my favorite romance writers, and Brandon Sanderson who is a fantasy favorite, are authors I’m currently working on reading through all of their catalog, so it’s not surprising they are both top this year. Once I read all their books, they’ll probably just show up as often as they have releases! In the third spot of the most read was Christelle Dabos, a French author who wrote an interesting fantasy series called The Mirror Visitor, which I read in full in 2022.
Here’s where data gets fun: I had an increase of 20% books read from last year, but only 9% more pages. That means I read more short books this year than I did last year! And, I didn’t include this in my post from last year, but I listened to about the same amount of hours of audiobooks (291 hours this year vs 295 last year), but I listened to 31 books this year vs 20 last year. I prioritized short audiobooks this year because they were all borrowed from the library where I only get 3 weeks to borrow them for.
The longest book I read this year was The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, which is basically three books bound in one hardcover volume, so you should give me a bit of credit for not counting this as having read three books (lol). And the shortest was by Brandon Sanderson, called Defending Elysium and is a short story that ties in with a series of his I’m currently reading.
I read so many genres, 33 according to my Storygraph (Storygraph is an app/tool to track reading like Goodreads, but with a lot better stats output), but Romance always gets the number one spot. There have been a resurgence of rom-com in literature in the past few years, and it’s hard to resist reading them all! Fantasy took a backseat, between all the rom-coms and contemporary and historical fiction I’ve been reading, I didn’t spend that much time in fantasyland.
Note: I would like to reiterate though, that even though I love Romance and Fantasy, I have not enjoyed the Fantasy Romance genre that has been incredibly popular the last few years (books from authors like Sarah J Maas and Jennifer Armentrout). Absolutely nothing wrong with the genre! It just didn’t click for me.
One of the reasons why I track my book reading so many different ways (see above mentions to Goodreads and Storygraph) is because I love data. But those apps don’t track the full range of things I want to know about my reading habits (and I know this sounds like “work” to many people, but I truly enjoy my spreadsheets and the last thing I do before sleep every day is updating all my apps and spreadsheets with the days’ numbers, because yes, I am a nerd). I created my own tracking with Google Sheets, and one of the things I track is how much my reading costs—and how much worse it could be, if I didn’t use the library! I’m not big on collecting books (I harbor no dreams of owning a library like Belle’s library in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast) so owning books is not important to me so much as reading them. When I do shop. however, I tend to favor indie bookshops, so I pay more for books than if I bought them from Amazon. With all that in mind, the books I read this year cost me about $500, but my reading habit would have cost me three times that if I didn’t use the library. My savings this year were $1097. How does this compare to last year? My spending went up about 5%, but my savings were much higher: I saved 30% more than last year!
Some more fun facts, courtesy of Storygraph: of all the authors I read this year, 83 were new to me (or have never appeared in my lists since I started tracking in 2011). 62 books were part of a series, and of those, eight were the last book in their respective series (I’ve started many series this year, or read the latest releases of ongoing series, but only eight of them were the last book in their series). I reread three books and I think I could have done better, there’s still many favorites I want to read again. And only two books I gave up reading before finishing.
And last but not least… how am I doing with my goal of reading the books in my TBR (to-be-read pile)? Before we get into this year’s numbers, let me remind you were we were last year. I started 2021 with 101 books in my TBR and wanted to try to read 50% of them in 2021. By the end of that year, I had 96 books in my TBR because even though I read 60 books (beating my 50% goal), I also purchased 55 new ones. So, we’re working through it, but slowly, very very very slowly. I gave myself a higher target for 2022, the goal is to read at least 60% of my TBR, which would be about 58 books.
And we did much better! I read 60 TBR books in 2022, surpassing my 50% goal, and was much better about purchases, only acquiring 43 new books (a few of those were gifts). I’m entering 2023 with my most manageable TBR pile to date: 73 books! Good job!
Note: For full transparency, I had already pre-ordered 7 books coming out in 2023, so the current status of my TBR in 2023 is actually 80 books. The goal is to read 60 of them again, and to not buy more than 30, AND to make sure that all the books acquired before 2021 get read in 2023. Check this space next year to see how I did.
And here we are, at the end of my reading year in review post. Thanks for reading (skimming) and I hope you enjoyed it. For your effort, here’s my top 12 favorite books I read in 2022:
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson: a family saga and a mystery novel, about two siblings trying to piece together their family history and their relationship.
You Have a Match by Emma Lord: a YA about two twin sisters separated at birth, who meet at summer camp and it is NOT The Parent Trap.
True Biz by Sara Nović: The book opens with missing kids at a school for the Deaf, and from there Nović weaves a captivating cast of characters and sign language and civil rights.
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green: It’s an alien invasion book, but here the aliens are nice and just want to help humanity connect. Told from the POVs of different friends as they work through the mystery of “the Carls.”
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green: Nonfiction essays about a variety of topics. Essays are from episodes of the podcast of the same name.
John Eyre by Mimi Matthews: it’s a retelling of two classic novels (one evident in the tile and the other is a spoiler) with gender swapped roles. The twist didn’t shock me, but I still really enjoyed what the author did with this novel.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel: This book is about time travel and a mystery that evolves through time. In the first half I had no idea what I was reading, but it was compelling. In the second half I got it and enjoyed it even more.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zévin: I feel like everyone has read this book this year, and the buzz is warranted. I could not put this story down, about two best friends and the video games they create.
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead: this was a book club read, and I should warn you, I was the only one who loved it. But it was wildly popular when it came out, and it tells the incredible (fictitious) life of a woman pilot in the 20th century, and her mysterious disappearance while flying across the world. It includes a lot of circles.
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik: The final book in the Scholomance trilogy was a great way to wrap the story. The school of magic and the world building of this series really puts the "other” famous wizard school series to the curb. Warning: it has monsters and it is dark.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Heara: is the story of Millicent Patrick, the uncredited creator of the creature from the black lagoon, one of the most famous classic monster movies.
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: if you love Star Wars and want a book that feels like a warm hug, this is it. It tells the story of an interspecies crew hurtling across space on a mission.
To all of the above reads, one thing they have in common is that my life is richer for having read them. I’ve learned so much, and I was entertained a lot.
Sources:
Photo by Stéphan Valentin on Unsplash
Photo by lionel abrial on Unsplash
And the gorgeous covers that inspired my infographics:
Taste by Stanley Tucci
When You Get the Chance by Emma Lord
Funny You Should Ask by Elisa Sussman
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff