Hello and welcome to my first post of 2024! I’ve been waiting ALL year to write this wrap up of my reading stats for 2023. My spreadsheets are more complex than ever and my brain more scrambled than last year because of it, so let’s go look at some numbers.
I’ve read 136 books in 2023, and had set out to read at least 120 (about 2/week). I don’t personally worry too much about those numbers though, because I also like to make some goals more intentional. For example, this past year I also wanted to read my TBR (to-be-read pile, aka books I already own), read more books not originally written in English, read more of the books that have been lingering in my library wishlist, and to finish reading the entire catalog of a couple of my favorite authors. Of those, I’m happy to report that my goal of reading 15 books not written in English—but translated to English or Portuguese, of course, as I only speak those two fluently—I surpassed it by reading 22 books that fit that criteria. For the backlog of my library wishlist, I set a goal of borrowing 2 a month from that list for a total of 24 a year, and ended up borrowing and finishing 27 of those. As for some of the other goals, I made graphs for them, so I’ll talk about them later.
This year’s new graph is the books-read-per-month graph you can see above. Nothing too fancy about it, but I just wanted to see what months I read more or less and see if I can figure out why. For example, in May I had my parents visiting for two weeks, so I only managed to read 9 books (but can’t remember why I only read 9 in March, most likely I wasn’t in the mood!). April, June, and December were the months I read the most, and I think they correlate with months I crafted the least.
Some more fun numbers to digest: of the 136 books I read this year, in average, it takes me a little over 8 days to read each of them. The one that took me the longest to read (34 days) was the Neuromancer, which is not a long book, but I started reading right before my parents came to visit, and also a couple of library holds came up that took priority over it. But quite a few books I read in one day: four graphic novels and a few novellas under 100 pages.
Let’s look at page numbers next, I read 33,444 pages this past year (ebooks and printed books) and listened to over 400 hours of audiobooks equivalent to over 13,000 pages if printed. The shortest book I read was 56 pages long, a surprise novella release for the Brandon Sanderson kickstarter campaign from 2022 (which delivered the goodies in 2023). I had no idea I was going to get that book, but I read it the day it hit my inbox. The longest book I read this year was actually a re-read of Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest, one of my favorite books ever. I wanted to re-read it in the occasion of our trip to Ireland, as most of Marillier’s books are set in Ireland and based on its myths and legends.
The average page number per book was 352 pages, but in the pie chart above, you can see the split between length of books read. Most books I read are around 300-500 pages, and very few times last year I picked long books to read (only 10!). Although, I finished 2023 with 85% of David Copperfield read, which is a 900 page book, so let’s say I read 10.85 books with over 500 pages in 2023. 😂
I also listened to a lot more audiobooks than I did last year (414 hours this year versus 291 hours last year, 42% increase!) and yet, I still read a lot more “traditional” books than audiobooks: 72% of all books read in 2023 were either printed or ebooks. I prefer ebooks because they are easier on the eyes as I can adjust the font size for my tired graphic-designer eyes. On a typical day, you’ll find me with a paper book in the morning while drinking my tea before work, with an ebook on my phone while I’m on the treadmill or out and about waiting for something, with an audiobook on my ears while I’m sewing or crocheting at night, and with a kindle book before bed. That’s the main reason why I read so many books at once (usually 3 at a time), because I have a preferred type for each occasion. The goal is to always be reading.
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 (from 1-2 a year max to 15+ every year for a few years!). Toxic Wives: Murder, Media and the Poison Panic in America was one of my favorite reads this year, written by one of my friends, Christy Seifert. I also really enjoyed reading Prince Harry’s memoir early in the year, even though it was a very awkward book.
The next pie chart above, you can see the percentage of books read that were borrowed (from the library mostly) versus books that I already owned (purchased or gifted). This year I did pretty well 50/50 of owned versus borrowed from the library! The library is my biggest temptation—free books! I’ll talk more about my TBR at the end of this post (my grand finale, my most important goal of the year).
Quite a few years back, looking at the books I was reading, I made a focused effort to start reading more women than men, since up to that point, the vast majority of books I was reading were written by men. This effort paid off for me, I discovered many new authors and genres I love and also found out that so many women write books I adore. At this point, I don’t even have to make any effort to read more women, it is just what I am drawn to naturally. And I also believe (but have no data to share on this) that the publishing industry has been shifting in the last few years, seeing the power of publishing and promoting more female authors, so it’s also not very hard to find and read women.
This past year also saw a small number of rereads of old favorites. The Six of Crows duology has become my new comfort read, and I read them again this year after finishing a watch of the second season of Shadow and Bone on Netflix (sadly not renewed for a third season because Netflix sucks). I also reread a few of my favorite Juliet Marillier books, and it ignited my desire to finish reading her full catalog (I have 5 books still left to read that I plan on getting to them in 2024).
2023 was the year of Sanderson: with a kickstarter delivering five new books, plus the release of the final Skyward book, and all the novellas I purchased on an effort of trying to finish reading his entire* catalog, 2023 was indeed the year of Sanderson, as I read 10 of his published works (5 novels, 4 novellas, 1 compilation of novellas written with Jaci Paterson). I expect he will not be the top author read in following years (unless I do a Stormlight Archive reread in 2024). Juliet Marillier is another fantasy author I really love and been reading consistently for a decade, and am close to finishing reading her full catalog, so she should be a repeat in this list again next year. Christina Lauren and Mimi Matthews are also authors I had several of her books in my kindle, so this year I wrapped up reading all of their books still in my TBR.
*I should qualify that I only wish to read his adults and YA novels, but will be skipping graphic novels and MG books.
Romance and Fantasy are again my top 2 genres! It’s the third year in a row, actually. Fun fact: as much as I love romance and fantasy, I do not enjoy “romantasy” (a name for this genre of romantic fantasy has been coined in 2023). That means a lot of the very trendy books of the last few years I have not read, or if I did, I hated them. Sorry Sarah J Mass fans, but I am just not an ACOTAR fan.
This year I was pretty excited about all the new-to-me authors I got to read. More than half of what I read this year were written by people I had never read before. Twenty-five of them were debut authors. Over 50 books I read this year were part of a series (and six were the last book in their respective series, which is always a good feeling when you can wrap it up). We already talked about rereads, but not about the 2 books I didn’t finish (that would make 138 books read this year if I had). I am not great at dropping a book I’m not enjoying, I always feel like I’m curious enough to keep going even if I am not having the time of my life, so the fact that two made the cut this year, just means I really really hated them. Maybe I need a reading goal of DNFing (DNF: did not finish) anything I’m not into after 50 pages.
Another favorite stat I like to track is how much I spend and save on books. It IS a bit skewed because not all books I read this year were bought this year, and not all books I bought this year I read this year, but what I am trying to do with this is figure out the cost of what I read this year (hope that made sense) 🤪. We saw, in a different graph earlier on this post, that I read a 50/50 split between owned books versus library books. But the actual cost of those was more like a 35/65 split. That’s because, besides not paying for half of the books I read this year (thank you library), I also try to buy books used and on sale when I can. If I had paid “full price” (I track full prices as the cost of the book on kindle at the time of starting to read the book, or the cost of one credit subscription to audible for audiobooks) I’d have spent about $1,600 dollars in books this year. Because of the reasons mentioned above, I only spent $661 dollars in books read this year. I saved almost $1,000 dollars by using the library, gift cards, and being a savvy shopper 🤣.
Ink Blood Sister Scribe, Emma Törzs: my favorite book of 2023. It’s what I like to call “light fantasy,” it is set in the real world in a contemporary timeline, it has a little bit of magic and spells, but it’s not a complicated world build. The book is about two sisters and their task to protect their family’s collection of magical books. Parts of it are set in Vermont, Antartica, and England. I couldn’t put it down once I started it.
Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld: the title says it all, it’s a romantic book and it’s funny. I really enjoyed the setting of this novel in the backstage of a SNL-like TV show, and the reversal of roles in the romance. It was sweet and surprisingly relatable. Sittenfeld knows how to write inner dialogue that sounds like my own brain sometimes.
The Wishing Game, Meg Shaffer: this was my second favorite book I read this year. It’s a sweet story, a Willy Wonka for adult readers. It’s perfect for adults who grew up reading adventure series as kids.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt: another sweet story, I think this novel was a favorite to many this year because the story is so poignant and so well written. An older lady befriends an Octopus, and the Octopus changes her life and the lives of others, and it even solves a decades old mystery. Really, a must read.
The Green Journey, Jon Hassler: this was a birthday gift from a friend prior to a trip to Ireland we had planned for October. The story is about multiple characters from a small town, coming together for their own trip to Ireland. It’s an old book and the author has several stories set around that same small town and characters.
The Harp of Kings, Juliet Marillier: I devoured this book and the two follow ups in the series as fast as my library holds came. It’s a fantasy-world spy story, with students from a secretive warrior school who are called to infiltrate a king’s court and to solve a mystery of a missing harp. It was so much fun to read. *There are TW for this book for animal cruelty/death, and those are usually things I avoid in books, but I love JM too much, so I read it, even though some parts of it were difficult to read.
Babel, R.F. Kuang: This is a spectacular novel of fantasy. It’s a magic-school novel, but it’s nothing like Hogwarts. It grapples with the ethics and consequences of colonialism in a brilliant and gutting way. The ending was unexpected and the only way to really end it. I’ll be reading all books by R.F. Kuang in 2024.
In the year of 2020 I went on a big book buying binge (BBBB), mostly because I was home more and had a ton of extra time to read, but also because a lot of small bookshops were terrified of what the pandemic would mean to their businesses, and I wanted to help by supporting my favorites. The result was: I bought a LOT of books, and my already large TBR got out of control. Since 2020, I’ve made it my main goal every year to read more books from my collection, but not buying more than what I can read in a year. In 2023, I also tried to read all books bought in 2020 or before that were still lingering in the pile (I did it!), and then got almost all of the books purchased in 2021 read as well (have just 8 to go and it will be my priority to read in 2024). I did fail in my goal of getting my TBR under 50 books though. There were lots of releases I was excited for this year, and I bought more books than I had planned for. I will try to do better in 2024, but it’s not a huge deal to me, as, even though I buy a lot of books, I read even more books.
For a multi-year comparison, when I started to track my TBR in 2020, I had 120 books in it at the end of that year in my pile. Three years later, I only have 69 books waiting to be read on my pile. That means I almost—almost—halved the size of my TBR in three years of reading. My goal for 2024 is to try to keep my purchases and borrowing from the library to a minimum. so I can get that number even lower. I think to achieve this, I’ll have to stop looking at best-of published lists and other book related social media I follow. If I don’t know it’s out there, then I can’t borrow it from the library or buy new, right?
If you made it down here, thanks for reading and supporting my love of books.
And if you want to shop my shelves all in one neat spot, I got all 2023 and 2022 books listed on bookshop.org.