Sunday, January 1, 2017

2016 Wrap Up - The Stats

This year I made my Goodreads goal to read 65 books and I ended up exceeding that goal by quite a bit.  I ended up reading 101 books, which comes out to slightly over 31,000 pages; since over half my books were audiobooks which technically I listen to and not read verbally, I probably read actually closer to 14,000 pages.  Still pretty impressive.

Since I love seeing what specifically, I'm reading, I broke down my reading,  Although I'm not big into mathematics, I do enjoy seeing how things turn out statistically.

  • About 3% of my reading was done using actual physical books.  I actually only read 3 hardcovers from my local library.  I usually prefer reading books on my Kindle and audiobooks, which I discovered I enjoy a couple years ago.  Since my son is 7 and in 1st grade, I am going to try to read a lot more physical books when I am around him.  He's actually an excellent reader and after the first quarter report cards came out, I found out that he is reading closer to where they expect them to be by the end of first grade.  I kind of figured he was reading well, but I did not realize he was at the level he was.  Like most kids at that age, he wants to play videogames and other electronics and getting him to read is like pulling teeth.  If he sees me reading an actual physical book, rather than my kindle, he'll be able to see that I am actually reading, not playing on an electronic device.  Actually my local library, although small has some really good books and I often find that many of the new releases are there and for some reason are not being checked out.
  • About 52% of what I read were actually through audiobooks that I get through my library system's Overdrive app.
  • And 45% were on my kindle.  Over half of those were ARCs from NetGalley.  I really need to "read my own damn books".  Not library books (68% of what I read was from the library; all the audiobooks and all my physical books this time and the rest I downloaded on to my Kindle.) and not requesting any more on NetGalley.  Easier said than done though.
I pretty equally read both fiction (53%) and non-fiction (47%).  In the non-fiction category, about 26% were biographies or memoirs, 5% history, and the rest were just general non-fiction.  Fiction-wise, I was more diverse with about 3% of the books being considered children's fiction, 7% were considered Christian, 5% fell under Christmas, surprisingly only 10% was under historical fiction, which is one of my favorite genres, 23% were romance (no big shocker there), and 5% were suspense/thrillers and another 5% were young adult fiction.

Lastly, my ratings for everything I read and listened to were pretty evenly dispersed.  I had a good year; most of my reading fell in the 3 or 4 star range. 
  • 12% were 5 star reads
  • 32% were 4 star reads
  • 31% were 3 star reads - still good though
  • 20% were 2 star reads
  • 5% were 1 star read
I usually have very few 1 star books, because usually I DNF a book that I am not enjoying, but for whatever reason I continued to the end for 5% of these.  Actually, I see that all of these that I gave 1 star to were audiobooks, so I probably decided just to continue with it since I was listening to them while doing something else anyways,

The book with the most pages was My Life by Bill Clinton, but since I actually listened to it on audio, the book with the most pages that I read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson.  The shortest was a short story by one of my new favorite authors, A Mistletoe Welcome by Annie Raines at approximately 25 pages.

The book I least enjoyed was audiobook, Born Standing by Steve Martin.  I had thought it would have been interesting and funny, since Steve Martin WAS one of my favorite comedic actors in the 80s and early 90s, but instead it was a painfully boring and had I not been doing other things while listening to it, I would have either DNFed it or fallen asleep.  I don't think I'll be able to watch Father of the Bride, Cheaper by the Dozen and possibly Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (although John Candy may be the saving grace of that one) the same way after having read this memoir.

What about my favorite book of the year, you ask.  Well, you'll have to wait for a separate blog post to find that out.  I can't pick out just one, but check back soon and I'll be listing my top favorites for 2016.

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