May-September 2016: The Numbers

I really liked how the graphics came out I used to analyze my first 25 TBR jar picks and the first months of 2016, so I decided to do something similar for the latest reading months.  And just look at how all those pretty covers of the books I’ve read in May, June, July, August and September 2016 look together! ❤

First of all some quick facts. In the previous five months of 2016 I have read no less than 79 books with a total page count of 25.521 pages; an average of about 323 pages per book. The average rating is 3,53 stars, which is a bit higher than the first four months and also includes one 0 star rating (DNF). 16 books had a 4,5 or 5 star rating and 12 books received a rating below 3 stars… Which means I enjoyed reading about 85% of the books this year, not bad!

And now some graphics for those who like them as much as I do.😉

I know I have been reading a lot of YA books since the beginning of last year, so I’m actually quite happy the amount of Adult reads is still just about the same. I don’t read a lot of Middle Grade in the first place, so that low percentage is no surprise.

I kind of feel bad that the percentage of female authors is so much higher than male authors… I never base my choice of books on the gender of the author, so this number is quite a surprise. I really should focus on reading more books by male authors during the last few months of 2016

The main genre is basically the most dominant genre I think each book belongs to. There is no surprise here are a lot of mystery/thriller and fantasy reads on this list since they are two of my favorite genres. The other well represented genres are contemporary romance and (realistic) fiction. I actually don’t really like romance in general, but apparently I have been reading a lot of books belonging to the genre anyway.

This graphic is a huge surprise! I’ve calculated the average rating for each genre, and even though Mystery/Thriller and Fantasy are two of my favorite genres, they didn’t score that well with 3,60 and 3,23 stars respectively. Contemporary Romance did a lot better than the first four months with 3,65 stars… Historical Fiction is one of my favorite genres and actually scored the lowest this time: only 3,08 stars average. Non Fiction/Memoir and Science Fiction/Dystopia were the best scoring genres with 4,08 and 3,75 stars respectively.

I’m actually quite happy with this number, because I thought I was reading too many books belonging to series this year. And I have actually managed to increase the number of stand-alones in the last five months!

Boy do I feel bad about this graphic! I made a promise to myself over two years ago to read more books published before 2000, and so far I have been doing a lousy job with only a meager 2% of the total. To make things even worse, 78% of the books were published in 2014, 2015 or 2016!

Last graphic: it seems that most books I’ve read have between 300 and 399 pages, which seems to be a pretty good number and a  sign of a story that’s not too short and not too long. There are exceptions of course; some stories are just too complex to be told in under 400 pages… I really need to try and read longer books as well though, since so far it’s been only 16% of the total.

Tired of numbers yet? I know I am! That’s it for this May-September 2016 review… More to come at the end of this year!