Call me a nerd, but I do love my graphics posts! I first started properly keeping track of my reads in Excel back in 2016, making it possible to finally put together some graphics. I’ve done a bunch of ‘The Numbers’ posts over time, including my 2016 and 2017 posts, and it has been revealing interesting things about my reading habits. So why stop? 😉 This post will be al about the first six months of 2018. Let’s talk nerdy and see what my numbers were like, shall we?

First of all some quick facts. In the first six months of 2018 I have read no less than 97 books with a total page count of 30.832 pages; an average of about 318 pages per book. If I keep this up in the second half of the year, I will be able to match my reading numbers from last year, even though my page count is slightly lower so far. The average rating is 3,63 stars, which is actually the exact same rating as last year even though it included two 0 star ratings (DNF). No less than 28 books had a 4,5 or 5 star rating and 29 books received a rating 3 stars or below… Which means I enjoyed reading about 70% of the books during the year. Not that bad at all, even though the number is lower than previous years. Another fun fact: 60 of the 97 books I’ve read so far were actually ARCs; about 62% of the total. Way more than I was aiming for, but I do hope to be able to read more of my own books in the secound half of 2018.

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

This graphic above explains exactly why my average rating ended up being quite high… About 54% of the books I read last year had a 4 star rating or above! And only 15% received a 2,5 star rating or below, so all in all I’m very happy with this one.

I already knew I hadn’t been reading a lot of Middle Grade in 2018, so I’m not at all surprised by this graphic. It does show that I still read more Adult than YA, which is probably mostly because I’ve been reading a lot of ARCs and I mainly request mystery/thrillers. 😉

One of the things I’ve been trying to do is read more books by male authors, because somehow I always seem to be reading more books my female authors (even though I never base my choice of books on the gender of the author). Sadly the percentage decreased by 7% since last year! I really have to step up my male author game in the second half of 2018.

A new graphic! After seeing Tina mention it in her update post, I decided to start keeping track of whether the books I read are by new authors or authors already known to me. And I have to say this graphic was a huge surprise! I would have never guessed that more than half of the books I read in the first half of 2018 are actually by new authors: a total of 62% or 60 books. I guess it shows I do love discovering new authors… And reading a lot of ARCs does help as well. I’m looking forward to read some old favorites though in the second half of 2018.

The main genre is basically the most dominant genre I think each book belongs to. As always mystery/thriller/horror is the biggest group (there’s truly no surprise there for those who follow my blog!). What is a surprise is that I have picked up a significant amount of contemporary romance reads as well, since it’s not one of my favorites. It’s good to see both historical fiction and fantasy quite well represented as well.

This average rating graphic is quite a shock… Although I’m aware each genre has received a few lower ratings during the year. Mystery/thriller/crime is well on top with a 4,06 rating. Looks like I’ve been reading a lot of excellent thrillers so far this year! Fantasy comes second (3,63 rating) and I’m actually quite shocked by the lowish ratings of the other genres. Especially when it comes to (realistic) fiction (2,6 stars) and non fiction/memoir (3,17 rating), but genres I normally enjoy and normally receive a higher rating.

The series/stand-alone ratio has been almost the same as in previous years, and I’m actually quite happy with this. As much as I love reading series, I tend to neglect them with the result of a huge pile of unfinished series collecting dust. And there is no such problem with stand-alones! 😉 I do want to finish a bunch of those unfinished series in the rest of 2018 though.

Boy do I feel bad about this graphic! I joined the Beat The Backlist challenge and have other challenges as well to help me read older titles, and somehow only a meager 16% of the books I’ve read in 2018 are published in 2015 or before. Oops? At least the number of books I read that were published in the current year went down: now a 43% of the total. I guess it shows I’ve been trying to get rid of my backlist, but somehow a lot of them ended up being books published in 2016 or 2017. I guess it’s better than nothing though right?

Last graphic: as always 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 do have to step up my game when it comes to reading longer books, because only a meager 13% of my books had over 400 pages.

Tired of numbers yet? I know I am! That’s it for this January-June 2018 review… Happy reading everyone!

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