2020: The Numbers

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, 2017, 2018 and 2019 posts, and it has been revealing interesting things about my reading habits. So why stop? 😉 Let’s talk nerdy and see what my numbers were like for 2020, shall we?

First of all some quick facts. In 2020 I read no less than 257 books with a total page count of 88.069 pages; an average of about 343 pages per book. I didn’t manage to break 2019’s record, mostly because I read slightly less in the second half of 2020 compared to the first six months… But still so much better than expected! The average rating is 3,71 stars, which is almost the same as in 2019 and I’m happy with that. No less than 74 books had a 4,5 or 5 star rating and 65 books received a rating 3 stars or below… Which means I enjoyed reading about 74,7% of the books during the year, which is higher than in 2019. Not that bad at all! Another fun fact: 118 of the 257 books I’ve read so far were actually ARCs; about 45,9% of the total. This means I’m close to keeping my promise to get the ARC ratio below 40%, although I do hope to actually reach this goal in 2021.

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

New graphic! I decided to look at how many books I manage to read each month as well instead of just naming the total amount of books read… August was an obvious low as we were busy redecorating our new home back then, but I’m surprised by just how many months I managed to finish over 20 books! Only four months were below that number…

This graphic above explains exactly why my average rating ended up being quite high… About 64% of the books I read had a 4 star rating or above! About 12% received a 2,5 star rating or below, but overall I’m definitely happy with these numbers as they are considerably better than in 2019.

Oh boy, I’ve been seriously slacking with my YA and MG reads! I already knew I was reading even more Adult titles than usual, but I should really try to find more balance in 2021.

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). I managed to increase the male author percentage 2% compared to last year, but a minor victory is still a victory. 😉

I’ve been reading more backlist titles and known authors this year, so I’m happy to see that the percentages for both are still quite balanced out.

I’m happy to see that I’m still reading translations! I even managed to increase the percentage slightly compared to last year… I read 25 translations during 2020, and a few more in a different language too (not shown as this graphic only shows translations).

I thought it was interesting to keep track of the author nationalities… The majority of my reads were between UK and US authors (no surprise here), but I’m happy to see quite a few other countries on here as well. It’s a total of 24 different countries; three more than last year!

This is what the previous graphic looks like on a map! The countries in orange represent the nationalities of the authors I was able to read in 2020.

And here is another map, this time around of the different settings I managed to travel to with the help of the books I read during 2020. A total of 39 different countries; not bad at all even though it’s three countries less than in 2019… (In case you are wondering how I’m able to create the maps; I’m using this page.)

The main genre is basically the most dominant genre I feel 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!). I’m surprised how poorly one of my other favorite genres, historical fiction, was represented though; I really have to step up my game in 2021!

I decided to start keeping track of the POV in each story in 2020… And a surprising amount of stories ended up having more than one POV where both genders are represented.

This average rating graphic is quite a shock… Although I’m aware a lot of genres have received lower ratings including DNFs. Especially my historical fiction reads seem to have done a nosedive in the second half of 2020 and ended with a meager 3,44 rating. Mystery/thriller/crime ended up being the most successful genre with a 3,90 rating, although it too went down in the second half of 2020. Fantasy improved though and took over the second place with a 3,81 rating.

I’ve been able to balance out my stand-alones and series a bit better in 2020 than the previous year, although I did do better in the first half of 2020 than the second half. I do love my stand-alones too, as this graphic shows.

Whoops, I’ve been bad in the second half of 2020! I joined the Beat The Backlist challenge again to help me read older titles, and while I did do that, I seemed to have read a LOT of 2020 releases in the second half of 2020… Still, 27% of the books I picked up were published in 2017 or before, and a total of 48% of the books were published before 2020. This is definitely not as good as in 2019 or the first six months of 2020 though, so I will have to work on those backlist titles in 2021.

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… A total of 22% of my books had over 400 pages; which is higher than in 2019 and I’m definitely happy with that.

I’m finishing this post with one last graphic! Looking at the page count I managed to get each month… It definitely shows I have been reading longer books than usual this year!

Tired of numbers yet? I know I am! That’s it for this post… Happy reading everyone!