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, 2019and 2020 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 the first eight months of 2021, shall we?

First of all some quick facts. In the first eight months of 2021 I read no less than 173 books with a total page count of 61.538 pages; an average of about 356 pages per book. This is definitely way better than expected! The average rating is 3,74 stars, and I’m definitely happy with that. No less than 43 books had a 4,5 or 5 star rating and 42 books received a rating 3 stars or below… Which means I enjoyed reading about 75,7% of the books so far, which is higher than in 2020. Not bad at all! Another fun fact: 72 of the 173 books I’ve read so far were actually ARCs; about 41,6% of the total. This means I’m closer to keeping my promise to get the ARC ratio below 40%, although I do hope to actually reach this goal in the rest of 2021.

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

Last The Numbers post I decided to look at how many books I manage to read each month instead of just naming the total amount of books read… And it seems like I’ve been reading a lot each month so far! March and July were the only two months I read less than 20 books, which is definitely way better than expected.

This graphic above explains exactly why my average rating ended up being quite high… About 63% of the books I read had a 4 star rating or above! Only about 10% received a 2,5 star rating or below, and overall I’m definitely happy with these numbers as they are better than in 2020.

Oh boy, the whole MG/YA situation is even worse than in the first four months! I already knew I was reading even more Adult titles than usual; I guess it just shows that I’ve been outgrowing the books for a younger audience…

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). The male author percentage went down a bit compared to the first four months, but it’s been worse so I’m not complaining.

Whoops, I’ve been slacking with my new-to-me authors in the last four months! I guess it shows that I’ve been trying to catch up with a couple of series and titles of authors I’ve read before… Still, I’m not complaining as it means I did work on my backlist more.

I’m happy to see that I’m still reading translations, although I do need to read more in the last four months to catch up and reach the same amount as last year… I’ve read 13 translations so far, and one or two 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 18 different countries; only six less than my record 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 so far in 2021.

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 so far during 2021. A total of 40 different countries; which is already more than last year! (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, is represented though; I really have to step up my game in the rest of 2021!

I decided to start keeping track of the POV in each story in 2020, and it’s been fun to see that a surprising amount of stories end up having more than one POV where both genders are represented.

This average rating graphic actually makes me quite happy as the numbers in general are a lot better than last year! I while some ratings made a nosedive (fiction/contemporary), I still have three genres with an (almost) 4 star rating. My new top scoring genre is science fiction/dystopia, which I confess have hardly read books of, but it shows that the three books I did read were absolute winners.

I’ve been able to balance out my stand-alones and series better than last year… I do love my stand-alones too, as this pie chart shows.

I joined the Beat The Backlist challenge again to help me read older titles, and I’m happy to see that 34% of the books I picked up were published in 2018 or before… And a total of 60% of the books were published before 2021. Not bad at all considering I’ve been reading lots of ARCs recently!

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 32% of my books had over 400 pages; which is higher than in previous years and I’m definitely happy with that.

I also decided to look at the page count I managed to get each month instead of just writing down how many pages each book had… And I’m surprised I was able to read over 7.500 pages in five out of eight months!

I’m finishing this post with one last graphic! My list of most reads authors during the first eight months of 2021. Angela Marsons is the winner so far, which is no surprise as I’ve been trying to catch up with her DI Kim Stone series… Karin Slaugher comes in second, which is no surprise either as I’ve been working on her Grant County/Will Trent books.

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

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