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 2021, shall we?

First of all some quick facts. In 2021 I read no less than 240 books with a total page count of 84.557 pages; an average of about 352 pages per book. This is definitely way better than expected considering the slump! The average rating is 3,67 stars, and I’m happy with that even if it’s slightly lower than in 2020. No less than 56 books had a 4,5 or 5 star rating and 66 books received a rating 3 stars or below… Which means I enjoyed reading about 72,5% of the books so far, which is lower than in 2020 but still not bad at all. Another fun fact: 84 of the 240 books I read were actually ARCs; about 35% of the total. This means I actually kept my promise to get my ARC ratio below 40%!!!

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 as a whole I’m not complaining about these numbers. 5 months were below 20 books and especially September was a slow month for me, but especially the first half of 2021 I managed to read a LOT.

This graphic above explains exactly why my average rating ended up being quite high… About 59% of the books I read had a 4 star rating or above! Only about 12% received a 2,5 star rating or below, and overall I’m definitely happy with these numbers as they are about the same as in 2020.

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… I did manage to at least read more MG than in 2020 I guess.

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 did go down 3% compared to 2020, so I will have to step up my game in 2022.

Whoops, I’ve been slacking with my new-to-me authors ! 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 the percentage went down 3% compared to last year… I ended up reading 16 translations during 2021, and one or two more in a different language too (not shown as this graphic only shows translations). I hope to do better in 2022!

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 20 different countries; not as good as last year, but still a great number.

This is what the previous graphic looks like on a map! The countries in red represent the nationalities of the authors I was able to read 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 during 2021. A total of 43 different countries; which is a new record! (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!). There is a surprising amount of romance compared to the past, but I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise after all as I’ve been craving the genre a lot since COVID. On the other hand, I haven’t been in the mood for one of my favorite genres historical fiction, and it shows.

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. I also ended up reading more stories with a male POV compared to last year.

This average rating graphic took a nosedive in the last four months of 2021, but thankfully the numbers are mostly still slightly better than in 2020. Mystery/thriller/horror takes the first place with a 3,88 rating, with historical fiction coming a close second with a 3,86 rating.

I’ve been able to balance out my stand-alones and series better than in 2020… I do love my stand-alones too, as this pie chart shows.

I always join the Beat The Backlist challenge 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 57,9% of the books were published before 2021. Not bad at all considering I did read a lot of ARCs!

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 30% 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… I’m surprised I was able to read over 7.500 pages in five out of twelve months! And a whopping nine months had over 6.000 pages, which is way better than I hoped for.

I’m finishing this post with one last graphic! My list of most reads authors during 2021. Angela Marsons is the clear winner, which is no surprise as I’ve been trying to catch up with her DI Kim Stone series… The second place is a tie between Ben Aaronovitch, Sarah Bennett and Karin Slaugher, who all have series that I’ve been working on during 2021.

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

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