2023: 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, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 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 2023, shall we?

First of all some quick facts. In 2022 I read no less than 238 books with a total page count of 82.247 pages; an average of about 346 pages per book. This is both less books and less pages than the previous year. The average rating is 3.49 stars, which is again lower than in previous years and this kind of makes me sad. Only 56 books had a 4.5, 4.75 or 5 star rating and 76 books received a rating 3 stars or below… Which means I enjoyed reading about 68% of the books so far; about the same as in 2022. Another fun fact: 112 of the 238 books I’ve rea7 were actually ARCs; about 42% of the total. This means I wasn’t able to keep my promise to keep the ARC ratio below 40% for the second year in a row.

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

In 2021 I decided to start looking at how many books I manage to read each month instead of just naming the total amount of books read… In this graphic it’s quite clear that we were away on vacation during April and I was dealing with a very stubborn slump in September-November.

This graphic above explains exactly why my average rating ended up being lower than usual… About 54% of the books I read had a 4 star rating or above, while about 23% received a 2.5 star rating or below; definitely not as good as last year.

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 it seems like it’s getting worse and worse each year.

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 by female authors (even though I never base my choice of books on the gender of the author). My percentage of male author has definitely tanked in comparison to previous years… Whoops?

I’ve been reading more backlist titles and known authors this year as well as catching up with a couple of series, and it shows… Although the numbers are still better than in 2022.

I’m happy to see that I’m still reading translations even though I did worse than last year. I read a total of 11 translations, and one 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), although it’s the second time in a row that the US authors have won the race by a landslidee. I’m happy to see quite a few other countries on here as well though. It’s a total of 17 different countries; not as good as previous years, but still not bad at all. This is the first time in years Ireland doesn’t make an appearance though!

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 2023.

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 2023. A total of 51 different countries; a new record! In case you noticed: I’ve decided to split the US in states because I started keeping track of the states in 2023.

(I’m using this page to create the maps.)

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). What IS more of a surprise is that almost fifth of my books were romance reads; a genre I didn’t read exactly much in the past, but I’ve started to enjoy it more and more in recent years.

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 kind of sad as the ratings are considerably lower than usual for most genres. Only science fiction/dystopia has a decent 3.81 rating, but the rest are mostly horribly low. I guess the 9 DNF and multiple lower ratings had a bigger impact than expected.

This graphic is usually more balance, but it shows that I ended up favoring stand-alones in 2023. This is a honestly a bit surprising considering the fact that I’ve been catching up with quite a few series…

I joined the Beat The Backlist challenge again to help me read older titles, and I’m happy to see that at least 29% of the books I picked up were published in 2020 or before… And a total of 53% of the books were published before 2023. I guess it shows that I’ve been reading lots of ARCs as well as new releases in general though.

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; lower than last year, but I still like those numbers.

I also decided to start looking at the page count I managed to get each month instead of just writing down how many pages each book had… I’m quite happy in general with these numbers, although some months were pretty weak compared to others.

I’m finishing this post with one last graphic! My list of most reads authors during 2023… No clear winner this time around, as two authors share the first place: Lyssa Kay Adams and Daniel Cole. I guess I have been reading more diversely in 2023, as I usually have more authors with 3 or more books each!

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