Final Reading Statistics for 2022
What with Covid ruining the holidays and a cat who’s been to the vet twice in two days, I’m wishing 2022 good riddance. (The only good thing the end of the year brought is a visit from my sister, who hadn’t been to the UK in 15.5 years. After a few cautionary days at a hotel in London, she’s been staying with us and enjoying the slower pace of life of these quiet, rainy days.) It was still a good reading year for me, though; I worried my total might plummet after my mom’s passing, but I found I read as much as ever, just maybe shorter books and more rereads. Late in the year I realized matching the previous three years’ total of 340 books wasn’t going to happen, so reduced my goal accordingly and managed to surpass it yesterday.
How I did with my 2022 goals
My goal for 2022 (which I had completely forgotten about!) was to read mostly backlist books. In fact, I read 44.9% current-year releases, which means 55.1% older material – even if just 2021 or 2020 releases. This is actually higher than my 41.8% new releases last year, so it looks like I failed to live up to the letter of my resolution, but still happened to read well over half “older” books.
Once again, my initial goal for the new year will be to get through all my set-aside books and my review backlog shelf. After that … I’ll just read some books and hope to enjoy them.
The statistics
Fiction: 53.3%
Nonfiction: 33%
Poetry: 13.7%
(Fiction and nonfiction are usually just about equal for me; I’m surprised that fiction pulled well ahead this year. I read a bit less poetry this year than last.)
Female author: 72.3%
Male author: 23%
Nonbinary author: 1.7%
Multiple genders (anthologies): 3%
(I’ve been reading more and more by women each year, but this is the first time that female + nonbinary authors have outnumbered men by more than 3:1.)
BIPOC author: 20.7%
(The second time I have specifically tracked this figure. I’m pleased that it’s higher than last year’s 18.5%, but will continue to work towards 25% or more.)
Work in translation: 8.7%
(Better than last year’s 5%! But I’d still like to get closer to 10%.)
E-books: 26.3%
Print books: 73.7%
(The number of e-books has doubled since last year because of my increase in reviewing for Kirkus and Shelf Awareness, for which I exclusively read e-books.)
Rereads: 12 (3.5%)
(The same number as last year, so one per month seems to be what I naturally gravitate towards. I have a whole shelf of books I’d love to reread, though, so I’d like it to be more like 2–3 a month.)
Where my books came from for the whole year, compared to last year:
- Free print or e-copy from publisher: 42% (↑10.2%)
- Public library: 30% (↑5.3%)
- Downloaded from NetGalley or Edelweiss: 7% (↑1.1%)
- Secondhand purchase: 6.7% (↓10.1%)
- New purchase (sometimes) at a bargain price): 4.7% (↓0.9%)
- Gifts: 4% (↑2%)
- Free (giveaways, The Book Thing of Baltimore, the free mall bookshop, etc.): 2.6% (↓6.7%)
- University library: 2.3% (↓1.5%)
- Borrowed: 0.7% (↑0.7%)
Additional statistics courtesy of Goodreads:
67,899 pages read
Average book length: 225 pages
Average rating for 2022: 3.6
Happy new year!
Novellas in November 2022: That’s a Wrap!
This was Cathy’s and my third year co-hosting Novellas in November. We’ve done our best keeping up with your posts, which Cathy has collected as links on her master post.
The challenge seemed doomed at points, what with my bereavement and Cathy catching Covid a second time, but we persisted! At last count, we had 42 bloggers who took part this year, contributing just over 150 posts covering some 170+ books.
Ten of us read our chosen buddy read, Foster by Claire Keegan (with four bloggers reading Keegan’s Small Things Like These also/instead). I’ve gathered the review links here.
Our next most popular novella was a recent release, Maureen [Fry and the Angel of the North] by Rachel Joyce, which was reviewed four times. Other books highlighted more than once were Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, Mrs Caliban, The Swimmers, The Time Machine, Winter in Sokcho, Ti Amo, Body Kintsugi, Notes on Grief, and Another Brooklyn.
Thank you all for being so engaged with #NovNov22! We’ll see you back here next year.
Bookish Bits and Bobs
It’s felt like a BIG week for prize news. First we had the Booker Prize longlist, about which I’ve already shared some thoughts. My next selection from it is Trust by Hernan Diaz, which I started reading last night. The shortlist comes out on 6 September. We have our book club shadowing application nearly ready to send off – have your fingers crossed for us!
Then on Friday the three Wainwright Prize shortlists (I gave my reaction to the longlists last month) were announced: one for nature writing, one for conservation writing, and – new this year – one for children’s books on either.
I’m delighted that my top two overall picks, On Gallows Down by Nicola Chester and Silent Earth by Dave Goulson, are still in the running. I’ve read half of the nature list and still intend to read Shadowlands, which is awaiting me at the library. I’d happily read any of the remaining books on the conservation list and have requested the few that my library system owns. Of the children’s nominees, I’m currently a third of the way through Julia and the Shark and also have the Davies out from the library to read.
As if to make up for the recent demise of the Costa Awards, the Folio Prize has decided to split into three categories: fiction, nonfiction and poetry; the three finalists will then go head-to-head to compete for the overall prize. I’ve always wondered how the Folio judges pit such different books against each other. This makes theirs an easier job, I guess?
Speaking of prize judging, I’ve been asked to return as a manuscript judge for the 2023 McKitterick Prize administered by the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for writers. (Since 1990, the McKitterick Prize has been awarded to a debut novelist aged 40+. It’s unique in that it considers unpublished manuscripts as well as published novels – Political Quarterly editor Tom McKitterick, who endowed the Prize, had an unpublished novel at the time of his death.) Although I’d prefer to be assessing ‘real’ books, the fee is welcome. Submissions close in October, and I’ll spend much of November–December on the reading.
Somehow, it’s August. Which means:
- Less than a month left for the remaining 10 of my 20 Books of Summer. I’m actually partway through another 12 books that would be relevant to my flora theme, so I just have to make myself finish and review 10 of them.
- It’s Women in Translation month! I’m currently reading The Last Wild Horses by Maja Lunde and have The Summer Book by Tove Jansson out from the library. I also have review copies of two short novels from Héloïse Press, and have placed a library hold on The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun. We’ll see how many of these I get to.
Marcie (Buried in Print) and I have embarked on a buddy read of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. I’ve never read any of his major works and I’m enjoying this so far.
Goodreads, ever so helpfully, tells me I’m currently 37 books behind schedule on my year’s reading challenge. What the website doesn’t know is that, across my shelves and e-readers, I am partway through – literally – about 90 books. So if I could just get my act together to sit down and finish things instead of constantly grabbing for something new, my numbers would look a lot better. Nonetheless, I’ve read loads by anyone’s standard, and will read lots more before the end of the year, so I’m not going to sweat it about the statistics.
A new home has meant fun tasks like unpacking my library (as well as not-so-fun ones like DIY). As a reward for successfully hosting a housewarming party and our first weekend guests, I let myself unbox and organize most of the rest of the books in my new study. My in-laws are bringing us a spare bookcase soon; it’s destined to hold biographies, poetry and short story collections. I thought I’d be able to house all the rest of my life writing and literary reference books on two Billy bookcases, but it’s required some clever horizontal stacks, special ‘displays’ on the top of each case, and, alas, some double-stacking – which I swore I wouldn’t do.
Scotland and Victoriana displays, unread memoirs and literary reference books at left; medical reads display and read memoirs at right.
I need to acquire one more bookcase, a bit narrower than a Billy, to hold the rest of my read fiction plus some overflow travel and humour on the landing.
I get a bit neurotic about how my library is organized, so questions that others wouldn’t give much thought to plague me:
- Should I divide read from unread books?
- Do I hide the less sightly proof copies in a stack behind the rest?
- Is it better to have hardbacks and paperbacks all in one sequence, or separate them to maximize space?
(I’ve employed all of these options for various categories.)
I also have some feature shelves to match particular challenges, like novellas, future seasonal reads, upcoming releases and review books to catch up on, as well as signed copies and recent acquisitions to prioritize. Inevitably, once I’ve arranged everything, I find one or two strays that then don’t fit on the shelves I’ve allotted. Argh! #BibliophileProblems, eh?
I’ve been skimming through The Bookman’s Tale by Ronald Blythe, and this passage from the diary entry “The Bookshelf Cull” stood out to me:
“Should you carry a dozen volumes from one shelf to another, you will most likely be carrying hundreds before you finish. Sequences will be thrown out; titles will have to be regrouped; subjects will demand respect.”
What are your August reading plans? Following any literary prizes?
How are your shelves looking? Are they as regimented as mine, or more random?
Novellas in November Wrap-Up
Last year, our first of hosting Novellas in November as an official blogger challenge, we had 89 posts by 30 bloggers. This year, Cathy and I have been simply blown away by the level of participation: as of this afternoon, our count is that 49 bloggers have taken part, publishing just over 200 posts and covering over 270 books. We’ve done our best to keep up with the posts, which we’ve each been collecting as links on the opening master post. (Here’s mine.)
Thank you all for being so engaged with #NovNov, including with the buddy reads we tried out for the first time this year. We’re already thinking about changes we might implement for next year.
A special mention goes to Simon of Stuck in a Book for being such a star supporter and managing to review a novella on most days of the month.
Our most reviewed books of the month included new releases (The Fell by Sarah Moss, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, Assembly by Natasha Brown, and The Writer’s Cats by Muriel Barbery), our four buddy reads, and The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy.
Some authors who were reviewed more than once (highlighting different works) were Margaret Atwood, Henry James, Elizabeth Jolley, Amos Oz, George Simenon, and Muriel Spark.
Of course, novellas are great to read the whole year round and not just in November, but we hope this has been a good excuse to pick up some short books and appreciate how much can be achieved with such a limited number of pages. If we missed any of your coverage, let us know and we will gladly add it in to the master list.
See you next year!