Happy New Year, Wormies! I am here to bring you my statistics post for 2016. Be prepared for a barrage of graphs because I am totally obsessed with them right now.
Prepping my stats and making the graphs also revealed something to me. I still read A LOT of historical romance novels! If you are wondering why I am super happy about that, it’s because I thought I read more YA books. Not that there is anything wrong with that but my favorite genre is historical romance. I even talked about this in one of my earlier 2016 posts!
Looking back at 2016, I feel a sense of happiness. In fact, 2016 was perhaps my most active year in the bookish community, and I am really pleased about that. It has also been the most active I have been in blogging. Sure, there were still some gaps when I wouldn’t have posts lined up for you, but I think they were few and far between.
2016 was also the year where I wrote varied types of posts. Sure, I still did Top Ten Tuesday, but by joining the Discussion Challenge, I was challenged to discuss more!
I also started a Bookstagram account on Instagram! Well, I just turned my personal account into a bookish account. For the most part, I was pretty much active there, but not as much as I would like.
2016 was also the year I started to diversify my reads. I tried (and enjoyed) reading genres not in my comfort zone. This is the breakdown of the different genres that I read.
For the main genre, I still read mostly adult books. I think this was a sigh of relief for me because I thought I was reading more YA titles. And to be perfectly honest, this blog was supposed to feature only adult titles because, at one point, those were the titles I was reading. Thank God for These Broken Stars for introducing me to YA!
For the subgenre, I still read a lot of historical romance titles, but close second is contemporary romance, which is a huge surprise for me because I AVOID contemporary romance like the PLAGUE! NOT ANYMORE, though! Third is fantasy, which I thought would have been second. I included Sci-Fi, which I absolutely love and I am super excited to read more titles this year. I have also started to lose interest in retellings and dystopia. Dystopia is now lumped in under other. I think I only read a couple of dystopia titles this year.
Unfortunately, it seems like I have mostly transitioned to digital reading. Of the books that I read, I have listened to 56% of them with 36% I read via ebook. I was also able to read 6% paperbacks and only 2% hardbacks. Yeah, those hardbacks are really heavy to carry! 🙂
Also, I have started to multi-task while listening to audiobooks which really changed the way I read. So, audiobooks has now been my go to format. I’m not sure I can read physical books anymore, though, which is a little sad.
Although I purchased quite a few books this year, most of them I HAVEN’T READ YET! I know that is so bad, but yeah, I gravitated to titles that I borrowed! Which is a good thing because I borrowed A LOT of books this year! Thank you, Los Angeles Public Library!
I also received a few books as gifts that I read. I honestly have a few more books that were gifted to me but I just haven’t read them yet.
Up next, I wanted to show the year the books I read were published. Apparently, I read more titles published in 2015 or earlier! I guess 2016 was the year that I read back titles! Which is really awesome! I predict that I will be reading more back titles in 2017!
Lastly, I wanted to look at the number of books I read, re-read, and DNF’d. I honestly was a little surprised that I only DNF’d 5% of the books I read. I actually wrote a post about me DNFing books in a snap, so it was an awesome revelation. I’m actually quite pleased by it.
I also think that 15% re-read books is a good percentage. I think I will still be re-reading more books this year.
Now on to the challenges! I am one to admit that I have absolutely failed some of the challenges. One of the things that I really hate is that when I join a challenge, I do everything in my power to NOT think about it, and the worst part, AVOID it.
For the breakdown, I read 110 books this year! With the goal of 80!
Reviewed 55 books out of 80
Re-read 16 books out of 10
Wrote 17 discussion posts out of 20
Read 13 books out of 20 for the Shelf Love challenge
These are all the books I rated 5 Hearts this year. Some are older titles and some are newer ones, and if you haven’t read them yet, now is the perfect time to do so!
The Revolution of Ivy – After the surprise that was The Book of Ivy, I expected a lot of The Revolution of Ivy, but I was just disappointed. Mostly because there was NO FREAKING REVOLUTION!
Anna and the French Kiss – I had heard of a LOT of AWESOME things about this book, but it wasn’t all that great.
Chasing Lady Amelia – I was really anticipating this book this year, but when I read it, I was thoroughly disappointed. Amelia is one unlikeable heroine! Since I am also not a huge fan of the movie this book was based on, Roman Holiday.
Empire of Storms – Although this book was superbly written, it just felt too drawn out for me. I also thought that Queen of Shadows was the last book in the series, so…
Mogul – I absolutely love Baron, but Mogul just missed the mark for me. Let’s just say that the heroine was just so unlikeable, I almost DNF’d this book.
The Hunter by Kerrigan Byrne is the longest book I read this year, clocking in at 432 pages. Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas is the longest audiobook that I read, clocking in at 25 hours and 23 minutes.
Tycoon by Joanna Shupe, a novella is the shortest book I read at 80 pages only and The Princess, The Scoundrel and the Farm Boy is the shortest audiobook I listened to at 5 hours and 5 minutes.
This year was the year I started doing my Skinny Review Cards. It’s an image with all the book info including my rating, and a few words describing the book, including my thoughts. I also wrote a post about trying different review styles.
Favorite Historical Romance Review
The Hunter by Kerrigan Byrne
Favorite YA Review
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
Favorite Contemporary Romance Review
All Chained Up by Sophie Jordan
Because I wrote quite a few discussion challenges this year, I decided to pick my top 3 favorite posts!
In my Top Ten Tuesday 2016 Resolutions post, I listed 10 resolutions. Unfortunately, I only met 50% of them! ACK!! I KNOW I suck at this. I actually re-read this post when I wrote this post and I can’t believe I forgot to write down book quotes!
That was one of my bookish goals for 2016 AND I FAILED IT BIG TIME! Oh my God! I feel so stupid. This is exactly why I hate writing resolutions! Ha ha! Let’s hope that 2017 will be better for me!
How did your year go? Did you create a stats post?
Share your link so I can stop by and check it out!
I did a recap of my challenges and I created a list of my Top 5 Reads for 2016. I did make my GoodReads and personal pages read goal. I upped my number of books to read in 2017. Can’t wait for GoodReads to open up their challenge tomorrow!
Terri M. recently posted…My Top 5 Reads from 2016
Me too! I really want to update my Goodreads Challenge now! 😀
How funny, we both kept track of all sorts of things, but we kept track of completely different things! It’s interesting to see the different types of things people keep track of. But stats and graphs are just so much fun, right?! And that’s awesome that you found some new genres you enjoyed. It’s also cool that you borrowed so many books. I need to do more of that this year, I didn’t take advantage of that enough in 2016. I mostly just borrowed a fair amount of graphic novels from Hoopla lol. In my defense, I borrow ebooks, and the stupid ebook reading apps don’t work very well on my phone and kindle -_- Anyway, Happy New Year!
Kristen @ Metaphors and Moonlight recently posted…Bookish Musings: My 2016 Bookish Stats
Happy New Year, Kristen! I really find it very interesting that everyone tracks things differently! I actually looked at yours and you were very, VERY specific, which is so cool!
The Los Angeles Public Library has really helped me with my book buying budget. I swear my husband is happy about that! haha 🙂 I’m not sure if your public library has this option but LAPL has the ability to borrow an ebook via Amazon so it syncs to your Kindle app, which I use a lot. There is also the Overdirve app which is very helpful.
Looks like you had a fantastic reading year! I know you didn’t quite make your Discussion Challenge goal, but I think you should be proud for getting so close. I really love your Skinny Review Cards—I think they give a great overview!
Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction recently posted…A New Year’s Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore! 1/1/17
Thank you, Nicole! I will be using the Skinny Review cards this year, too! And yeah, was pretty much uninspired about what topics I would discuss so… but 17 is still ALMOST there!
oh I just love seeing all of these stats here!!! And so many of my favorites you listed as yours. The Hunger, Marrying Winterborne and All Chained Up. I mostly read digitally now too if you combine books I buy and ARC’s however I am trying to build my physical library so I am trying to read more printed books this year.
I read quite a bit of HR as well, and I used to NEVER read contemporary but the past couple years I am starting to fall in love with the genre again.
Glad to see you had a great blogging year as well and hope 2017 is a fabulous one for you.
Lover Of Romance recently posted…Book Review-Royal Scandal by Marquita Valentine
Thank you! I am pretty surprised that I am enjoying contemporary. I used to NOT love it at all. I think I may have been reading the wrong books! 🙂
It’s awesome that you’re happy with 2016! That’s the most important thing about blogging, I think. I love your skinny review cards idea – it’s such an interesting format! Hope 2017 will be another great one for you ^_^
Thank you, Cilla! I know some readers just want to glance/skim reviews so I thought an image would be perfect for that!
Sorry you didn’t like Anna & FK, I loved it.
I also find that I end up reading more titles from the library–i think because I only get them for a short while so the books I buy wait. i just keep finding more books when I return the others. It does feel really good and relaxing to read a book that is mine–I feel no pressure of return due date.
You have a great point, Danielle! The good thing about library books is that you can renew if for another 3 weeks….but only if no one is queued up for the book. I try not to buy as much books, though. I mean, I only have so much space for them!
Awesome job reading so many books! Hopefully you can beat that number this year!
For my anything by Sarah J. Maas is an automatic 5 star, too bad you weren’t too happy with Empire of Storms, I agree with it being a bit too drawn out but I still liked it, it was nice to see all the character from the prequel come back.
Wishing you the best of luck this year 🙂
I enjoyed it but I also had mixed feelings about it only because it was really, really drawn out.. like she is milking it for all its worth. I also don’t want the series to end, but by adding an “in-between” book where some parts don’t really make a difference to the whole plot is just a cop out. IMO. I will still read more Throne of Glass books, though. 🙂
I’ve had my IG account for several years now, but I just recently start focusing on posting bookstagram stuff. It’s going pretty well I think. I really need to read something by Sarah J. Mass already!
YES, please DO! Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series is AMAZING! I don’t really like her other series ACOTAR though. Good luck with your bookstagram!