Reading Year in Review: 2020

Welcome to my favorite post to write ever and that’s my reading year in review! I am here to share all the stats for my reading in 2020 and I am always beyond excited to chat about all the different statistics of my reading. I did this post in 2018 and 2019 as well, so you can contrast and compare! 

Housekeeping: I track my reading using Goodreads and also a spreadsheet created by Brock Roberts from Let’s Read (it’s updated for 2021!). So all of these are from either Goodreads or from my spreadsheet.  Let’s jump in!

I am quite satisfied with the number of books I read this year. I set my reading goal at 60 and I’ve easily surpassed that! The years when I was able to read 100 books a year are behind me, but given how busy I am, this is still a solid number. AND I even got to some of my really long fantasy novels (such as Words of Radiance, which was the last book I finished this year). 

Genres

This is basically my reading tastes summed up – top 3 genres are 1. Fantasy, 2. Literary Fiction and 3. Romance. I did read less Romance than last year, but it’s still a prominent genre in my reading. I said last year that I wanted to get back to my favorite genres (Adult Fantasy and Lit Fiction) and I did that, and I am really glad that’s reflected in my stats! I also read more Non-Fiction than last year (or it comprised a larger percent of my reading) and I am really glad that is the case. Definitely want to try and keep that momentum up in 2021 and pick up more Non-Fiction. 

Year of Publication

This is so funny to me, because every year I make a point of not only reading ARCs and recent releases but then every year my reading is just frontlist. So I am gonna finally accept the fact that I am a fool and I get swept up in new releases and that’s JUST WHO I AM. Who can blame me when there are so many exciting new books coming out (look at my HUGE LIST of 2021 releases). I will be making a backlist TBR and spinning a wheel to decide in the beginning of the month which of the books I will be reading. But other than that, I think reading mostly new releases is here to stay.  

Books by Month

I also love looking at this month by month breakdown. I have no idea what was going on in August, but it seems rough. Also, December had way less books than usual because I hit a huge reading slump in November after The Burning God. ALSO, March was when lockdown happened here (the only one we had) so you can see how I coped. 

Ratings 

These are my rating excluding rereads, and as you can see I refuse to love a book, but I like most of the stuff that I read, which is interesting. Also, I had 3 one star reads this year (you can find my most disappointing books HERE) which I almost never give, but those books were atrocious. My overall average rating is 3.35, so expected. But I do hope I can get that to be a little bit higher. 

Author Gender 

Naturally, most of the books I read are by female authors, but the percent of male ones is larger this year than last, because I read more Adult Fantasy by male authors. My instant reaction was there’s too many male authors which is so funny to me. Multiple refers to books that have more than one authors of different gender (but those are also mostly female or NB). 

Protagonist Gender

This is also really interesting! Most of the protagonist I read of where female, and this percent is up compared to last year. Dual PoV is also down (because those are usually Romances and I read less of those this year). Percent of male protagonists is also up (more male authors, more male protagonists). I’ve also read more ensemble books which is really exciting because those are my favorites.  

Age Group

This is one of the biggest changes in my reading – I have really moved away from reading YA and I think that will be here to stay. I’ve found that I enjoy YA less and less (which is natural, I am not the audience for it anymore) and I think I will continue reading YA Fantasy but I expect this to be the general ratio of Adult to YA books I read from now on. I’ve also been rereading the Percy Jackson series so my Middle Grade percent is up a bit. 

Diversity

This is mostly the same as last year. Own voices is up and I am really glad for that, and as you can see, the majority of the books I read are diverse, which makes me super happy obviously. The None part are some Literary Fiction books and some Adult Fantasy titles, but that’s always a smaller part of my reading compared to the ones that do have some diverse characters or representation. I will obviously always strive to read even more diversely. 

This Year’s TBR or Backlist? 

This is also mostly the same as last year. Most of the books I read were new books, and hence made it to my TBR only this past year. My rereading has also dropped down significantly, which is interesting. I always reread, but some years I do it more and some less. I am surprised I did not reread more because I find rereading really comforting, but seems like I was really adamant about keeping up with my goals and reading my ARCs. 

Format 

 

This is again mostly the same as last year. My graphic novel reading is down, and I really do think that I am less and less interested in picking up graphic novels, besides the ones I already love. It’s also interesting that my paperback and hardback reading has flipped compared to last year, so I read more paperbacks this year. I’ve also read more audiobooks compared to last year. This is mostly due to Libro.fm (I love them). And yeah, most of my reading are ARCs and I am really grateful for having that opportunity to read books early and acquire them like that. Also, most of my reading is digital (I buy a lot of ebooks and almost all the ARCs I read are eARCs).   

Author Status

This is a new thing I added to my spreadsheet this year, because I think it’s really interesting. I have read almost an equal amount of new to me authors and authors I’ve read from before. I would love to keep this up (read new things but also go back to authors I enjoyed before). I’ve also discovered a lot of new amazing authors (you can read more about that HERE).    

Debut? 

This is also a new thing I added – most of the books I read were not debut, which is expected, but I would love to read more debut authors in the upcoming year. 

Blogging Stats

Followers at the end of the year: 1209
Views in 2020: 24.8K
Visitors in 2020: 17K

This is not to brag, but to say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, for making this atrocious year better and for offering me a place to discuss books and talk about them in a really gratifying way with you all. I loved reading your comments and talking about books and just thank you for always being so kind and wonderful to me, especially this year. I hope 2021 is infinitely better for all of you! 

Chat with me about your 2020 reading stats, anything surprising, new, different? 

In the meantime, happy reading

 

 

* If you want to buy any of the books I talked about, you can use my Bookshop affiliate link if you’re in the USA! You buy a book and support local bookstores, and I get a small commission! Even if you do not want to use my own affiliate link, I would still recommend using Bookshop.org since a lot of independent bookstores are struggling and this is a nice way to help them out.  You can even find your favorite local bookstore and support them directly! 

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