2016 Reading by the Numbers

I already posted my list of top reads from 2016, but here is the rest of it! Between Goodreads and all my extra shelves I create, I track quite a bit of data that I personally find interesting.

Around the end of December, Goodreads users get greeted by their year in review, automatically generated. These numbers are actually a bit high because it includes the books I abandoned, since I track those too. But they are close.

In 2015, I read 244 books and 65,186 pages. So in one year I increased by roughly 38% in each way of counting, accounting for the handful of abandoned books which shouldn't count but do. I may find a new way to keep track of abandoned titles in 2017. My Read in 2016 shelf says 327 books, which sounds about right.

Last year I read about 50/50 male/female authors; this year my numbers skewed more to female, at about 58%. This isn't the only diverse category I'm interested in but I feel strange tracking authors for other things. Just know that I have been reading widely and diversely and feel pleased that this list is not just all dead white men.

Format is always interesting to me. This year I read 188 (56%) books in print, 125 (37%) in eBook, and 24 (7%) in audiobook. That makes about 2 audiobooks a month. I used to only read library and review copy books in eBook but now that I have a Kindle Paperwhite, that accounts for some increase. I really love reading on it, and it has been a help when I travel. A large amount of the audio and eBooks I read are review copies, and overall I read 109 review copy books this year, accounting for 32% of the books I read, so almost one third. I request review copies, and it is a rare day where I will blindly accept an offer (so please don't get any ideas.) I go looking for specific titles and stick with those.

Other technological shifts that changed some of how I read included learning about Hoopla through the public library (with audiobook and eBook downloads) and the Serial Reader app, which distributes daily content of classics in eBook format. While those were not a huge percentage of the books I read (and they are accounted for in the above format breakdown), this was the first year I read using either of those methods.

I read a lot of books because of award lists. In 2016, that broke down this way:
Baileys Prize - 4
Dylan Thomas - 4
Giller Prize - 1 
Man Booker - 9
Hugo - 3
National Book Award - 6
Nebula - 3
Pulitzer - 2
Tournament of Books - 2

My book club alliances have shifted slightly, and I need to keep better track of books I read because of various groups in Goodreads and Litsy, but here is what I kept track of:

International Center Book Club (in-person) - 9
League of Extraordinary Dorks - 1
Sword and Laser - 6
Misfit Readers - 2
Postal Book Group - 5

And here is a hodgepodge list of various genres and subgenres that I track because I'm interested in getting back to them easily. Some of them I looked at percentages too, just out of curiosity, so will include those when relevant. I felt like I read less science fiction and fantasy this year but it was actually slightly more than last year. I love that 11% of my entire reading list was of translated works. Those were the two surprises.

Africa2016 - 38 (11%)
Around the World - 60
Banned Books - 3
Biography and memoir - 23
Books on Books - 5
Cold Weather Islands - 12
Creative Non-Fiction - 13
Cults & Communes - 4
Graphic novels and comics - 10
Poetry - 39 (12%)
Post-apocalypse and dystopia - 9
Romance - 17
Science Fiction & Fantasy - 43
Secret Agents & Detectives - 4
Short Story Collections - 19
Southern - 8 (this may be low, not sure I caught all of them)
Spooktober - 5
Translated - 36 (11%)
Travel Writing - 7
YA - 17