2012 Stats + Some 2013 Goals

After looking at some other blogger's charts to wrap up 2012, I decided to look at some of my own reading statistics. In 2012, I read 367 books. My definition of a book works as follows: a book (for any age group excluding picture books), graphic novel (individual or whole series), manga (individual or whole series), audiobook, or play.

Now here are some charts on my reading:

You can maybe see why I don't worry too much about children's books throwing off my book totals, since I only read four, and they weren't even ridiculously simple ones. I really thought I was a bit more balanced with YA and adult reading, but that might have been more true by time spent reading, since most adult books tend to go much slower.

2013 Goal: I'd like to keep YA to no more than half my total reading, but I guess I won't be that upset if it continues to dominate, because I do love YA. The important thing is to love what I'm reading. I would like to read more middle grade books, but I doubt I'll read much more childrens' fiction. I mostly just read classics within that genre.

Alright, I know this data isn't precisely accurate, since those numbers do not quite add up to the number of books that I read, but I've already spent a lot of time on this, so you'll just have to deal with it. Series books definitely won, though I did count companion novels as series books, and I know some might not have done so; using those calculations, it would probably be about even.

2013 Goal: I don't necessarily want to read less series, but I would like to stick to series more. If I read a book in a series and want to continue, if the other books are already out, I should go ahead and read them. I was a bit all over the place, and, with my memory, I end up having to reread books I didn't much like the first time so that I can read the sequel.

For those who are curious about the formatting on my books, they break down like this. Most of the ebooks were from the first 3/4 of the year, when I used NetGalley heavily. Most of the ARCs are from BEA. The majority of the hardbacks and paperbacks were finished review copies, followed by the library. I read very few of my owned books this year.

2013 Goal: Read more of those books you own, self! Why on earth do you keep buying them if you prefer books from the library? *waggles finger at self* The e-galley figure should fall quite a bit, because, even with all of those that I read, there are another hundred I did not get to. I've realized that I have no self-control as it comes to e-galleys, so they will be accepted sparingly and as needed, like for gym or travel reading.

Yikes, right? Almost three-quarters of the books I read this year were for review. This, right here, is why I end up begging for review copies of things I really want to read. Yes, I could buy them or get them from the library, but experience has shown me that I don't have much time for books that I'm not reviewing.

2013 Goal: I'm going to try to be more careful accepting review copies, and I will try to strike a better balance. The solution might just be to read MORE, but I don't know if I can. Of the books that I read that aren't for review, I would like to get to more of the ones I own but have been neglecting. The library has proved too tempting in the past.

This data goes off of every rating tag I have in blogger right now, which should be mostly 2012, since I only added ratings at the very end of 2011. There are a couple of scheduled 2013 posts in there too, but I think it's a pretty fair representation of 2012. Now, my ratings for this year are flawed for two reasons: 1) My rating system was new and it took a while for me to quite feel out what they mean. The 2.5 and 5 ratings have probably been most abused. 2) This won't change, but I review right when I finish a book, and hindsight often changes my opinion.

The rating spread is pretty good, and I'm not surprised the bulk of my reads have been from 3-4 stars. Basically, this means I've been doing a pretty good job choosing books to read in 2012. As much as I think about myself as a critical reviewer and tend to rate lower than the average person, I still try to find books I will enjoy, and, as you can see, don't have two many books that I give very low ratings to. Many of those low ratings were review copies I could not DNF for one reason or another.

2012 Goal: Basically just to have less ratings I later regret. Most of that was due to not knowing quite what I wanted my own personal rating scale to be. 5s will probably occur less, but I hope to see a good deal of 4s and 4.5s! Oh, I also hope to do a bit more DNFing, so that I don't waste my time on books I hate, though I feel bad DNFing review books, so that probably won't change.

That's it for this wrap up post on my readership habits. I'm planning to do another on my ratings broken down by publisher and imprint, something I'm really interested in, all in an affort to avoid books I probably will not like. Look for those in early 2013!