2023 Year in Reading
My reading year for 2023 was a little all over the place. It was the year of beta reading for others, so those took up a lot of my time. Time well spent, I think. But it was overall a good year. This was also the first full year I was on StoryGraph so I have solid data for you! Yay! Charts!
Overall, I met my reading goal on both Goodreads and StoryGraph, but I had different goals. Goodreads counts DNFs toward the total while StoryGraph doesn’t, so my SG number was lower to compensate. Regardless, I hit both, and that’s what counts. 😁
First up, my overall reading mood. It should come as no surprise that I don’t tend to read light and fluffy books:
The spring and early summer months lightened up for me a little, but otherwise I’m into the dark stuff. SURPRISE. And they were largely faster-paced books. How me!
My most popular genres:
If you are shocked by this, you aren’t paying attention.
What also shouldn’t be shocking is that I really don’t read long books. The longest book I read was 438, and the average book length was 269 pages. I’m not fooling around when I say I like my books more tightly paced and plotted!
My average star rating:
Not too damn shabby! Turns out I’m pretty good at picking books for myself that I’ll like. Who would have thought???
My five star reads for the year:
I’m definitely on the stingier side when it comes to giving books five stars, but clearly I rank most of them above three stars.
I do enjoy SG’s incremental star rating. It allows me better accuracy when rating my books, and then I get lovely data like this. Of the 43 books I read in 2023, 30 were rated four stars and up. That’s 70% of the books I read. It’s amazing what these stats look like when I’m more discerning with what I read.
Not included in that read total are my DNFs, as I mentioned before. Ten books total this year I stopped reading before finishing. That’s 19% of my total book attempts this year. If I factor those DNFs into my rating total, that brings the percentage down to 57% of my total book attempts were rated four stars and up. Still not shabby, I don’t think.
I set myself a reading goal of 30 this year with the understanding that I’m doing a major cross-country move this month. I haven’t read since mid-December. I haven’t had the capacity to, and I’m being kind to myself in 2024 for the same reason. I do think 2024 will be a good reading year as well. I have no reason to think otherwise, and I’m looking forward to the books I pick up!
Just don’t expect to see reviews from me until February at the earliest. See above re: capacity. I won’t have the headspace to even think about sitting down to read until February, let alone when I can get a review up. But I’ll try!
