My year in books – 2018 Wrap Up!!

Oh I LOVE this time of year! All the amazing blog posts and YouTube videos that recount all of the adventures that us bookworms went on throughout the year! I love seeing how much we were able to accomplish, and all of the new things that we were able to experience because of books. This is a particularly EXCITING year for me because……. drumroll please…… I finally reached triple digits in one year!!! Cue the dance party! I never thought I could really do it, but it happened! I pushed myself hard, and I am so proud that I was able to accomplish it. But I don’t think I’ll worry so much about goals next year though lol!

As I was preparing to write this post, I started looking back at the books that I read at the beginning of the year. For some of them, it feels like I read them ages ago! It was such an incredible reading year! I found a few new authors, read some books that heavily impacted my emotions, and some that were absolutely mind blowing. Here is an in depth look at my reading year in 2018:

*** Before we get into the pictures I need to mention why some spines are turned around. Any books that I don’t own a physical copy for, or have lent out, are represented by a book without the spine showing. I also forgot a stack of 10 books after I took the first picture! So not all pictures are accurate but I updated the numbers to the correct amount***

BOOKS READ IN 2018

Number of books read – 100!

Number of pages read – 37,629

Average book length – 376 pages

I technically haven’t finished 100 – but it’s guaranteed before the end of the year. I counted the two books I plan to read in this wrap up. If I compare this year to last year, I have read 18 more books than I did last year, 4,199 more pages, but the average book length went from 407 to 376. I didn’t pay too much attention to the length of a book this year, but towards the end I started to choose shorter books. I want to focus on longer books in 2019.

BOOKS BY GENRE:

1 – Horror/mystery/historical fiction – 17

2 – Contemporary – 20

3 – Science fiction – 30

4 – Fantasy – 33

The books in this picture aren’t accurate. After putting this massive stack of books away, I realized that I had forgotten a few on the table. These pictures took me over 2.5 hours from start to finish, so I wasn’t about to do it again! LOL! I ran out of room on the table so I ended up putting the horror, mystery, and historical fiction together in one stack. It was the smallest amount so I needed to make it look more full. I was really surprised to see that my sci-fi and fantasy were close to even! I was even more surprised to see that I had read so many contemporary! It didn’t seem like that many!

NEW TO ME AND READ BEFORE:

1 – New to me authors – 49

2 – Read before authors – 51

Once again, the same stack is missing – I can’t believe that I forgot the stack!!! I kept wondering where certain books were but didn’t see the missing books until the end. On side 1 we have the books from authors that I had never read before. Number 2 is authors I’ve already read something of theirs. This was a HUGE shock! Last year I had read 55 books by new authors and only 27 from authors I had previously read. I’m glad that I’m still reading a lot of new authors, but I’m also glad that I was able to finally finish a bunch of series this year!

MALE VS FEMALE AUTHORS:

1 – Male: 28

2 – Female – 58

(You’ll notice that the numbers don’t add up to the 100 books I read this year. I had to remove books that were collaborations and had both male and female authors) Yikes! This number still makes me sad! I don’t know if it’s my female nature that draws me to more female authors or what! This is quite a staggering difference. Though, I will say, that it’s a HUGE IMPROVEMENT compared to last year. In 2017 I read 67 books written by female authors and only 15 written by men. As sad as the difference is this year, i’m still happy that it’s an improvement. I hope to see an even smaller gap in 2019!

STAR RATINGS:

One thing that I completely forgot to get a visual of was star ratings. I probably have a higher than normal star rating average. I’m good at choosing books that suit me and I’m also very easy to please. So here are my star ratings (minus the 2 that I haven’t finished yet) for 2018:

5 star ratings – 42

4 star ratings – 28

3 star ratings – 21

2 star ratings – 7

There it is fellow bookworms! An in depth look at the books I read in 2018. It was a really amazing year for books! I hit triple digits, I read some amazing new authors, and some fabulous books! Looking forward to an even better year in 2019! How did you make out this year?

Until next time, happy reading!