TSS: 2011 in Review
Happy 2012, readers! Hopefully everyone had a lovely and safe New Year’s Eve, and is starting the new year not too hung over!
Today’s post is, unsurprisingly, a look back at my 2011 in books. I’m going to start with some stats about my reading, and then get to my favorites of the year.
- I finished 185 books this year, 170 of which were new-to-me, and 15 of which were re-reads. 170 new books was my personal goal for the year, which I met mostly due to a last-minute sprint yesterday of a short audiobook and lots of NYE preparations.
- 144 of those were paper or e-books, for a total of 52,010 pages read. The remaining 41 were audiobooks, with a total of slightly over 20 full days of listening time. (Plus another 15 hours’ worth of individual short stories.)
- I read books by 125 different authors, 70 of which were new to me. I also did pretty well balancing the sex ratio: 53% percent of the books I read (excluding anthologies) were by female authors.
- Of the new books I read, about 49% came from my TBR pile. Another 5% were e-books, 19% were audiobooks, 19% were graphic novels from the library, and the remaining 7% were regular library books.
- I added 84 books to my TBR pile – the lowest yearly total since I started keeping track. I also either read or cleared 85 books from the pile, however, leaving me with a net change of -1!
- Of the books I read from my TBR pile, the average length of time between when I acquired them and when I finished them was 307 days.
- Half of the books I read were published in 2010 or later; however, the average publication date of my books was 2003.
- Unsurprisingly, my most-read genre was fantasy. I also read quite a bit of science fiction, but less historical fiction and general fiction than in previous years.
I will have a downloadable version of the spreadsheet I use to generate all these stats available soon, I swear!
I’m not going to do a formal “best of” list for 2011, since I always have a really hard time getting my picks down to 5 or even 10 “best” books. Instead, here are my picks-of-the-month for the year!
January |
February    |
March  |
April  |
May  |
June  |
July |
August  |
September |
October |
November  |
December |
January: Songs of Love & Death by George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois
February: I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, and The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
March: Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold and The Likeness by Tana French
April: POD by Stephen Wallenfels and Poison by Sara Poole
May: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi and Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
June: A Civil Campagin by Lois McMaster Bujold and The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma
July: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
August: The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry and A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin
September: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, with honorable mention to Discord’s Apple by Carrie Vaughn.
October: Sleight of Hand by Peter S. Beagle
November: Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi and The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
December: Banewreaker by Jacqueline Carey
What about you, readers? Read any good books this year?
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I’m ridiculously in love with your stats spreadsheet! It’s given me many hours of stats-centric bookish geeky fun over the past few years. I’m looking forward to the new downloadable edition. Bring on the stats!
Memory – Yay, I’m so glad you like it! The new one’ll be up on Sunday.
Congrats on all of your reading! I loved Old Man’s War and the Patrick Ness series too!
Alyce – I read some pretty mediocre books this year, but looking back, also a lot of really great ones!
You had an amazing reading year!
Kathy – Thanks! I really did.
Great job on getting so many books read off your shelf! I epically failed in that department.
Redhead – 49% doesn’t sound that great to me, but when I look at it, I’ve got almost 40% of my reading time (audiobooks and graphic novels) that can’t possibly be off my TBR (since I am cheap and have to get those things from the library), so really, I am doing pretty well. :)
Love the spreadsheet too! I feel I need to do this o see what I’m reading. I keep a list but nothing special. Bring on the downloadable version…please!
Great reads. Madame Tussaud was a good book. It made on my best of 2011 list too.
Amy – Sunday! And if your list contains titles, authors, the dates you finished, and the number of pages, you should be ready to copy-paste!
i’m impressed with all your reading and those stats! I’d have no idea how I’d keep track, I’m always adding books to my TBR list willy nilly! I have no idea how many I add in a year, but your spreadsheet does make me want to start! Happy New Year!
Julie – My spreadsheet actually doesn’t keep track of my numbers of TBR books that I add to the pile, I do that via LibraryThing tags, and my monthly TBR updates. It’s a good way to keep me honest!
185 books is an impresive numbers of books read! Happy New Year!
Karen – I’m pretty floored by that number myself – it’s higher than my usual yearly total.
Once I finish listening to A Dance with Dragons I’m going to give Songs of Love and Death a try.
Beth – Usually anthologies have some hits and some misses, but I enjoyed almost every single story in Songs of Love and Death, and some of them I really, really loved. I hope you do too!
A few of these were already ensconced on my TBR list, but I added the Erica Bauermeister tonight; I’ve often referred to her “books about books”, but I had missed the publication of her novel and the premise does sound interesting, though it’s your recommendation that secures its place on my list! I hope you have a great reading year ahead of you!