Year in Review 2015
Happy 2016, readers! Hopefully everyone had a lovely and safe New Year’s Eve, and your 2016 is already off to a great start!
2015 was busier than I was expecting, and somehow not as much got done as I was hoping. I can’t even put my finger on why, exactly – this fall at least was supposed to be less busy than usual, but somehow wound up being more busy! I didn’t hit my reading goal (100 new books) for the year, not even close, and I had a few months were I didn’t read much at all. I also have gotten REALLY behind with blogging – I’ve got reviews from months ago that are still waiting to get done. I’m going to do my best to catch up in the next few weeks – Hopefully I’ll be able to hold to that. Some of those old reviews are going to be pretty short, though!
But enough with the negatives and things I didn’t do. The books I did read, while not as numerous as in previous years, were on the whole quite good, and provided a nice break whenever I could convince myself to take it! Let’s look at some stats, shall we?
- I finished 101 books this year, 82 of which were new-to-me, and 19 of which were re-reads. 100 new books was my personal goal for the year (revised down to 85 in October when it became obvious I wasn’t going to hit 100), so I missed that out, even the revised one. But I did at least pass the 100-mark for total books, so that’s something?
- 65 of those were paper or e-books, for a total of 18,877 pages read. The remaining 36 were audiobooks, with a total of 19.1 days of listening time. (Not included in either of those tallies are all the individual short stories I read and/or listened to.) If you count the text equivalent of the audiobooks, I consumed 33,353 pages of reading material this year.
- I read books by 72 different authors, 50% of which were new to me. I didn’t do such a good job of balancing the sex ratio: excluding anthologies, only 43% percent of the books I read were by female authors. Do better next year, self!
- I didn’t do a great job of reading my own books this year (new books, anyways, I re-read a bunch of my own books). Of the new books I read, only about 31% came from my TBR pile. Another 22% were audiobooks, 30% were graphic novels from the library, 10% were non-graphic-novel library books, and the remaining 7% were e-books freebies or from the eTBR “pile”.
- I was pretty good about not acquiring new books! I requested relatively few review copies this year – also a function of the not having as much time for reading and reviewing – and the library booksale in my new town is only open a few times a year, and I missed the fall sale. The result that I only added 40 books to my TBR pile – which is the lowest its ever been since I’ve been keeping track. I read 23 books from the pile, though, and cleared another 68 (donating them to the library sale or selling them to a used bookstore – and then NOT purchasing them again, which is key!), leaving me with a net change of -51 TBR books! Not too shabby!
- 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 187.3 days. I didn’t read so many long-term TBR residents this year as in the past, but instead, I donated them!
- Even though I was reading relatively fewer review copies, more than half of the new books I read were still published in 2014 or 2015 (63%); however, the average publication date of my books was 2008.
- Unsurprisingly, about 40% half the books I read this year were fantasy; with sci-fi taking up another 20%, and non-fiction, historical fiction, classics, and contemporary fiction making up the rest (less historical fiction and more classics than normal, but not by a huge margin). Only about 25% of the books I read were young adult or mid-grade, which is less than normal for me.
You can calculate these kind of stats for yourself using my reading tracking spreadsheet. You can download the 2014 version here: 2014 reading tracking spreadsheet; just change the tabs for 2016. You can find the instructions for using it here: reading tracking spreadsheet instructions.
I’m not going to do a formal “best of” list for 2015, 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! (Among my new books – picking books that I already loved enough to re-read as my favorite of the month just doesn’t seem fair.)
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January: Legion: Skin Deep by Brandon Sanderson
February: Fairest by Marissa Meyer
March: Firefight by Brandon Sanderson
April: Sex Criminals, Vol. 1 by Matt Fraction (no contest; this was the only new book I read that month.)
May: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
June: The Martian by Andy Weir
July: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
August: The End of All Things by John Scalzi
September: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
October: The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett
November: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
December: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
What about you, readers? Read any good books last year?
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I love the stats you keep and really do want to do a better job at that. I read Fangirl a year or two ago and loved it.
You read lots of good things this year! Hope 2016 is a good reading year. :)
I really like your stats and may need to check out your spreadsheet (thanks for sharing!) even though I had just decided NOT to track with a spreadsheet + goodreads this year. A good spreadsheet is hard to resist though….
Gulp was also one of my favorite reads of the year! I love Mary Roach and Gulp was my favorite since her first book Stiff. Who knew the digestive system was so fascinating?!
Happy reading in 2016!
101 books is nothing to sneeze at! I’m looking forward to seeing your thoughts on Carry On. Also, Happy New Year!