Hey y’all! Since I already took a look through the usual Goodreads year-end stats, now I’m pivoting over to The Storygraph. I used it pretty consistently through 2021, so I’m excited to see full-year stats from it for my first time! Considering their specialty is partly in their statistics (and even more so since I have Plus) I have a lot to enjoy!
The Pies
So the first chart is both simple and gloriously detailed: my pie graph of books I read by mood this year! 2021’s top moods were emotional, adventurous, and lighthearted. I guess that pretty much covers all of my usual moods: cathartic crying, energized excitement, and silly smiles.
With two books each, my lowest were “sad” (You’ve Reached Sam and Red Thread of Fate) and “inspiring” (Idol Gossip, what?? and Not Here To Be Liked). Admittedly I don’t think I would call either of those last two inspiring, but ok.
My top 3 make up just about 50% of my reading, but the other half is a generous spread. I guess I’m okay with that? I’m reading for enjoyment in the end, so I’ll continue enjoying what I do!
Pace
Also unsurprising that my most common pace is medium. More surprised that this is actually kind of even! And not sure if I’m surprised a quarter of my books are slow-paced — did I think it would be higher or lower? I feel like I flew through a lot of books this year, but I also remember having some that were a winding journey.
Page Number
Well, okay, I guess I had very few books (5 total) that were over 500 pages this year in the grand scheme of all that I read. That might be a part of the slow paced stat above, though “long book” doesn’t necessarily mean “slow paced.”
Fiction v Nonfiction
Nonfiction was 12%, which comes to 14 books. I aim for at least one a month, so I hit that goal, but this is still surprisingly low to me! There are so many interesting nonfiction titles I want to read. I guess I need to actually read them. xD
Format
You don’t see it in my chart, but audiobook is also an option on this one. I read none. xD When i first looked at this chart, it said my print percentage was about 60% and I immediately knew that was HIGHLY inaccurate. After updating the editions in my library, print is down to 33% and digital at 67%. Considering all of my digital library loans, and digital review titles, this makes much more sense.
Monthly Charts
The next three show how many books & pages I read each month! Most months this year were more quantity-heavy than length-heavy. By which I mean, looks like I tended to read multiple shorter books. However, I did just compare to my 2020 stats where I read 142 books as opposed to 123, and yet only 100 pages more in 2020 than 2021!!! That seems like something MUST be wrong there, like some missing page counts or something.
Ratings charts
Average rating of 3.22! Since a true “middle ground” would be 2.5 on a 5 point scale, this tracks, I think. I read mostly average books with a few that were pretty crappy and a chunk that were quite good. Although this is also only 95 of the books I read because I tend to forget to add a rating on this site. Since there’s so much else you can do besides adding a rating, sometimes I skip it because I don’t want to do the rest of it at the moment.
Fiction versus Nonfiction ratings
I think it’s no surprise that nonfiction is rated more highly than fiction for two reasons: one, the sample size is much smaller so it’s easier to skew with a few highly rated books; two, when I finish a nonfiction book I tend to have loved it because I’ll DNF the ones I don’t like.
Adventurous and Emotional are the moods I read the most of in the year, so those ratings are probably pretty accurate! Lighthearted was #3, and that’s a little lower down. Those books tend to be easy fluff reads that are perfectly fine more than anything that blows me away. Sad books are at the bottom of the list. Granted, I only read 2 that fell into that category, but both were meh. I don’t like to be sad, so why would I seek it out?
Mood ratings
Ratings by genre
This is a pretty chunky list of stats, so get ready! The list of how many books in each genre I read is below the ratings averages as well, so skew comes into play for this chart, too. For example, I have “Reference” as a category that’s rated a solid 5.0 which makes it sounds like I read a medical textbook or style guide for fun and rated it highly. I did not. It was technically a dictionary, but still!
Nadia from Storygraph has addressed that these aren’t weighted deliberately to give people an idea of genres they don’t read often but tend to enjoy. Maybe I should look more into sports or biography then??
I’d say spots 10 (Fantasy) through 23 (Historical) are probably the most accurate since I’ve likely read the most from those middles. With Short Stories sitting at the bottom, I feel comfortable saying this is at least mostly accurate as a picture of my preferences. xD
- Young Adult: 39
- Fantasy: 31
- Romance: 30
- Contemporary: 30
- Comics: 12
- Graphic Novel: 10
- Historical: 9
Note that books can be tagged as multiple genres (ie contemporary and romance) so there are definitely some specific combinations that I enjoy in the top few. xD Young adult fantasy romance is probably my top combo lol.
OH MY GOODNESS ALL THE STATS! I adore numbers and data, so this is a joy to see for me. Hopefully y’all made it through the pie charts at least before tuning out. xD
My most interesting discoveries:
- the months when I’m most weather depressed are also the months when I read the most (typically feb/march and oct/nov)
- young adult novels, despite being my most read category, are actually fairly low on the average ratings scale. I’ve noticed being a little less into them this year, so is this a data-backed indication of what my feelings were already leaning to? Hmmm…
- I think I actually prefer digital books over physical. It’s partly an access and convenience thing, but maaaan are those numbers significantly spread!
My Book Joy 
I got Storygraph last year but I was very inconsistent with using it and now I kind of want to start all over again and reimport all the books from Goodreads on there to make it a little bit more organised. I love their stats—so detailed, and I love to see info about the pace of reads and the different moods books are categorised as. So good!
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