Hey y’all! In a few years ago, I stumbled upon my favorite reading challenge ever, the Library Love reading challenge! Hosted by Angel’s Guilty Pleasures & Books of My Heart, the goal is simple: read books from the library! And boy, do I ever do that!
2022 was a surprise to me in how much I read from the library, considering I don’t often walk to one anymore. Technically it’s within walking distance at about a half hour, but the walk is on some busy streets for about half of that so I don’t love doing it. I did take advantage of any time I was out near the library for another reason to stop by and browse, though. 🙂 And of course, I read so many books digitally from the library!
Here are the tiers that were established from the hosts for level of reading:
- Dewey Decimal: Read 12 books
- Thrifty Reader: Read 24 books
- Overdrive Junkie: Read 36 books (my goal)
- Library Addict: Read 48 books
- Library Card on Fire: Read 60+ books
I actually ended up surpassing the final tier of 60+ books with a total of 72 which is WILDLY UNEXPECTED but okay! So yes, I hit my goal. xD I love this challenge because it’s fun to see how much I really am getting from the library. There are so many books I first learned about by just wandering around their displays! (a few examples in the full list below are #3, #19, #57, #61… honestly a lot of my nonfiction reads come from discoveries at the library!)
Now this year I have something extra included in this post. Below is the usual list of all the reviews with links to each, but ALSO I have a lot of custom statistics courtesy of The Storygraph for all the books I tagged with the library reads 2022 challenge! I’m really excited to dig into those. 🙂
~ the stats!
I love Storygraph stats and this was a fun one to see what they can do with their custom tag stats (a really lovely Plus plan extra!)
- I read 72 books from the library which is just about half of my yearly total of 143
- They were mostly emotional, lighthearted, or funny reads
- Most of the books were between 300-499 pages (only one over 500!)
- 22% of my loans were for Nonfiction titles (16 books)
- I primarily borrowed books that were Contemporary, Romance, or Young Adult. To be honest a lot were probably all 3!
- Of my borrows, 76% were digital (and ONE audiobook that made a big impact!)
~the books!
- How to Be Interesting by Jessica Hagy
- We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan
- My Inner Sky by Mari Andrew
- 30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani
- Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Wen Hing
- A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas
- You Truly Assumed by Sabreen Laila
- People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd
- The Bone Orchard by Sara A Mueller
- Well-Behaved Indian Women by Saumya Dave
- Just Haven’t Met You Yet by Sophie Cousens
- DEWEY DECIMAL LEVEL! So This is Ever After by F.T. Lukens
- I Am Margaret Moore by Hannah Capin
- Dava Shastri’s Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti
- You’ve Changed: Fake Accents, Feminism, and Other Comedies from Myanmar by Pyae Moe Thet War
- Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf
- An Arrow to the Moon by Emily X.R. Pan
- From Little Tokyo, with Love by Sarah Kuhn
- Around the World in 80 Plants by Jonathan Drori
- Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship by Irene Latham, Charles Waters,
- The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
- Soundless by Richelle Mead
- The Noh Family by Grace K. Shim
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
- THRIFTY READER LEVEL! A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair
- Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic by Lauren Ho
- The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
- The Upside of Falling by Alex Light
- Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley
- The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas
- If You Ask Me by Libby Hubscher
- A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer
- The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons
- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van pelt
- Heartstopper Vol. 2 by Alice Oseman
- OVERDRIVE JUNKIE LEVEL! Heartstopper Vol. 3 by Alice Oseman
- Heartstopper Vol. 4 by Alice Oseman
- Never Fall For Your Fiance by Virginia Heath
- Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan
- The Replacement Wife by Darby kane
- Nothing But The Truth by Holly James
- Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola
- Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club by Roselle Lim
- Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
- The Bodyguard by Katherine Center
- The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
- Kiss and Tell by Adib Khorram
- LIBRARY ADDICT LEVEL! How To Be Second Best by Jessica Dettmann
- The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa
- Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld
- Seoulmates by Susan lee
- She’s Nice Though by Mia Mercado
- Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf by Hayley Krischer
- Dune, The Graphic Novel Vol. 1 by Brian Herbert
- Commute by Erin Williams
- Strange Planet #1 by Nathan W. Pyle
- The Office BFFs by Angela Kinsey and Jenna Fischer
- In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
- Dune, The Graphic Novel Vol. 2 by Brian Herbert
- LIBRARY CARD ON FIRE – MAX LEVEL! I Choose Darkness by Jenny Lawson
- Belonging by Nora Krug
- Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
- Where We End & Begin by Jane Igharo
- Counterfeit by Kristin Chen
- Will by Will Smith
- When The Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo
- Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen
- Loveless by Alice Oseman
- As You Wish by Cary Elwes
- The Dark Queens by Shelley Puhak
- The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
- Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander
My Book Joy 
72 Is awesome! I need to read more from my library but because I have so much at home I tend to pick those up quicker. (Plus the dutch library doesn’t have that much of what I want to read and I’m mostly stuck on what has been translated here)
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Ah yeah, translation woes. I lived in Korea for a bit so I was reading a lot more digital books for sure! There’s definitely something to be said for having your own shelves at home to peruse though 🥰
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GREAT accomplishment on the reading. I’ve never kept a list. I read, but also listen to podcasts, etc. You are inspiring me. Also, nice list of books, I will look through them. Thanks
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Thank you! I hope you find one or two you might enjoy 🙂 I have a lot of podcasts in the last half of the year too, so I’ll listen to those when I need to be moving. For some reason audiobooks don’t work for me, but podcasts do!
Any podcast recommendations? I’m always curious what folks are listening to. :
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Lately, I’ve been into audio books. I hear you, unless it’s a really good book to keep my attention, I have to keep hitting rewind. This is a good series —Maisie Dobbs mysteries. Try it, you might like it, start with the FIRST one, Maisie Dobbs. Podcasts, depends on my mood… I listen to David Goggins, Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue on relationship – really nice, they interview celebrities on how they keep their relationships together, Tony Robbins for motivation, Coffee Break Italian (I’m Italian background), Joel Osteen, Motiv8 – The Motivation Podcast, Matthew McConaughey (very motivational), Writer’s Routine, Inside the Writer’s Studio, Classic Audiobook Collection on Spotify… Hope that gives you some ideas.
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Thank you!! Plenty of ideas in here! I need some new ones to listen to at the gym 🙂
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Great, I’ll keep visiting you for ideas too.
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Wow, that’s great! I want to read from my library more too, but I also want to read down my physically owned TBR, so I’m hesitating to sign up for the Library Love Challenge this year. I might still decide to join in late, though.
And thank you for the great idea of tagging library books on The StoryGraph! I always forget about the tag system there, and I need to make better use of it.
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I think I need to read less from the library and more from my own shelves. xD You could always sign up and target a lower tier deliberately, like just starting with the first one. Then it’ll be something to keep it in your mind. 🙂 More isn’t always better!
Yes!! The tag system is awesome, I use so many. I’m thinking of starting tags for all the locations books are set even because I love that info. It would get wild though haha. What would you make tags for? Any suggestions?
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So… I have a TON of tags over on my LibraryThings account. I tag location, audience, what story retellings are reimagining, genre, various diversity things… so much.
BUT on The StoryGraph I want to keep it limited to things that I want the specific stats for. I guess I don’t want to overwhelm my stats page and I feel like tagging to much on TSG will clutter it? So right now I’m tagging library reads, magazines, my personal top 12 per year lists, and short stories I read free online. (Many are listed as separate entities on TSG, and I want to see how the stats for my free short fiction reads compare with my full-novel reads.) I think I’m going to leave it at that for now.
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Sounds like you’ve got plenty haha. With the redesign they just started, I’m probably going to look at what new things I can add, maybe you too?
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Yeah, I’ve started adding more tags on the StoryGraph site, and I’m really liking them. I’m still keeping it to info about my reading (library, free online fiction, top TBR, etc) instead of about the book (setting, etc) but I’m really liking the way everything looks on the redesign.
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Awesome! And I love Storygraph stats. I didn’t know you could do custom tags with Plus! That seems useful. Honestly half the time I forget to mark whether the book is print or digital so my stats for that are completely wrong 😂
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Oh gosh mine too. I’m not very focused on that stat though because I know I read a lot more digital so it’s not really telling me anything new haha. The custom tags are available to everyone, it’s just the STATS on custom tags that are Plus features. The custom tags are super helpful, I use a ton!
A recent newsletter from the owners/team mentioned they were changing some things soon and making more advanced stats and features available for free so keep an eye out!
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Oh cool!
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