Hey y’all! It’s a third of the way through 2023, so of course that means one thing: I should probably post the rest of my yearly review things from last year. xD I did part one already, which was looking at the wrap up stats given by Storygraph (referenced as SG through this post when I’m feeling lazy) and Goodreads, and had some of the basic things like number of books read, longest book, and so on.
This next batch is looking at the beautiful, amazing graphs that Storygraph hosts for each year, as well as information from my own tracking system that I enjoy looking at (primarily countries books are set in!)
“I’m a mood reader”
I most certainly am a mood reader, but I have managed to find ways to work with my moods and give some structure to my reading with monthly TBRs that are usually about 50% completed with the other 50% books I just decided to read during the month. xD
But what ARE my moods that I’m usually looking for? My top five are below, but note that books can have more than one mood (for example, it could be emotional and sad)
- 51.7% of my books were emotional
- 30.3% of my books were lighthearted
- 29.6% of my books were adventurous
- 27.5% of my books were funny
- 24.8% of my books were reflective
This is pretty much the same as most years that I’ve tracked on SG. In fact, since 2019 it’s been that same order with lighthearted and adventurous sometimes switching places by a few books difference. But I’m pretty consistent it seems!
And my least commonly read book moods? Relaxing, inspiring, and challenging.
Genre-defying?
As with moods, there can be multiple genres assigned to a book. The top 4 categories – Contemporary, Young Adult, Romance, and Fantasy — all tend to combine with each other a lot. For example I read a lot of Contemporary Romance, or Young Adult Fantasy. I’m intrigued but not really surprised to see LGBTQIA+ as my 5th most category, because I do tend to read a lot of identity-based young adult books and queer romances.
Memoir in 5th slot is also no surprise! I think I’ve been on an absolute tear of memoirs since last fall, and I just went through a list from my library of graphic novel memoirs and biographies this morning, of which I borrowed two and tagged about 12 others to borrow in the future.
Commitment and dedication
This category is looking at the length and pacing of what I read most commonly, hence the commitment and dedication title for this section. xD How much time was I willing to commit to a story? How dedicated was I to finishing it?
The long and short of it (ha) is that I tend to read medium paced books between 300 to 499 pages long. I think that’s largely due to most books falling into those categories. But besides that, my next biggest category is a short and fast-paced book. I know I struggle with slower-paced, long-page-count behemoths. Sometimes, though, that’s exactly what I’m craving (like lately, in fact).
I read 7 books that were over 500 pages last year (and a lot that were, annoyingly, 485-499) partly due to a challenge I set for myself specifically to read books over 500 pages. I was seeing that as a hole in my reading, and wanted to give myself chances to sink into a longer story and really settle into the world and characters. I’m trying to continue this focus in 2023.
World travels
OOOOOH time for my favorite stats to look at 🥰
This one is all the different countries that I’ve read books set in over the year. Note that this won’t tally to my total book count for the year because some books have multiple or have none, such as a memoir or science book where it might not apply to a specific setting or one location. Here are some quick stats:
- there are 25 different countries on the list
- I hit every continent besides Antarctica
- top 3 countries were USA (48), England (11), and South Korea (5)
- 29 books were set in fake worlds / locations
Misc interesting stuff from Storygraph
When I first saw this chart I didn’t understand it and thought it was broken since I was just looking at a green line. I started seeing other people post theirs on social media and understood it’s not broken, I just don’t read very dark books. xD Considering “lighthearted” and “funny” are in my top 5 book moods, I guess that’s no surprise! I think this is a really interesting chart, though.
I must have finished a lot of books in June that I had been in progress with, or read a few chunkier books that month because the page count spikes way up! And I love seeing my addition of “minutes” in the last part of the year for the one audiobook I managed. xD
Yeah…. that’s really it, apparently. I don’t always remember to add a rating on Storygraph but wow I only marked ten 5-star reads for the year. xD I’m pretty picky about what I give top marks I guess. You can tell how much I loved the City of Brass series seeing all three books given five stars!
122 new authors?! Out of 145 books read?! That’s a really high ratio! Although I guess it’s not really surprising since there are always new books coming out and new authors debuting and such, it’s still wowing me to see just how much that’s true. And reading 50 books that I owned is way better than I’d expected! That’s about 34% of my reading coming from my own shelves 🙂 and with about 50% coming from the library, that means only 16% were other books (that I bought, for example).
The series one is intriguing to me because it makes me want to know how many of those series I’ve read more than one book in. xD A lot of the time when I read a series book, I end up not finishing or continuing the series.
My Book Joy 
Awesome review! And I had to laugh at the “fake” description for fictional locations. I’ve been referring to them as fantasy worlds. 😉
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