2016: Reading Year in Review

new year times square photo
Photo by Anthony Quintano

As I do each year, I like to reflect on my reading year in a blog post on December 31. For the second year in a row, Goodreads has compiled a handy infographic with reading statistics, but they haven’t yet created a way to embed the infographic on a blog. It’s not exactly a true image file, so it’s not as simple as saving a picture. It’s a whole webpage. While it is possible to embed HTML on a blog, in order to make it look good, it’s a bit of work. Here is a rundown of some of the interesting facts (if you don’t feel like clicking over to Goodreads):

  • I read 11,997 pages, according to Goodreads.
  • I read 38 books. One book is not counted in this total, so I suppose my actual page count is about 200 pages more than the figure above.
  • If I count just the Goodreads total, that’s an average of 324 pages per book.
  • It works out to about 33 pages per day. Not too bad.
  • My shortest book was The Importance of Being Earnest at 54 pages, and the longest was an audio book re-read of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at 734 pages.

Of the 38 books I read, the stats further break down like so:

  • 28 works of fiction
  • 10 works of nonfiction
  • 3 dramas
  • 1 collection of poetry
  • 5 audio books
  • 6 re-reads
  • 1 graphic novel/memoir
  • 11 YA/children’s books

My favorites from some of these categories with linked reviews (re-reads not counted):

YA/Children’s

Fiction

Nonfiction

I’m not going to pick audio book favorites this year because all but one of them were re-reads, and the one that wasn’t was not one of my favorite books. I had a better nonfiction year this year than I typically do, and my fiction year was not as good as usual, though I did read some outstanding fiction.

My least favorite reads of the year:

Reading Challenges

I did not meet my Goodreads goal of reading 55 books. I had every reason to think I could do it, having read 62 books last year, but this year was much more trying. My grandmother passed away, and it made it very hard for me to read. I was already behind at that point. I stopped worrying about trying to make the goal really early on, so I’m not upset about it or anything. It is what it is. I didn’t have the worst reading year, but it wasn’t the best either. I stuck with some books I wasn’t liking for too long.

I didn’t complete any of my other reading challenges either, sadly. I enjoy reading challenges tremendously, but I don’t have the best track record in the world when it comes to completing them, let alone participating any more than simply reading certain books.

Here is my reading map for the year. I did manage to read some more far-flung locales than I typically do. I am hoping to do even better next year.

2016 Reading Goals

2016 Reading Challenge

2016 Reading Challenge
Dana has
read 0 books toward her goal of 55 books.
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The beginning of the year is a good time to reading goals for the year. I have decided to increase goal from reading 52 books last year to 55 this year. Given that I surpassed my goal of 52 books last year by 10 books, it might seem like I’m low-balling a bit, but I had never even managed to read 52 books in a year before, and I don’t want to make myself stress out over a reading goal, of all things. I decided to increase it a little bit and see if 2015 was a fluke or not.

I also now have a page for keeping track of my reading challenges. I don’t know why I didn’t think of creating a page before, but I didn’t. I have rearranged a few small things on this blog as well. Most of the stuff is in the same place.

I ultimately decided in the middle of 2015 to stop using Shelfari. It has one feature that I really like: it lets you keep track of multiple reads, even of the same edition. Goodreads lets you mark how many times you have read a book, but it doesn’t let you count a read during multiple years. I had to create tags in order to do that. I know this feature request has been made of Goodreads, and I’m not sure what they will decide to do about it, but I wish they’d implement it. I ultimately decided not to keep track of books on Shelfari anymore, but I didn’t delete my account. Most of my book friends are on Goodreads, and it’s a bit more social, so I am not going to keep using Shelfari, even though I think Goodreads could take a few pointers from Shelfari and have a better service for readers. I am not the only person who re-reads all the time, I know.

I don’t know what is happening with the Where Are You Reading Challenge. I’m thinking about creating a mapping/book setting challenge that is similar. Does that sound like something anyone would be interested in?

I’m not going to make goals to read a certain number of genres (except for the Historical Fictional Challenge). I think I have a better time when I just read whatever I want, which just makes sense. Last year, I got a bit bogged down in the first half of the year with some challenges that were more rigid. Later this year, of course I will do the R. I. P. Challenge in the fall, but I don’t anticipate taking on any more challenges unless the book setting one is a go.