Happy New Year everyone! A little bit of a later newsletter today, mainly because it took me a while to pull all the graphs, and I needed a break. I cut it real close to the deadline for my 100 books of 2023 challenge. I finished my last two books at 11:49pm on New Year’s Eve, and in the midst of all of that, I had to go buy a book by Anne Sexton’s daughter, Linda, about all of the Dalmatians she grew up with.1 This was imperative, because I had to buy it before midnight when my No New Books Challenge™️ of 2024 began. And you thought you had an eventful NYE.
A bit of background before we do a deep dive into graphs: I use The Storygraph to track my books. I do have an account on Goodreads, but I don’t really use it. I did for a number of years, so all of my book data is still in there if you’d like to peruse.
I switched over to the Storygraph around 2021.2 I learned that Goodreads was now owned by Amazon, and The Storygraph was an alternate book tracking tool. Not only was it *not* owned by Amazon, but it was also run and operated by a Black British woman. I can support a POC woman run business AND stick it to Amazon? Sign me up. If you Google The Storygraph, you’ll find many articles along the Storygraph vs. Goodreads angle.3 I’ve pretty firmly chosen my camp, but, there are a lot of other opinions out there if you’re curious on the differences.
The Sparknotes version for me is this: I love data. I love seeing my data. And The Storygraph is chock full of it. One day I’ll get into how my Thesis for my Master’s was nearly 10 pages over length because I had an appendix full of graphs in it; but you get the picture. I love graphs, and there is so much raw data that The Storygraph has to work with. There are also trigger warnings included in their reviews, and you can rate books by half stars, unlike Goodreads. Also, I’ve actually WON something on The Storygraph app!4 Can you say the same of Goodreads? Do you know anyone who has ever won one of those giveaways?
I have their app on my phone, and I use it to keep tabs on my reading goals. You can join challenges, and connect with other readers, and they release new features pretty regularly. They just rolled out a barcode scanning feature which is *chef’s kiss.* There is a free version, but I pay for the Premium version, which has greater analytics and more features. They have a January pages challenge going on right now where you could win many prizes, including a year of their Plus version.
Why am I going on and on about this? Because this is where all of my data is going to be sourced from. Let’s take a walk down memory lane in 2023 with all 100 books I read. With due thanks and reverence to The Storygraph and their Reading Wrap up which came out today.
First up, let’s scroll through all of the books I read. Please clap, I had to do video editing for this.
Next, some general summary stats.5 For someone who claims to be a Science Fiction and Fantasy author, I sure don’t read a lot of it, huh? I’m not surprised that Memoir and literary fiction is at the top of my Genres list; those tend to be the ‘it’ books of the moment. I am going to make a concerted effort to raise Fantasy and Science Fiction in the rankings in 2024. Then, we have a graph of my reads by mood. There is a time and place for depressing books, and the time for me is never, apparently.
Moving on then. Remember last post when I mentioned I had a reading slump in June because of how overwhelmed I was with upcoming travel? Well here is the visual evidence of this.6
As much as I hate to say it, I really did spend the rest of the year playing catch up. So I’ll work on *not* becoming so overwhelmed with life that I stare at a wall, watch Grey’s Anatomy on repeat, and only read 3 books for the month.
I further learned that my books averaged 234 pages, and it took me about 8 days to finish them. The fastest book I read was in 1 day, and the longest took me 68 days.
I read the most pages in October (2,590), and I had the ignominious distinction of being the only person who read Le Pendule. It’s a French book about dowsing for water…totally see why no one else was interested. Though glad to see I was one of nearly 350,000 people who picked up Daisy Jones and the Six.
Now, these next screenshots are just from the general data I get from the app, not the end of year wrap up. First up: moods.
I am apparently very reflective, emotional and informative. I am apparently not hopeful and relaxing which…that tracks. The next breakdown, in pace and page number, is always interesting to me. I know it’s irrational, but I can’t help but feel judged by the fact that most of the books I read are under 300 pages. And I am a medium paced gal, which makes sense, because if you cannot get to the point, you’ve lost me.
Moving right along, I read 51% fiction and 49% non-fiction and we have now come to my favorite graph of all: genre.
Feast your eyes upon the data-proven metrics of my chaotic reading being. I couldn’t even get the full graph in this screenshot, that’s how many genres I read this year. Now, many of the books I read fall into multiple genres, but point being: I read widely. If you try to force me to read one thing, I will revolt. There’s so much out there to read! Though I love SFF, and Memoir, and Essays, I refuse to exclusively read those. The one genre that most surprised me is Play, whatever that is.
And lastly, format. The Storygraph also keeps tabs on audiobooks, and have a number of stats on hours listened. What’s nice about reading 100 books is that I can very clearly do the math on what my percentages are for each category. I read 61 physical books, 31 digital books, and listened to 8 audiobooks. Similarly to genre, I try not to stack my reading with one author. The max I’m allowed myself last year was 2 per author. I thought about reading another Claire Keegan book to help get me to 100 books, but refrained. That just means I get to read it this year, yay!
And that is it - thank you for coming with me on this tour through data that I’m sure will now be used to market things to me. I find all of this data so interesting, and if it’s going to be collected, the least an app can do is present it back to me in pretty graphs. That’s all I want in life.
What about you? Do you use The Storygraph or Goodreads or another book tracking system? Are you surprised about the results of your 2023 reading? Let me know in the comments!
I have a lifelong affinity for Dalmatians. They are perfect and the best and Pumpkin the Dalmatian was ROBBED of best in show at the dog show last year and no, I will not hear otherwise. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL.
It was the pandemic, time is a circle, etc, etc.
Like this one, that I generally agree with: https://simmonsvoice.com/13123/showcase/goodreads-vs-the-storygraph-a-readers-thoughts/
It was Pride and Prejudice and Turkish Delight by Kc McCormick Çiftçi, and no I have not read it yet thank you for asking. Maybe would have helped my Pride and Prejudice themed post if I had read that, huh?
That is my username, btw, please feel free to friend me if you want! Big shout out to my parents for naming me this way, because I am the only one with my name in the US which means I get ALL the username handles mwahahahha.
I still regret nothing, btw.