My 2015 Bookish Stats

I love breaking down my year in reading into different stats based on rating, genre, etc. The results always interest me! I did this last year, as well. I don't know if anyone really cares about these stats except for me, but I find that it's a good way to keep track of trends in my reading and certain things I might want to change for this year.

If you're wondering: no, I did not just compile all this information recently. I've been keeping track of my 2015 books all year long in a spreadsheet, so this didn't take me as long to do as you might think!

Total books read in 2015: 150

Number of rereads in 2015: 21

I hope I don't sound too full of myself when I say that I am quite proud of these numbers. It's taken me a lot of practice and prioritizing to be able to get my number of books read in a year up to 150. What's more is I've successfully challenged myself to read 25 books more each year than the year previous:

So the question becomes: can I really keep this trend up and read 25 more books for 2016 (ie. 175 books total)?!. I'm not counting on it. I would say that would be an unnecessary pressure to put on myself just to follow some trend. Instead, my goal for this year will be more conservative (relatively) at 100 books. And I think I will be perfectly satisfied with that number should I accomplish it.

Note: To make this easier, I've rounded UP all .5 Star Ratings. So 4.5 Stars is lumped in with 5 Stars, 3.5 Stars is lumped in with 4 Stars, etc.

2015 Breakdown By Rating: I didn't read as many books this year that I was *in love* with as I did last year, but overall 2015 was a pretty solid year in books, I would say! It's pretty rare these days that I pick out a book to read that I end up disliking completely.

2015 Breakdown By Genre: Now this is surprising: 2015 is the year that contemporary fiction officially became my most read genre over fantasy. Granted, only by a little bit, but still. I don't think anyone who knows me would have ever expected this to happen... But I think it has to do with the fact that I largely read via audiobook in 2015 and I'm not the best at listening to stories with complex world building like you might find in fantasies. I find it much easier to follow non-speculative-fiction audiobooks.

2015 Breakdown By Type: And here's the audiobook statistic that I mentioned above: 2015 was truly the year of listening to books rather than reading them, for me. This was purely because of the limited time I had to read physical books for pleasure. The majority of my physical reading time was devoted to scientific papers as part of my research for my thesis... I had to turn to audiobooks to get in my pleasure-reading. This year, I truly hope I can make my return to physical reading for pleasure. It's not that I dislike audiobooks - I love my experience with them - but I've missed the times when I could snuggle in for the night with a good book and a mug of tea.

2015 Breakdown By Author Gender and Protagonist Gender: I'm feeling quite pleased with these stats! I would say that's a pretty even spread between both author genders and protagonist genders.

2015 Breakdown By POC and LGBT Presence: Somewhat good proportions... or at least an improvement over previous years. My goal this year will be to exceed the proportion of books I read with a POC and LGBT presence from 2015.

2015 Breakdown of Series Vs. Standalones: Nothing surprising here. And though it may be most people's goal to read more standalones, I'm okay with having read mostly series in 2015. Actually, one of my goals for 2015 was to work on completing some of the many, many series I am currently in the middle of. And I would say I succeeded that! I've gotten my number of WIP Series down to only 6 (from 20 or so)!