2014: A Year in Reading

Bow down…I did it. I finished my reading goal to read 52 books in 2014. I can safely say that was more books than I’ve ever read in one year of my life.

read-all-the-books-meme

I decided that since I have so much data to work with, I might as well break it down by numbers.

53 books read in 2014 (not including books read for Kirkus)

Of those…

Stats on Book Purchasing/Borrowing/Reading Habits

30 books were purchased/gifted, 23 books were borrowed from the library

Of the 30 books that were purchased…

27 were bought new, 3 were bought used

Of the 27 that were bought new…

16 were bought new from brick and mortar stores like Barnes & Noble and Target, 9 were bought new from Amazon, 2 were bought new from the Book Depository (UK bookseller)

0 books were read entirely as e-books

Stats: Authors and Nationalities

Of the 53 books that were read…

39 were by women and 14 were by men

47 were by writers from the United States and 6 were by writers from the United Kingdom

0 were in translation/language other than English

Stats: Genre and Category

Of the 53 books that were read…

8 were graphic novels

28 were Young Adult novels (including some overlap with graphic novels)

3 were horror

3 were straight-up romance

4 were mystery

6 were literary fiction

6 were chick lit or women’s fiction

1 was a memoir

Stats: Favorable vs. Unfavorable

Of the 53 books that were read…

16 were five stars

10 were four stars

12 were three stars

6 were two stars

8 were one stars

and 1 received no stars (as in, not good enough for even one star)

Overall

Overall, though I think I gave more books negative ratings this year, I do think that made the five and four star books that more special for me. I tried to get much better about only rating things based on if I really felt like they changed my life or something like that. I was also introduced to some new writers who have a ton of books published–Tana French, Stephen King, Jill Mansell, Jenny Colgan, Laura Kinsale–so now I am definitely not in want of something to read!

Plus this blog! And my new year’s 2015 resolution to review everything I read. I’m really happy with how many people like this so far. It motivates me to keep reading.

Coming up soon, a post about music and fiction about music. Also, I’ll finally get around to writing my best of 2014 post!

Sarah S. Davis is the founder of Broke by Books, a blog about her journey as a schizoaffective disorder bipolar type writer and reader. Sarah's writing about books has appeared on Book Riot, Electric Literature, Kirkus Reviews, BookRags, PsychCentral, and more. She has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Library and Information Science from Clarion University, and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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