Sunday, December 29, 2013

The Year In Books: 2013

The Goliath of reading updates- I present to you, my summary of 2013 in books!

Below, you will find the complete list of books I've read for the last 12 months.

Though I won't be listing my favorites (look for that in a future post!!), the book nerd in me will submerse you in book statistics like you never dreamed possible.

Curious what percentage of books I read were prose vs. graphic novels/comics?
Want to know what genre I read the most of? or what my most read author was>

Keep reading, because this post will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about my reading habits.

If for any reason you want to look back on my 2013 monthly reading updates, I will start by linking those:


January | February | March | April | May | June/July | Aug/Sept | October | November | December


And just for fun, lets take a look at the books off my 2013 Reading List, that I was actually able to finish:
  1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, JRR Tolkien
  2. The Magicians,  Lev Grossman
  3. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
  4. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo
  5. 1984, George Orwell
  6. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  7. Raise High the Roof Beam, J.D. Salinger
  8. more Jane Austen
  9. some Haruki Murakami
  10. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
  11. The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
  12. Delirium/Pandemonium, Lauren Oliver
  13. The Maze Runner/The Scorch Trials, James Dashner
  14. The Blood of the Lamb, Peter de Vries
  15. Reached, Ally Condie
  16. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
  17. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (I read a few, but not close to finishing)
  18. Castle In the Air, Diana Wynne Jones
  19. House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones
  20. The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
  21. Winter Rose, Patricia A. McKillip (started)
  22. Slammed, Colleen Hoover

 Total: 8 of 22, 36%

Not an incredible success. But I don't mind. The list is just mean to guide me if I have moments of not knowing what I want to read next. They'll be just as attainable in 2014 (and the following years) as they were this year.

And now finally, here is the complete list of books I read in 2013.
Rather than type them all into this blog post, I did them in a spreadsheet (in alphabetical order) and took a screen shot.

*R = reread
**Even though it creates for inconsistency, I tried to count 1 book as something I read cover to cover, despite the fact that some books I read were collections of multiple books (Oz, Y: the Last Man, etc.). What this translates to is a list of books that is shorter than the actual amount of books read. Hope that makes sense. 






The total comes (if I counted correctly), to 129 books. 129 books!
And if my memory serves me, that is 69 books more than my goal for 2013.
While it's not secret, especially not from myself, that I read a lot, I still almost can't believe I read that many books.

And lastly, the part I find most enjoyable...



BOOK STATISTICS


Prose vs. Graphic Novels/Comics

As the year wore on, I started reading more and more graphic novels and comics. Here's a pie graph indicating the ratio. I'm personally surprised at the large percentage of graphic novels. 




Books by Genre

Dividing books by genre is a difficult task. So many overlap. I tried to categorize based on which types of books I read most.
Literature = books that don't fit in any other category (e.g. Haruki Murakami's After Dark)


Top 5 Genres:
  1. YA contemporary
  2. Fantasy
  3. Science Fiction
  4. Children's
  5. Classics


Most Read Authors

I only included authors in this chart that I have 3 or more books from just this year.
The accuracy of this list isn't exactly as I'd want it. I may have read more Robico than Gaiman, but I put more time into Gaiman's books than I did Robico (since Robico writes manga, which is much faster to read than Gaiman's novels). So make of this pie chart what you will. A bar graph may have been a better choice. :P


Top 5 most read authors of 2013:
  1. Brian K. Vaughan
  2. Robico
  3. J.K. Rowling
  4. Neil Gaiman
  5. E. Lockhart, Mike Carey


While I could go on and on with book statistics, I think I've spent enough time on this single post. It's time to wrap up 2013 and look to 2014.

There is still one more post left for 2013- my favorite books. Other than this post, it's probably my favorite one to do since I get to focus on those books I most enjoyed. Look for it in the next two days.

 As always, thanks for reading. :)

No comments:

Post a Comment