Every year, I like to take a look at my reading in terms of data. Who was I reading? What was I reading? Were there any trends? I’ve been doing a statistical breakdown of these for a few years now, and I’ve gotten it to a science where I don’t need to look at too much information to get a clear picture of where I am, what I want to do in the next year, and where I could improve.
I’d planned on posting this before the end of 2014, but I made some decisions in terms of stats keeping that I wanted to change. I wanted to look not just at the books I read, but also the books that I bought. Am I putting my money where my mouth is when it comes to things like diversity? What am I buying?
Then I decided, too, that I wanted to set up a series of spreadsheets for 2015 that looked not just at my books read and books purchased data, but also the books I received from publishers. Am I getting diverse books if I don’t ask for them? What is being sent to me in multiples? I’m not sure this data will tell me a whole lot at the end of this year, but I know it’ll be interesting to look at. I’ve already found there are books I’m getting in multiple.
Because it’s the start of a new year and I know other people are looking to be more mindful of their own reading and purchasing habits, I’m making my basic Google Doc available for anyone to use. There are three sheets here — one for reading, one for purchasing, and one for review copies received. Save a copy of this publicly-available doc on your own Google Drive or download it to your computer and feel free to adapt it to your own needs. All of the categories are pretty self-explanatory.
If you want to push your reading and data collection even further, I can’t recommend the Ultimate Reading Spreadsheet from Book Riot highly enough. It looks at way more than I do, but I know how useful that can be. Sarah Enni also created a really robust reading data spreadsheet, especially good for tracking genre/audience of books read, if you’re looking for more options.
Here’s a look at my last year in reading.
In 2014, I read a total of 113 books. There were a total of 119 authors represented, which included illustrators and collaborators on graphic novels and comics. I did not include the translators of the two books I read that were in translation in that count.
By gender:
I read a total of 24 books written or illustrated by men and a total of 95 written or illustrated by women. I’m okay with this break down. I might try to read more men — specifically men of color — in 2015.
By audience/category:
Out of the 113 books I read in 2014, 82 were YA, 27 were adult, and 4 were middle grade. I was surprised to see that I read that many adult books. I’m hoping in 2014 to read more adult books — I’m especially hoping to read a good chunk of memoirs by women of color.
Other data:
- 21 of the books I read were written by authors who debuted in 2014. This is a stat I’m pleased with.
- 8 of the books I read had LGBTQIA+ themes to them. This is a low number, especially considering I thought I was reading a good spread of these books. But it turns out I happened to read many in a row, and then I didn’t read many more after. I’m going to improve here in 2015.
- 32, or 28%, of the books I read this year were written by people of color or featured main characters of color. I’ve included Native authors here, even though Deb Reese explains why Native authors aren’t “people of color,” for the sake of my own record keeping.
Here’s a look at my 2014 in terms of books purchased.
Before I looked at the books I bought, I thought I didn’t buy many books. When I pulled them all out, I’d purchased a total of 46 books, which is more than 3 per month. That’s way more than I thought and far higher than the average person (which ranges somewhere between 6 and 11, depending on what sources you read). There were a total of 47 authors and for some reason, I didn’t include the illustrators in this round.
Not included in this data are the books I bought for prizes for readers here at Stacked. These are only titles I added to my personal library.
By gender:
36 of the books I bought in 2014 were written by women, while 11 were written by men. These percentages look pretty darn close to the ones for the genders of authors of books I read in 2014.
By or about people of color:
Almost one-third of the books I bought were written by people of color or featured main characters of color. Again, I included Native authors and characters in this grouping. This number was solid; this is something I am conscious of when I buy books. One night I walked out of a bookstore this year — a chain — because I could not find one book in the YA section by a person of color that wasn’t on the New York Times list to buy.
In 2015, I hope to up this percentage even more.
By category/audience:
I bought slightly more adult, when non-fiction and fiction are combined, than I did YA. But not much. Since I tend to read more YA, I tend to borrow it much more frequently than I do buy it, because otherwise, I would never have any money.
Keeping track of my reading means when the year winds down and I start thinking about the next year’s reading, I’m able to be more intentional in my choices. Intentionality is what guides my reading, not a set of goals or bench markers.
Thank you for sharing your spreadsheets! I normally just track title/author in a notebook, but when I was doing my annual totals this year, there was data I wish I had but didn't, and I also kept thinking "if this was in a spreadsheet, it would just tell me these numbers".
I also like the idea of tracking the books I buy. I have a feeling that what books I buy paint a very different picture than what books I read. Next year, I'll have the data to know for sure!
I do title and author in a notebook, then I sit down periodically and update the spreadsheet from there. It gets me more info and I have duplicate records (which apparently is a necessity for me).
I wasn't surprised to see I buy more adult books than anything else. I think that it's because they're lower-priority reading for blogging purposes and more reading-for-me, so I feel like I can take my time and HAVE them, if that makes sense.
"Intentionality is what guides my reading, not a set of goals or bench markers."
I love this. I've been trying to verbalize what I want to do this year with my reading as far as differentiating it from other years, and you hit the nail on the head. No stats, no goodreads challenge, just trying to read books that are more likely to intrigue me, challenge my thinking, or open up my eyes.
I wrote about this a little bit a couple of years ago, when the pressure of numeric goals really just starting making reading less enjoyable for me: http://www.stackedbooks.org/2012/12/reading-resolutions-goal-setting.html
I think the value in reading and talking about reading is doing so intentionally. Sometimes that intention HAS to be for a reason — a review, for work, etc — but reading is a thing you do because you like doing it and that should always be the big guiding intention.