Bookish Quarter in Pie Charts 1/2022

Hi and welcome to FromBelgiumWithBookLove!

This is my third year of keeping a spreadsheet to keep track of my reading in a more organised fashion than Goodreads offers, and once again I’ve tweaked it a little to find out a little more about other aspects of my reading. I’m not a numbers person, never have been, but I do like stats and pie charts so once again I’m going to have a look at my bookish year through pie charts, and see what they might reveal about me as a reader.

This is what my bookish January, February and March look like in pie charts:

First of all: format. This looks rather different than last year’s format charts, mainly because I wasn’t able to work for two months due to covid so I didn’t have my daily commute and I wasn’t able to do much in the way of household chores either, which means that the audiobooks slice is a lot smaller than last year’s. The eBook percentage on the other hand, has never been this high, I don’t think. Maybe because it was just easier to read digitally while lying on the sofa?

I have been trying to diversify my reading, finding I’m really enjoying historical fiction, so I started keeping track of When I was reading. I’m thrilled to note that the 2000-present slice keeps decreasing. Much of what I read was set before 2000, and non-fiction books (NA) and fictional settings take up a large chunk as well. I did enjoy fantasy when I was out for the count in January and February!

I was equally excited to find out Where I was reading. England and the USA remain popular settings but they have decreased quite a lot compared to last year. This is partly due to the amount of non-fiction (NA) and fantasy I read, but I do feel my reading was quite diversified in terms of location and I’m happy I got to “visit” a great deal of other countries as well.

When we look at Origin, where my books came from, I think it’s clear that I love my Scribd subscription! While I use it mostly for listening to audiobooks, I did read a few eBooks on Scribd as well, which is probably one of the reasons I read so much digitally in this first quarter.

Looking at Genre, I’m rather surprised at how much historical fiction I read and how few thrillers, compared to earlier pie charts. I’m really happy with this mix.

The balance between new-to-me and known-to-me Authors has never been this perfect 😂

Last year I looked at Publication dates, but this year I’m trying to read as much from my backlog TBR as I can (inspired by Lisa @ OwlBeSatReading), so I thought it would be more interesting to look at when I bought the books I read, or, in case of books read through Scribd, when I added them to my wishlist: did I #BeatTheBacklog or did I say #BallsToTheBacklog in this quarter? Well, technically, I beat the backlog, but talk about about a photo finish 😅 I’ll try and do better this quarter!

This year I also decided to keep track of whether I was reading standalones, series or duologies, and I’m rather surprised at this outcome, because I would have sworn I read far more standalones and far fewer series.

I also decided to have a look at books I read in their original languages vs books in translation. I’m not aiming for anything here, I was just wondering how large the percentage of translated novels might be, and this is pretty much what I thought it might look like.

I hardly ever reread books. Not because I don’t want to, but because my Mount TBR shoots daggers at me whenever I do 😂 Still I decided to keep track of rereads, in the hopes of sort of motivating myself to reread more. This is not a staggering reread percentage, I know, but it does mean I did reread a few books and I’m really happy with that.

Well that’s it for today, if you made it here thanks for joining me and sticking it out 😄 Do you keep track of your reading, would your pie charts look anything like mine or not at all? Let me know below!