Bookish Quarter in Pie Charts 2/2022

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 April, May and June look like in pie charts:

First of all: format. I’m still reading a lot digitally, with the occasional paperback or hardcover thrown in. Customs has been hell this year, with me having been asked to pay for gifted proofs, so most of my ARCs are digital as well. It’s a good thing I love my Kobo! More gardening means more time to listen to audiobooks, but with my daily commute just a fraction of what it used to be since I changed jobs, the audio percentage is higher than last quarter when I was home with covid, but lower than last year.

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 afraid I’m slacking off a little, I don’t like how big that 2000-present slice of the pie has become. However, I did read stories set in many different time periods, which I’m happy about. If I were to make predictions about genre, I’d say I read too many thrillers and a lot of fantasy, since the fictional slice is also bigger than last quarter’s.

I was equally excited to find out Where I was reading. England is back with a vengeance this quarter with a 13% increase, and the US slice has got bigger too, as has the fictional slice, which backs my suspicion that I read a lot of contemporary thrillers on the one hand and fantasy novels on the other hand. Not as much diversification as previous quarters, I must say.

Looking at Origin, where my books came from, I’m obviously still getting my money’s worth from my Scribd subscription. I also had a Kindle Unlimited trial for 99p and tried to squeeze in as many books as I could.

Looking at Genre, my predictions are confirmed: a whopping 44% of what I’ve read was thrillers. A bit more fantasy and horror as well. This was mostly to the detriment of historical fiction and non-fiction.

The balance between new-to-me and known-to-me Authors, which was a perfect 50-50 last quarter, has tipped.

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 😳 Should I just forget about this one, maybe? Kids, don’t try this at home, I did not do well 🙈 Last quarter I beat the backlog, but just barely (51.1%), and I hoped to do better but…. oh well balls to the backlog!

This year I also decided to keep track of whether I was reading standalones, series or duologies, and this chart is not hugely different from last quarter’s.

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 definitely less than last quarter, so maybe something to bear in mind when choosing reading material in the future.

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. And this is just sad 😳 I still love you, my poor read books, even if I do ignore you!

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!