Bookish Quarter in Pie Charts 2/2023

Hi and welcome to FromBelgiumWithBookLove!

This is my fourth 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. 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, or how I might have evolved since I first started keeping track.

This is what my bookish April, May and June look like in pie charts:

First of all: format. I’m not surprised that I have been listening to more audiobooks compared to last quarter, I always listen more in spring and summer, because I garden more and I can’t garden without audiobooks. Still, I had not expected to find I spent almost as much time listening to audiobooks as actually sitting and reading.

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. Although compared to the previous quarter I read more books set in the present, I did read some about other eras, as well as some fantasy and non-fiction, so I’m rather happy with this chart.

I was equally excited to find out Where I was reading. England is at a record low, USA takes the top spot, but most importantly: about half of what I read was set in other countries. I’m pleased as punch with this chart!

This year, I decided to keep track of US states as well. I would love to visit all the states this year, not sure if I’ll be able to but I do have a fantastic collection here already. If you have any recommendations, do let me know!

And for those of you who like maps:

Looking at Source, where my books came from, I obviously took full advantage of from my Kindle Unlimited subscription! This percentage is thanks to the large quantity of short stories I read, but I’m still surprised at just how high it is! As a consequence, I read fewer ARCs, fewer NetGalley ARCs and fewer of my own books. Seeing this chart, I’m really happy I decided to cancel my KU subscription after the trial period, as I do want to focus more on my own books.

Looking at Genre, the thriller percentage is even lower than the previous quarter’s, who even am I 😱😂

I’m surprised at how many new-to-me Authors I read.

Last year I tried to read as much from my backlog TBR as I could (inspired by Lisa @ OwlBeSatReading), so I looked at when I bought the books I read, or, in case of books read through Scribd, when I added them to my wishlist… I always knew it would be bad but this is just ridiculous! Clearly, I did not #BeatTheBacklog, it’s a landslide victory for #BallsToTheBacklog.

In terms of standalones, series or duologies, I seem to have read even more standalones than in previous quarters.

In terms of books in their original language vs books in translation, this is really rather sad and I need to clean up my act!

Speaking of sad: even though I want to reread tons of books, I hardly ever do and last quarter, I did so even less. Another aspect of my reading that does need some work!

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!