Hi and welcome to FromBelgiumWithBookLove!
Last year I kept a spreadsheet to keep track of my reading in a more organised fashion than Goodreads offers, and this year one of my goals was to expand that spreadsheet. I’m not a numbers person, never have been, but I do like stats and pie charts so I decided to have a look at my bookish 2021 through pie charts, and see what they might reveal about me as a reader.
First of all: format. This looks pretty much the same as last quarter’s. I love paperbacks and hardcovers, and I do indulge myself regularly, but eBooks are usually a lot cheaper and sometimes just easier to get my hands on. I can’t even imagine life without audiobooks anymore. Every kilometre I drive, every household chore I do, every weed I pull, there’s an audiobook accompanying me and preventing me from having an anxiety attack due to overthinking things.

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. There’s less diversification than last quarter but I still managed to read books set in different eras so I’m quite happy with this chart. I used NA (not applicable) for non-fiction.

I was equally excited to find out Where I was reading. I do love my English thrillers so it’s no surprise that England still has the largest slot here, but the USA is definitely trying to catch up. I love seeing Italy pop up, and with all the excellent Scandi Noir I’ve been reading it’s no surprise to see Iceland and Norway have a larger percentage. Among the countries that have a slot but are not named are: Wales, Argentina, Mexico and Thailand. Here too I used NA (not applicable) for non-fiction.

When we look at Origin, where my books came from, there’s one huge difference with last quarter: I discovered Scribd, which works like Netflix, you have access to the library but you don’t actually own the books, and almost all my audiobooks this quarter were from Scribd. (Click here for a free trial period, and to fuel my addiction as I also get a free month for every subscriber through this link). Compared to last quarter I read about thrice as many NetGalley eARCs but the number of ARCs (paper proofs or eBooks received directly) and the Pigeonhole reads were more or less the same.

Looking at Genre, I still had a nice mix going on in the second quarter of 2021, although I clearly read even more thrillers than in the first quarter.

I still have a nice balance between new-to-me and known-to-me Authors, but whereas last quarter the number of new authors was slightly larger, now it’s slightly smaller.

Reading more (e)ARCs implies more recent Publication dates, and I also read quite a few new releases, so I’m not surprised to find that this quarter I read 20% more books published in 2021. Still, I am slowly making my way through some of my older books as well.

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!
Absolutely not, I can’t remember where I put which book half the time! I love the charts and find then really interesting ,the statistics really made me think. But yep, too much of a shambolic book reader to do this 🤣
😂
Oh how I love charts and graphs! These tell so much about you, Kelly, and I love it💜
I’ve toyed with joining Scribd again (I was one of those former members from ten years ago when they were in their infancy) and if I decide to rejoin, I’ll come back and click from here.
Aww thanks lovely 😍
That’s very interesting. I often think about keeping track like that but then I don’t. New ideas take a while to actually take hold for me. Looks like a very diverse bookish quarter ❤️
To be honest, I was too lazy to do it properly last year so I only kept track of the basics but I’m really happy with my current spreadsheet and it also helps me to diversify my reading.
I love these kind of stats! Apart from Goodreads, I don’t keep any statistics about my reading. I’m still a bit sad that they offer less insights than they used to do.
Thanks Annelies 😊 I’m kind of addicted to it now 😂
You know how much I love stats and graphics, so of course I loved this post! 😉
Thanks Yvo 😘