Bookish Quarter in Pie Charts 3/2022

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 July, August and September look like in pie charts:

First of all: format. I’m still reading a lot digitally, with the occasional paperback or hardcover thrown in. My digital reading has increased in comparison to last quarter, to the detriment of paperbacks, but weirdly enough, my audiobook percentage has stayed the exact same.

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 didn’t like how big the 2000-present slice of the pie had become in the previous quarter, so I’m happy to see it got a little smaller. I like that I got a few eras in, and apparently I also read a lot of fantasy again, judging by that large “fictional” percentage.

I was equally excited to find out Where I was reading. The US has kicked England of its throne again, it’s really funny how those two always seem to fight each other for the top spot. I did get to visit a few other countries, but there is not as much diversification as I’d like.

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 I renewed my Audible subscription so I has access to the Audible Plus catalogue. I’m happy to note that I read a few more of my own books as well.

Looking at Genre, I’m shocked that almost half of the books I read were thrillers. I mean, I know I love my thrillers, but I had no idea it was this bad 😅 I read a bit more fantasy and horror as well. This means I read a lot less historical fiction, which I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for, but I do think it’s a shame and I will try to pick up some more hist fic in the months to come.

The balance between new-to-me and known-to-me Authors, which was a perfect 50-50 in the first quarter of this year, has tipped a little more. This doesn’t really bother me, I do tend to dive into backlists of authors whose books I enjoyed and/or keep up with their newly published books, so I guess it makes sense that I read more books by authors I know. I’m still happy that I got to try as many new authors as I did.

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? I can only say this keeps getting worse 😅 Oh well, balls to the backlog again, I guess 🤷🏼‍♀️😂 On the other hand, I am trying to read books as soon as I buy them, instead of just having them pile up, which means the backlog isn’t getting much bigger, which is something I am happy with. Silver linings.

This year I also decided to keep track of whether I was reading standalones, series or duologies. As usual, I read more standalones, but apparently I did read more series / duologies than last quarter.

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. I read almost twice as many translated books than in the previous quarter and I’m really happy with that evolution.

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 still rather pathetic but it’s better than last quarter so I guess I should be happy 🤷🏼‍♀️

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!