Bookish Quarter in Pie Charts 3/2024

Hi and welcome to FromBelgiumWithBookLove!

This is my fifth year of keeping a spreadsheet to keep track of my reading in a more organised fashion than Goodreads offers. 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, and how I might have evolved since I first started keeping track.

This is what my bookish July, August and September look like in pie charts:

First of all: format. As always, a mix of audiobooks, eBooks and paper books. Paper books are still at an all-time low but I did read a few more paperbacks this time around.

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. As always, the present takes up the largest chunk, I don’t think that’s ever going to change, but I did manage to visit a few other eras as well, as well as fictional worlds. No non-fiction this time.

I was equally excited to find out Where I was reading. The USA and England are still in pole position, but they do take up smaller chunks than in the second quarter and almost half of what I read was set elsewhere. I’m really pleased with this chart.

The race is on to visit as many US states as possible, and I did manage to visit a few new ones. I visited them all last year, will I be able to do the same in 2024? Honestly, I don’t think so, I still have 8 states left to visit and they’re (obviously) not the easiest ones (Delaware, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Vermont). I’ve titles lined up for Maryland, Oklahoma and Vermont but do let me know your recommendations for the other states!

And for those of you who like maps:

Looking at Source, where my books come from, I see that I read even fewer ARCs / NetGalley DRCs than I did in the first and second quarter. I didn’t read any review copies in August, so I guess that makes sense. I tried to take full advantage of my heavily discounted Kindle Unlimited trial period and it shows, but I also got my money’s worth from my Everand (formerly known as Scribd) subscription and I read loads of my own books as well. A good chart!

Looking at Genre, it shows that I love reading horror in the summer and that I got my spooky on in September: horror has tripled!

Looking at known-to-me vs new-to-me Authors I read, I still struck a good balance but I read more known-to-me authors than in the first two quarters. I noted last time that this seems to be a trend for me, to read fewer new-to-me authors as the year progresses, and it seems I was right.

This is always the most exciting chart for me: did I manage to read more books from my backlog TBR, i.e. books bought or added to my Everand list in or before 2023 (#BeatTheBacklog) or was I more seduced by the new 2024 releases (#BallsToTheBacklog)? This constitutes an even more epic FAIL than last time😅

In terms of standalones, series or duologies, I seem to have read even fewer series than in the previous quarter.

In terms of books in their original language vs books in translation, I don’t have specific goals, but I do want to read translated books as I feel you can learn so much from them and it allows you to read authors you couldn’t otherwise. I’m not really happy with this chart, as the percentage of translated literature has pretty much halved.

I always want to reread books but oh that glaring TBR… I reread three books last quarter, which is one more than in the previous quarter.

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!