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.
This post is a bit late because of #Orentober, but these are the numbers for my third bookish quarter of 2021, July through September.
First of all: format. This looks pretty much the same as last quarter’s, although audiobooks do take up a slightly larger percentage this time around, probably with all the gardening I did over the summer.
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 happy to note that the 2000-present slice decreased by almost 10% compared to last quarter!
I used NA (not applicable) for non-fiction.
I was equally excited to find out Where I was reading. England turned out to be less popular this time around, with the USA taking the lead. There’s less diversity than in the previous quarter but I did still manage to visit quite a lot of different countries. I used NA (not applicable) for non-fiction.
When we look at Origin, where my books came from, there’s one addition compared to the previous quarters: Audible Plus, which is a range of audiobooks you have free access to when you have an active Audible subscription. I used it mainly to listen to (horror) classics, and a few thrillers. I clearly cut back on my reviews: both the ARC and the NetGalley percentages decreased dramatically.
Looking at Genre, there were no surprises. The thriller genre (in the broadest sense) has been my favourite for years so of course it keeps taking up the largest part of my reading. I was really in the mood for horror over the summer, so I’m not surprised I read almost twice as many horror novels than I did in the first two quarters.
The balance between new-to-me and known-to-me Authors keeps shifting to the detriment of new authors, but I guess that makes sense cos the more I read the more authors I know, and I often dip into their backlist as well.
In terms of Publication dates, I’m happy to see half of my reading was made up of books published before 2021. I did read quite a few proofs and new releases, but I also read my way through books that had been on my TBR, wishlist or radar for a much longer time. There’s a lot more diversity here than in the previous quarters and that makes me really 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!