Well, I barely made it, but I read my 52 books for the year (not including the hundreds I “blurb” read, but these are the ones I really read.)
This year that included a couple of surprises and also reaffirmed that I need to vary my reading particularly when it comes from reading books by authors with different perspectives from my own.
Below are some charts and figures from my year in reading!
Total Books: 52
Average Length: 316 pages
Average Rating: 7.725 out of 10
The average rating here is quite surprising, probably because I didn’t hate any books I read, and overall, I think it was a pretty strong reading year!
This chart was a bit surprising – I always listen to a decent number of audiobooks, but I probably finished more ARCs this year than any year previously!
I was really surprised that 49 of the 52 books I read were published in the last five years. This definitely was not the case when I first started at the bookstore, but I take it as a good sign that I’ve finally started to read more ARCs and get ahead as a bookstore book buyer!
This one is a little surprising given that I didn’t feel like I read much in March after the shutdown started. April and May make a bit more sense – I went back to work mid-May and then I was kind of all over the place for the rest of the year.
Another surprising chart – this is the first year I’ve really charted this one, but normally Macmillan is top of the list, I’ve never hidden the fact that they’re my favorite publisher. I wouldn’t have thought I had really read a lot of books from Simon & Schuster, but numbers don’t line. The most surprising thing, however, is the fact that Penguin Random House together have about 50% of the book market share (and will be more when their purchase of Simon & Schuster is finalized next summer) and yet they only account for 7 of the 52 books I read this year.
This is where I need a lot of work. I’ve always read more female authors than male, but the authors I’ve read are overwhelmingly white and straight. I will need to look more into the Read Harder Challenge that Book Riot does each year to diversify a bit here.
This year I finally started to get back into reading fiction! I’m so excited to see these numbers so close to 50/50.
I’ve read more contemporary and romance books this year than any year before, probably because they’re nice light reads and that has been what I have craved this year for obvious reasons. I also got back into fantasy and historical fiction which has been wonderful!
When I say my interests are varied, I’m not exaggerating. While I sort many nonfiction books into multiple categories, I think the number of genres here is ideal.
Books Read in 2020 Reviewed
Celebration of Books 