I recently discovered this AMAZING spreadsheet on Bookriot that allows you to track your reading in detail. I updated the 2019 spreadsheet to work for 2018 and filled it in with all my books for the year.
Here's a summary of what I found out!
Full list of books I read in 2018
Here's the full list of books I read in 2018, broken down by my star rating. I use the Goodreads star rating system, so 1-5 stars with 5 being the best.5 stars ("It was amazing")
20 books; 24% of total
- An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- The Book of Essie by Meghan MacLean Weir
- The Dry by Jane Harper
- Educated by Tara Westover
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- Essentialism by Greg McKeown
- Force of Nature by Jane Harper
- Getting Things Done by David Allen
- Give Your Child the World by Jamie C. Martin
- Grace, Not Perfection by Emily Ley
- The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown
- The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs
- The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
- A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
- Scythe by Neal Shusterman
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
- The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
4 stars ("Really liked it")
37 books; 44% of total
- 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam
- Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han
- An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
- Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown
- The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll
- Castle of Water by Dane Huckelbridge
- Cozy Minimalist Home by Myquillyn Smith
- The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
- Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
- Final Girls by Riley Sager
- The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
- Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
- The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
- Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin-Manuel Miranda
- How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind by Dana K. White
- I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell
- I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
- The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
- My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan
- The One by John Marrs
- P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
- The Path Between Us by Suzanne Stabile
- Practical Wisdom for Parents by Nancy Schulman
- The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin
- The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
- The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- Tables in the Wilderness by Preston Yancey
- Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan
- There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins
- This is how It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
- To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han
- What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
- A Woman's Place by Katelyn Beaty
- Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
3 stars ("Liked it")
20 books; 24% of total
- Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
- The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees
- Good as Gone by Amy Gentry
- The Ensemble by Aja Gabel
- Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
- Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel
- Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren
- Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker
- The One by Kiera Cass
- One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus
- The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy
- The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory
- Roomies by Christina Lauren
- Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen
- The Selection by Kiera Cass
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Still Me by Jojo Moyes
- The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory
- Yes Please by Amy Poehler
- You Can Stay Home With Your Kids! by Erin Odom
2 stars ("It was OK")
7 books; 8% of total
- Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman
- The Breakdown by B.A. Paris
- The Elite by Kiera Cass
- How to Walk Away by Katherine Center
- The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine
- Raising an Original by Julie Lyles Carr
- Something In The Water by Catherine Steadman
1 star ("Did not like it")
0 books; 0% of total
Book stats
The reading spreadsheet automatically creates lots of charts to give you insight into the types of books you have been reading. I found out a lot of interesting things!
In 2018, about half of the books I read were on my Kindle. About 40% were in print, and the remaining ~10% were on audio. This wasn't shocking; as much as I prefer books in print, I love the portability of my Kindle (and the fact that I can also read those books on my phone in a pinch).
I got about 43% of my books from the library this year, and I own the rest. Some of those were purchased this year, some I've had for a while, and others were gifts.
Not surprisingly, I read about 60% fiction and 40% nonfiction.
I loved seeing stats on the genres I read because some were surprising! At the top is Self-Help/Business at 23% (not a surprise). Next are Contemporary Fiction at 20%, Mystery/Thriller/Horror at 18%, Romance at 13% (higher than I realized!), and Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Christian Nonfiction tied at 6% (both lower than I would have guessed). Other genres don't get much of my time, but I think I might work on changing that in 2019!
This is a fun and surprising statistic: Over 81% of the books I read this year were written by female authors! I had no idea how often I gravitate toward reading books written by women but there you go. #feminist
Another less surprising stat: page count. I actively avoid really long books (part of why I made it to 84 books this year, I'm sure). I also don't cheat and only read short ones either. ALL of the books I read in 2018 were between 200 and 600 pages, and most were in the 300-400 page range.
Reading stats
It's fun to see how many books I read broken down by month. May and September were the lowest counts, and when you consider I'm married to a teacher, you might know why. :) October really surprised me, and then I remembered that's when we started going to the library (instead of just using them to check out digital/audio copies of books). It really made a difference!
Some more stats I learned from the spreadsheet:
- I read 23,950 pages and listened to 96 hours, 52 minutes of audio books this year.
- I averaged 29.5 days per book. This might sound surprising given the number of books I finished, but sometimes I start one and put it down for months. It would be nice to track the number of active hours I spend reading, but that sounds like a lot of work. :)
- I averaged 65.62 pages read per day. I'm guessing that's probably less than an hour for me for most books. (I read nonfiction faster, for whatever reason.) I am a relatively fast reader, but do note that I'm not spending hours and hours reading every day, which I think is the biggest assumption people make when they hear how many books I read. ("When do you find the time?" - Now you know: it's not that hard to find an hour a day after my kid is in bed, especially when I don't watch much TV at all.)
- I read 7 books a month, on average. My goal was 4, so I am thrilled with how many I did manage to read!
- I only spend about 15 minutes a day listening to audiobooks. I listen to podcasts most of the time and I just squeeze in audiobooks when I really want to get some extra reading in.
- About 15% of the books I read were young adult books.
- I read exactly one book of poetry this year (Lin-Manuel Miranda's book, Gmorning, Gnight!). Everything else I read was either a novel or nonfiction. Looks like I might need to branch out into some different styles (plays? short stories? graphic novels?).
- About 18% of the books I read were written by people of color. I would love to increase that percentage in 2019.
- If I tracked everything correctly, I read two books in translation this year: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (originally in Japanese), and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (originally in Swedish).
Okay, that was way more fun than it should be. :)
