I neglected to post a general photo of (most of) the books I read in 2022 — at least the physical, photographable copies — so here we are! (There’s a link at the bottom of the post to the full year on Goodreads, including digital ones.)
Everything on the top shelf except the last five (a.k.a., not the ones by Diana Wynne Jones or Ally Carter) are books I had the privilege of editing last year! ❤ The last five on the top shelf are re-reads (and that’s also where Twinepathy and Lightporter would be, but I’m lending them to friends at the moment. XD).
On the lower shelf are new-to-me novels, a couple of anthologies, and some nonfiction and picture books, with a few in there representing one section that I read in a book, even if I didn’t read the whole thing (for example, Into the Heartless Wood I read the previous year but last year I read the short story Of Leaves and Stars in the paperback version which I totally recommend and was my favorite short story I read last year!).
Obviously, I also read e-books . . . but there’s just something fun about looking back on a shelf of books I read in the previous year. ^_^
Charts!
Maybe I’m weird but I looove pie-charts and statistics, specifically for bookish things! And I realized that despite keeping a detailed spreadsheet of my reading during 2022, that I forgot to share the shiny results when I posted my Top 20 Favorite 2022 Reads post!
Not sure if it’s something that’ll interest any of y’all, but maybe it will as a curiosity, and I want to have it to look back on in the future. 🙂
So . . . some stats and charts!
This fascinates me. XD The 25 “Multiple Reads” was books I edited so it counts in both new and re-reads. I was just very curious about the breakout of this category, especially since I re-read a lot more than I do sometimes.
This one was interesting to me because I realized I usually read things I “needed” to read, or else miscellaneous things like picture books, graphic novels, short stories & novellas, and re-reads, all of which I categorize as different and kind of considered “lesser” than new-to-me novels. I’m trying to break from that mindset a bit (all reading is reading!) but it’s interesting.
- 33 Misc (Just Because)
- 28 Specific reason
- 25 Books (or short works) I edited
- 9 Review books
- 6 Read aloud
- 5 Just Because (novel)
Mostly novels but not by a huge amount. XD I did differentiate between novels and novellas, having a short story/novella/novelette category, and had the next most of those. I read several lovely picture books which was a lot of fun, and a non-fiction per month, ish.
- 1 play
- 2 poetry
- 3 graphic novels (I read a ton the previous year around when I first started reading graphic novels, but apparently not many last year)
- 3 anthologies
How I consumed books.
Physical, owned copy was the highest (especially when adding in the picture books which I tracked separately), although some of them I actually read in a digital format, for example if I edited them, and later acquired a physical copy, so…it depends.
23 audiobooks! I really hit my stride with audiobooks the last couple years. It makes me happy.
14 e-books–yeah, not so much of an e-book reader, apparently.
13 Other–a category I had for books read when editing, though some of those moved to physical when I got a copy… Yes, these categories are very unscientific. XD
7 In owned collection means I read something but not the whole thing it was collected in, for example when I read some amazing essays by Tolkien and Stephen R. Lawhead.
2 Borrowed
1 Play (I heard The Importance of Being Earnest read by different people as a sort of sitting-around-together-play-read-aloud and it was such a unique and fun experience. XD)
Bringing out the big guns! Genre!
- Unsurprisingly, over half was fantasy. XD
- 14 Nonfiction (sounds familiar from a previous category)
- 11 Historical fiction
- 9 Sci-fi (Which surprised me because I don’t think of myself as a sci-fi person but I enjoy it when I try it, it seems!)
- 6 Contemporary (most of these were a re-read of Heist Society!)
- 5 Superhero (Yes, I read enough that I made this its own category. XD Shoutout to We Could Be Villains and the Twinepathy books!)
- 3 Poetry/Play
This was fun to break out a bit more!
Fantasy
- Contemporary Fantasy (11)
- Fantasy (Other World) (25) And we have a winner! This was the largest sub-genre I read, which makes me happy. XD
- World-hopping (5) I decided on this for stories that spanned our world and a fantasy world since they didn’t quite fit in either the contemporary or the other-world fantasy categories.
- Celtic Fantasy (5) I made this a category this year and it makes me happy to see so many!
Science Fiction
- Space Setting (6) Yeehaw, we’re going to space! Er. Anyway…
- Superheroes (5)
- Time Travel (3) If I had a nickel for every story I read in 2022 that featured time travel, I’d have three nickels, which is not a lot but it’s weird that it happened three times. XD
Historical Fiction (5)
Non-fiction
- On Writing (6)
- Self-help (2)
- History (2)
- Inspirational (3)
Misc
- Christmas (9) Christmas books make me happy and I try to read a few each December. It’s fun. ^_^
- Retelling (3) I’m sure I read more than three retellings, but I must’ve been stumped for subgenres for these ones or something.
- Mystery (3)
- Poetry (2)
- Misc. (1)
- Horror (1) This was a short story and surprisingly good. I don’t generally read horror and don’t plan to make a habit of it but anyway!
- Humor (1)
- Heist (5) Yes, I did in fact categorize the Heist Society trilogy (and accompanying two short works) as heist as a genre. XD
- Steampunk or Gaslamp (3)
I also decided to track how I listened to audiobooks! It was mostly on Scribd. (Obligatory affiliate link here to join for two free months which gives me a free month as well, for any audiobook or ebook fans who want to try out a subscription site!) So I’m glad to see I was using it a bunch. Next Audible. I suspected that I didn’t use the Audible Plus part of their site much and that’s the case, but I did do a couple there. And I keep forgetting about Chirp and need to use it more but it’s not playing nice with my phone app currently, but it’s great for audiobook deals. 🙂
Yeah, that’s going to be a hard one to read without zooming in, but it’s the authors I read last year!
Here are the ones I read two, three, four, or five of their books (short stories included).
- Kyle Robert Shultz (Still so excited The Hare and the Hatter is released!)
- Ally Carter (I binge-reread everything Heist Society.)
- Diana Wynne Jones (Always a favorite!)
- Lloyd Alexander (Picture books, actually!)
- J.R.R. Tolkien (<3)
- Micheline Ryckman (Piratey series!)
- Selina J. Eckert (Retellings and cozy modern fantasy!)
- Tara Grayce (ELVEN ALLIANCE BE STILL MY HEART)
- Jenelle Leanne Schmidt (Y’all, this author’s books! The Orb and the Airship is nearly heeere!)
- C.B. Cook (Re-devoured the Twinepathy books and having serious longing for a third book!)
- W.R. Gingell (Finished up City Between, with mixed feelings, but feel accomplished and had many good times along the way. Zero forever!)
- Terry Pratchett (I read the entire Moist von Lipwig trilogy on audiobook. He’s a blast. XD)
- Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist and the two sequels. Recommend for creatives!)
- Hazel B. West (Brothersss! I adore her works.)
- Jon Del Arroz (Graphic novels!)
- Stephen R. Lawhead (I have so much more by this amazing author to read but especially loved finishing the Eirlandia series! A top favorite!)
- Ness Kingsley (Okay but she writes some of the most hilarious books ever and I adore them.)
For individual books I read last year, my Goodreads Year in Books has those! Although my spreadsheet lists 105, different than the 90 listed there, and the pages are inaccurate, and they’re all listed out of order since I just added them any-which-way instead of as I read them, which is bugging me, buuut anyway. XD
That’s all I’ve got for today! Thanks so much for reading — or skimming, if stats bore you! XD
Are you a stats person? Do you enjoy analyzing your reading? Or is it just me? 😛
Let me know your thoughts in a comment below!
The Page Dreamer (Deborah O'Carroll) 