2022 In Review – Stats and Goals

“Just as summer was turning golden and easing into autumn, a stranger came to the village.”

First line in Over All the Earth by Alexandra Rowland

It’s time for me to look back on 2022 in greater detail and that means looking at and analyzing stats about my reading. Warning: There are going to be a lot of numbers so let’s just jump into it.

I read a total of 71 books which is a new personal record and out of those 71, six were rereads (The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins). My total number of pages read was 30,372 which is also a personal record.

Some quick facts:

• My average rating was 3.36 (excluding rereads).
• The shortest book I read was Over All the Earth by Alexandra Rowland (63 pages – I wanted it longer).
• I longest book I read was Fool’s Fate by Robin Hobb (914 pages but it felt twice as long).
• My average book length was 428 pages.
• The most popular book I read was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (reread).
• The least popular book I read was Helvedeskvaler by Anne Christine Eriksen.

That’s a very low average rating 😬 But I guess that’s just what my standard is now because it wasn’t all that much higher last year. Graphically, my ratings look like this (rereads included):

It doesn’t look awful when put like that but you also don’t want “3 stars” to be your most common rating. March turned out to be the best month of the year in terms of the quality of my reading with an average rating of 4.3. I guess I got too excited because April along with October were my worst months with average ratings of 2.9.
I read the most in September (thank you, audiobooks) and basically didn’t touch a book in November except when I had to.

Moving on to the age categories I read in 2022:

This is extremely similar to last year except for the fact that I had a Middle Grade category that now has been absorbed by the YA one. The adult percentage has grown from 64% to 65% which is a bit disappointing because I still think the YA part is too big.

The genres I read:

This is rather shocking. I’ve never read less fantasy than I did in 2022 😱 I went from 76% last year to 55%! Don’t mind me as I’m having a crisis here. I wonder if there’s a correlation between that and my low average rating? Science fiction is number two which means there’s still some normalcy left, although the number is higher than usual. I’ve tracked sub-genres as well and can also reveal that it’s not exactly “proper” science fiction I’m reading since two-thirds of them are dystopias. I mean, it IS my favorite sub-genre of science fiction but it often feels like its own genre instead of a sub-genre.
With my fantasy sub-genres, I’m a little bit more all over the place but a couple that stand out are historical fantasy and paranormal fantasy.

2023 “Goals”

I purposefully didn’t set any goals for myself in 2022 but I think I kind of made some along the way anyway, so I’m going to acknowledge that I’m a planner at heart and make a compromise. I’m not going to have goals in 2023 but I’m going to have “focus areas” (no, that’s not the same). They are:

• Explore adult high/epic fantasy some more with the purpose of figuring out whether I still enjoy it. I’m already working on this because I realized I basically didn’t have any adult high/epic fantasy on my TBR and started to wonder why. Is it because I don’t like it or because I don’t think I like it? I use the synopsis a lot to decide whether I want to read a book and those can be very vague for that particular sub-genre so maybe I’m just not giving them a chance? If you have any recommendations for such books that preferably don’t have a HUGE cast of characters, I’d love to know!
• Get comfortable with audiobooks and make it a habit. I wrote a post about my relationship with audiobooks last year because it was non-existent but I had started to listen to them at work. I got a lot of great advice from comments on that post from people who also struggle with audiobooks so I’ve been in a sort of experimentation phase since then. I would like that phase to end in 2023. My main problem has been that I’m almost stressing about listening to the audiobooks. Like, if I have the time to listen then I have to listen. I need to get into that headspace where I’m accepting that sometimes it takes me an entire month to listen to a book because I’d rather listen to music at work.
• Be tougher on selecting which YA books to read. Okay, so I’m turning 30 in 2023 and you can of course always read YA, but I think I’m reaching that point where I need to let them go. While I do find the occasional gem, they are few and far between so I think I need to stop reading YA just because of hype. That said, this doesn’t mean I’ll never touch YA again because, like I said, I’m just going to start being tougher in my selection process. I’ll still be reading series I’m in the middle of (Cassandra Clare, Leigh Bardugo) and authors I consider favorites (Neal Shusterman, Patrick Ness). I also still have a couple YA series left on my TBR and I’ve decided those are staying. But adding new ones? No.

A Summary

My reading in 2022 was somewhat similar to my reading in the past couple of years in the sense that I read a lot of books that I don’t like. I’ve accepted that as a part of my reading habits because I don’t only read to have a good time but also to learn and explore unfamiliar topics. Of course, it’s great when books check both those boxes but I don’t feel a great need to change my reading habits because so many don’t. And ranting is kind of fun too.

As for blogging, I wish I could say I will do better in 2023 but I can’t. I’m sort of satisfied with the content I put out where I try to plan at least one big-effort post each month and then allow myself to be less creative with the rest, at least in terms of the idea behind the post. I can still be creative with what I write within it. Since I’m not a review blog, I do feel a pressure to constantly come up with innovative ideas and I must admit that I’m a bit in a slump on that front. I really don’t want to take a break so I need to dedicate some time to actually think about post ideas instead of just finding a tag to do. Some of my posts from 2022 are ones I’m really proud of though, so I do want to mention those:

✨ Matching Books to My Spotify Wrapped Stats – I matched books and music, what more do I need to say?

✨ House of the Dragon Season One Review – I reviewed the best TV show I watched in 2022 and had such a good time!

✨ Recommending Books Based On My Old Favorite TV Shows – Who doesn’t love to feel a bit of nostalgia?

✨ Top Ten Tuesday: Funny Book Titles (Part 2) – The second round of coming up with different plots to make book titles funny. I love the creative challenge so much!

✨ The Tour de France Book Tag [Original] – I actually made my own tag!

✨ Do I Like Books Recommended for My Zodiac Sign? – This was so much work but I loved the analytical part of it!

✨ Know Your Buddy Tag ft. Naemi @A Book Owl’s Corner – Best. Post. Ever.

In 2022, I changed the day I post from Saturday to Monday which has been great because it has made my week a lot less stressful. Before, I almost felt like I had to have my post done by Sunday because what if I didn’t have the time/energy to write on work days? The downside has been that I then push the major part of the writing work till that weekend before I post, which isn’t bad per se but it has meant that I barely do Top Ten Tuesday anymore because I need to plan those so much time in advance. I’ve liked doing those occasionally because they give me a prompt and then I can allow my creativity to run wild (sometimes too wild). But I guess I can’t always steal the prompts for a Monday post.
Finally, I also want to be more active in the blogging community and not just blog-hop more but also comment more, which is what I say every year but I never do it so don’t get your hopes up. I was particularly bad in 2022. Just know that if I liked your post, I probably had a comment thought out but my brain came up with a hundred reasons why not to post it (it’s too short, it’s too long, I’m too excited, what if they don’t want to discuss that?). I’ll try to do better.

That’s all I could come up with. I’m still shocked by how little fantasy I read. It really wasn’t intentional! But let me know if you’re satisfied with your reading in 2022! Any “focus areas” for you in 2023? Even if you haven’t, I hope your year turns out amazing!