#readingyear

Last year was the first time I decided not only to review my reading year by listing my favorite books but by actually taking a closer look to what and how I read during the year. Since many of you and myself liked this post, I headed back to Canva to create some more charts for my reading year 2018, looking into different aspects such as lengths of the books I read, setting or gender of the author. So let’s take a look what my reading year 2018 was been in numbers and pie charts!

Some general numbers:

Number of book I read: 46 (goodreads goal: 50)

Number of pages I read: 15 805 pages

Average per month: 3,8 books and 1 317 pages

2018 has been a very busy year on very different level for me which is part of the reason why I did not manage to read the 50 books I wanted to read (might have also been partly the fault of Netflix, which I finally got in April but psssst). Nevertheless, I did read a lot of good books and managed to do so without too much pressure. I like that the goodreads challenge is becoming something less serious to me whereas reading is becoming more chill and fun. This is also a reason why I read many long books this year. Almost two thirds of the books I read were 300 pages long or longer, almost twenty percent were longer than 500 pages. I really enjoy reading long novels as long as they are entertaining, educating or engaging. My average number of pages per book in 2018 is 343 pages.

Not a surprise, but most of the books I read this year were written in English. I just enjoy reading in this language so much, especially since it enables me to read in the author’s original language and, due to the ongoing “Representation matters” movement, offers increasingly more diversity than books in other languages I am able to read in. Still, I read a couple of books in my mothertongue German, all of them by German authors, and another book in Thai. I would have liked to read more books in that beautiful South East Asian language, which is why in 2019 I will try to pick up more books in Thai (so far, I have been trying to read Harry Potter in Thai and am stuck on book 3). I also would love to maybe add another language to that chart next year if possible.

Compared to 2017, I read more books by male authors this year (2017: 14%), but the majority of authors I read is still female. Sadly, I didn’t read any book written by an author that uses “They/Them” pronouns in 2018 (in 2017: 3%), something I really want to change in 2019.

Something that is very important to me is that I read about a wide variety of settings in my books, especially non-Western ones. Sadly, 2018 two thirds of the books I read were set in Europe and North America, compared to only slightly more than half my books in 2017. Roughly 20 percent of my books were set in Africa and/or Asia, compared to more than 25% last year. I did read more books set in Australia and/or South America, together they make up about 7%, compared to a mere 2 percent in 2017. I also read less Fantasy novels, only about 7 percent of my books taking place in a fantasy setting, whereas it was about 15 percent in 2017. In 2018, I visited 35 different countries in my books, namely: USA, England, Cube, Australia, Czech Republic, France, Morocco, Japan, Serbia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Nigeria, Russia, Germany, Israel, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Italy, Spain, China, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore, Palestine, Ireland, India, Iran, Belgium, Nicaragua, Columbia, Kosovo, Albania, Armenia, and Ghana.

Luckily, in 2018, I read slightly more diverse books than in 2017, 70% compared to 64%. Diversity and representation is something that I find incredibly important and I hope to read even more diverse books in 2019. Our world is such a colorful, diverse place and it’s a shame that it took so long for literature to give this diversity a platform, especially in YA literature that is so important for many teens out there. Also, they are usually really interesting, well-crafted stories where a lot of love and passion are tied to every page.