The 2011 Stats Post

Now that it’s officially 2012, I can do my final wrap-up of 2011! This is the first year I have previous data against which to compare, so please excuse me while I get geeky about reading stats. I don’t read just for the stats, nor do I obsess about them, but I do enjoy tracking them!

Reading in 2010 vs. 2011

I read almost the same number of books in 2010 and 2011: 114 (23,859 pages) in the former and 117 (21,680 pages) in the latter. With no planning on my part, my print vs. audiobook numbers worked out to be rather similar. My 2011 audiobooks must have been a lot longer, though, since I listened for nearly twice as many hours last year as I did the year before!

One issue I addressed a few weeks ago is that of review copies. Looking at book source data, the number of ARCs I read in 2011 more than tripled from 2010, from 8 to 25, a shift that didn’t make me as happy as I’d have liked. I’ve always meant to read more books I already own, and while I did borrow fewer books in 2011, the jumps in numbers of ARCs and ebooks meant I read fewer of my own books than I did in 2010. I’m not setting official goals this year, but I do hope my “owned” number is much higher next year. (I should note that audiobooks are not included in these numbers, since I borrow almost all of them from my public library.)

Reading in 2011

Above are the percentages of books I read/listened to by publication year each month. 2011 was the first full year of my Classics Reclamation Project, and I started and ended strong, with classics (the blue line, defined for my project as pre-1952, or at least 50 years old) making up about 30% of my monthly reading. But in the middle, they took quite a dip — there’s even a month where I didn’t read a single one! I’d definitely like to get back to reading classics in 2012. An opposite phenomenon occurred with new releases (the green line), which took up a large chunk of my summer reading. I’m happy with the red line, or non-classics backlist titles, making up the largest chunk of my reading.

This final chart shows my reading by reason. The blue line shows books I picked up on my own initiative, while the red line shows books I read for review. They flip-flopped quite a lot this year, but I’d like to always be reading more books of my own choosing than for review in the future.

In Conclusion

I’m not creating goals for myself for 2012. However, reviewing my 2010 and 2011 stats has helped me see where I might like to tweak my reading and justified my decision to cut down on review copies. It’s also satisfied my stats cravings for another year!

Did you do a reading stats overview for 2011? Did you learn anything cool? Feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments so I can check it out!