At this time of year, a lot of bloggers I read are talking about their reading from last year: numbers, favorites, and all that. I enjoy reading these posts, but haven't really wanted to dig deep on my own. I did get to thinking, though, about how much I read last year, which was a ton, I mean a ton, and decided to chart it to show what I mean. Yes, messing around in Excel is fun for me!
I started my books read spreadsheet in 2013, and over the years I have added (and removed) different things to track. Of course, date finished, title, and author have remained, but in 2013 I checked off these:
And things were added and removed until in 2025, it looked like this:
The category short/novella is one I added midway in 2024, as I was reading a bunch of shorts that I wanted to add to keep track of, but that felt kind of skimpy to count as a book (I don't track book size, but even so). So in the figure below, the 2024 and 2025 numbers are not counting those, to give a more true comparison.
I'm intentionally not showing the actual numbers, because that isn't my point. The point is, just look at how much life avoidance through reading I did last year! I'm somewhere between appalled/embarrassed and impressed.
I don't know that I want to break things down more than I do, but it's fun to think about what else I could track if I wanted.
* happy ending ✅
* cliffhanger (I could write a whole post about how much I hate them) ❌
* potato-chip read (enjoyable read but promptly forgotten) ✅ or keeper (must own to reread) 🎆🎇
What else do you or might you track?
These are great categories! I think I would be interested in knowing the year of publication, or at least if it was a current year book or a backlist book. I might also be interested in knowing if the book was a debut or part of a series. I don't really track much of this but I'm strongly considering trying it this year.
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