Happy New Year everyone! I will have some fun putting together the data in an upcoming post, including some new charts. I love charts. Meanwhile, I wanted to share the Goodreads “My Year in Books” infographic. I’m pleased to say that I met my goals this year, and exceeded them. You can see the online infographic here., but this post covers the basics.

Well shucks, thanks for the encouragement Goodreads! However, this is the first year that I have slipped back in reading–and I doubt that I’ll ever repeat my 2019 success again. 

However, in terms of sheer page numbers and books, I did pretty well. Goodreads tracked 133 books (my spreadsheet shows 134), and 41,995 pages, which is 21 books and nearly 8,000 pages fewer than last year. In 2020, I saw a drop in books as well as a drop in the size of books, down to 315 pages/book.

My average book rating is 4.2 stars–which is normal for me. I rate books too highly, I know. It comes from my years ranking music, where 5 stars goes to songs I want to hear most often, and so on. To be fair, I try not to read books that warrant 1, 2, or even 3 stars. My DNF pile is relatively high, but I also tend to read great authors–C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, L.M. Montgomery, Frederick Buechner, Octavia Butler, Marilynne Robinson, Flannery O’Connor, Shūsaku Endō, Madeleine L’Engle, Anne Rice, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Haruki Murakami, and great discoveries this year like Alix Harrows and Nnedi Okorafor. Great authors that I love like Stephen King have some stinkers in their book basket, but generally when I am reading for interest or enjoyment, I stick with the best. Intriguingly, the highest rating on Goodreads book is one of my lowest rated of 2019 (a mixed collection with some good essays in it).

Here is the rest of the infographic and stay tuned for more next week!