Hi friends! I cannot believe we’re already living the very last day of 2022. To say this year has ran away with me is a grand understatement! So much has happened, but at the same time it feels like so little has happened. How is this even possible? No idea. Nevertheless it is time for the annual end of year stats and summary for my bookish year. Pre-emptively, I’d like to confirm it has been the quietest reading year since I started tracking.
Yearly Stats
With running the risk of sounding like a broken record – I have FAILED my reading challenge. Again. Oops! I only read three out of the 12 books I set my mind on, but I think I will be blaming the “loose” rules for this years defeat. Looking at the positive side, though, I read a total of 20 books across 2022, so in a way I did technically (over)achieve!
You may remember from last year’s summary, that I anticipated that I will be reading more audio books in 2022. Turns out that I actually listened to 1% less audio books than in I did in 2021, comparatively of course. I read slightly more books in 2021 in general, but proportionately these figures aren’t actually that different!
65% of all the books I got through this year were paperback and my love for only enjoying hardbacks on the shelf looking pretty was confirmed by 0 of them being read in 2022.
Not surprisingly 2022 was also the year where I read the least number of pages – just above 8000 pages in total, compared to nearly 36 000 in 2020! You can tell lockdown had me reading two years ago for sure, and then I seem to have just fell off the waggon.
Breaking my reading down into months, It was all pretty much downhill from May onwards, and overall I read an average of 1.6 books per month. Evidently 2021 reading slump carried across to 2022. Like last year there were two months where I read no books. Can’t remember why February was such a slow month, but at the end of the year I was knitting and watching the whole series of the Walking Dead, so that kept me very occupied. To tell the truth, I have spent the majority of the second part of the year glued onto Netflix and Disney+, which is definitely another reason why I’ve read so little compared to previous years.
PS! Just in case you’d like to see what I knit – see pictured on the left! I made a hat for my brother-out-law, and sister-out-law. The other brother-out-law got an Arsenal coloured scarf and the other sister-out-law got another scarf to add to her collection. My favourite, but also one that took the longest, was the net shawl for my mother-out-law. Not pictured is the last minute blue woolly hat I made for my boyfriend. And now I can’t go a day without reminding him to wear it, so that I can admire it on his head, lol!
Anyway, going back to books. Almost half of the books I read were new, meaning published in 2022. And again, not surprisingly Thrillers were my most read genre. Just cannot get enough of them haha! And with that, there were only two age ranges – Adult and Young Adult books. Adult books winning by a long mile.
Looking at how I rated the 20 books this year, then it is evident I loved most of them. 80% were 4 or 5 star books. The lowest rating was for Survive the Night by Riley Sager and I gave it 2 stars. I’d like to review my rating system in the new year because I know that some 5 star reads don’t actually compare to others I’ve read over the years and would probably be a lower rating now. (I’m having a Déjà vu moment here – pretty sure this was something I meant to do a while back!)
If I haven’t already shouted from all the rooftops that A Man Called Ove was my favourite book of 2022, then take this as the last remaining rooftop I’m shouting it from! Loved, loved, looooved this book so much.
Conclusion & looking forward
In conclusion, yes I read a lot less books than compared to previous years. Especially compared to 2020 when I read 93 books. However, the quality of the books I did manage to read was superb! I had a good time reading them, I enjoyed them and some will be held in a special place in my heart for years to come.
If there are any further takeaways from 2022 it would be that I need some sort of reading structure, so mood reading my way through 2023 will not be an option. So, with that said, 2023 challenge will be a running monthly challenge! As always details of which will be revealed in January. But in addition I want to join a book club in 2023 again. I miss chatting with other people about books we’ve read. Also, because I have been incredibly quiet over on Instagram one part of the New Year’s resolution is to be more active online. Actually this also includes this blog page.
I just want to enjoy reading books, enjoy discussing books with you all and discover new things in this ever changing book world!
How did your year in books turn out? Did you discover any new favourites or perhaps discovered your least favourite? Let me know, I really want to know.
