Last year I drafted up a post with bookish stats and my top ten favorite books completed (not necessarily published) in the previous year.  I had so much fun looking back over my year of reading that I knew I had to repeat the exercise this year… only this time, I had even MORE pie chart fun!  Here’s 2013 by the numbers, followed by my top ten favorite books read this year.

In 2013, I read 118 books, for a total of 38,566 pages.  Of those books, 98 were fiction and 20 were non-fiction.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the different fiction genres I read:

(It’s worth noting that I assigned these categories myself.  There were probably some books that I assigned as “literary fiction” that someone else might call “general fiction,” or books I put into “classics” – like the Anne of Green Gables series – that another reader might consider “children’s.”  But this pie chart is based on my own impressions of what I read, so there you have it.)

Then, there’s the 20 non-fiction books:

(The “other” category included two knitting books, one book of poems, one advice book, and one travel book.)

Well, that was fun!  In fact, it was so much fun that I thought this year I’d make a few more pie charts, you know, for giggles.  First, I thought it would be neat to see where most of the books I read were set, geographically speaking:

A couple of things, I thought, were interesting about this chart.  For one, I thought England would wipe the floor with the rest of the categories, and it did win out with 38 of my books having English settings.  But the good old US of A was right behind, with 36!  I also read five books set in fictional realms, which is unusual for me.  (Note that the setting I chose was the main setting of the book.  So, for instance, Royal Blood and Naughty in Nice both got assigned to “Europe – Other,” because although the stories begin in England, Georgie spends most of her time on the Continent in both novels.  And A Tale of Two Cities was also assigned to “Europe – Other,” because the main action took place in Paris, although plenty happened in London, too.  If a book involved multiple settings, I just chose the setting where either the majority of the action took place, or where the most important events took place, as I saw fit.)

I also thought it would be fun to take note of how many books by male authors and how many by female authors I read:

Well, I’m definitely not that dude who only likes male authors!  Next year, I need to work on giving the guys a bit more attention, clearly.  (Note: this pie chart counts the number of books read, not the number of authors.  So authors by whom I read more than one book last year, got counted more than once.  For example, I read five books by Rick Riordan, so Rick Riordan counted five times for the guys.  I read eight books by L.M. Montgomery, so L.M. Montgomery counted eight times for the ladies.  Make sense?)

Since we also know that I have no willpower when it comes to the library, I thought it would be interesting to see where the books I read this year came from:

So, the vast majority were from the library – no surprise there!  (Twenty of the library books were from the Buffalo library; the rest hailed from Fairfax County.)  Maybe next year I’ll do a little more reading off my own shelves… but probably not.  I’m always going to be an enthusiastic library patron.

Whew!  Okay, I think that’s probably enough pie charts for now.  So onward to the last part of my 2013 reading retrospective: my top ten favorites, in no particular order.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a year 2013 was!  I read some really amazing books, by some fantastic authors.  Can’t wait to see what 2014 will bring!