This is one of my favorite posts of the year to write, and also one of the most difficult – because math. (Invariably, I end up mis-counting at least one category and have to recalculate.) But no matter how hard it is to gather up and analyze all this data, I wouldn’t miss it for the world – I love seeing how my last year’s reading shook out, in really concrete form. Shall we take a look?

First up, according to Goodreads records, I read 124 books last year, for a grand total of 33,560 pages. The page total is never entirely accurate, because I have uncounted pages on the margins of the year (I’m always mid-book when the year turns over, so this count gives me credit for some pages read in 2020 for which I didn’t finish the book until early 2021, and on the flip side, I read pages in the last week of 2021 that will end up counting toward my 2022 book list because I finished that book – it was Patsy, by Nicole Dennis-Benn – on New Year’s Day). I’m also not too precious about selecting the exact edition read when I record my reading on Goodreads, so page totals vary in that way, too.

I read a few super-short books this year – a couple of Candlestick Press “instead of a card” poetry collections. On the other side of the scale, James A. Michener’s Chesapeake was a feat of endurance.

Speaking of those Candlestick Press poetry collections, it seems they should be better known. Only two other people shelved Ten Poems for Spring last year? Can’t be. But it seems that The Odyssey was crazy popular. Who knew?

Okay, let’s dive a little deeper.

The fiction/non-fiction breakdown was pretty standard in 2021. I always read more fiction than non-fiction, but especially in recent years, I’ve been enjoying more nature and gardening books, and more memoirs – so that scale has been creeping toward even. (It’s not there yet, as you can see, and I expect never will be – I’ll always be primarily a fiction reader.) The one thing that I think is noteworthy about this graph is: eleven poetry titles last year! Although I do enjoy poetry, that’s a lot for me. Probably has something to do with my efforts to read poetry almost all of April. I burnt out on it a bit after that, so I don’t think I’ll be recreating that challenge in 2022 – although I did read some very lovely stuff.

This is another graph that’s about standard for me. By far the largest genre – if you call it a genre – of fiction that I read in 2021 was classics. I’ve been a classics fan since high school and don’t see that ever changing. My second-most read genre, again completely predictably, was mysteries. What can I say? I love a good crime novel. Outside of the big two, again this is all standard stuff. Just a handful of literary fiction titles, a few historical fiction, and one or two titles from other genres. I’m not a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy, but I usually have more than two titles on my booklist at the end of the year; this is more representative of how I see myself as a reader – those just aren’t really my jam.

The big shift with non-fiction genres is this big growth in nature and gardening books. I always have a few titles on my list, but I’m usually more heavily weighted toward books about books. This year I only read five books about books, and fourteen nature titles – almost an exact reversal from last year. The rest of this graph surprises me less: I always have a handful of history titles, and quite a few memoirs, and that’s exactly what I see for 2021.

No surprises here – as usual, I mainly read in the standard book format. There were a handful of audiobooks, read mostly on neighborhood walks, and a handful of ebooks, which I largely save for travel. And four journals – those were all Slightly Foxed quarterly issues.

As with 2020, I have really been trying to read my own books. I curate my bookshelves carefully, and I really know what I like, so I tend to be happiest with my own personal collection. I did borrow 23 books from the library last year, which is four more than the 19 I borrowed in 2020 – but far less than I used to check out, pre-pandemic, when my reading was almost 90% from the library and I would spend way too much time looking wistfully at the books on my own shelves, which I carefully chose and knew I’d love. I’m so enjoying reading mostly my own books and I don’t see myself going back anytime soon, although I’ll always be a library user to some extent.

Apologies in advance, because I kind of phoned this category in. Last year, I had categories for non-binary authors (just didn’t read any in 2021 – must correct that for 2022) and multiple sex/genders (mainly for anthologies and essay collections; this year I did read several books with both male and female contributors, but I pressed the easy button and simply categorized those based on the sex or gender of their editor). Maybe I’ll get more granular next year, but for now – this is just what I would have expected to see – heavily favoring women authors and editors.

Lastly, here’s a bit of a surprise. Usually, the USA and England compete for the largest slice of the “settings” pie chart, and while they go back and forth it’s usually closer than this. Not in 2021 – 67 books set in England (plus another 6 in other countries in Great Britain – five in Scotland and one in Wales, specifically) and only 16 in the USA! Continental Europe had a good showing this year – interestingly, Greece made up a large percentage of those books – but I need to read more set in Africa and Asia in 2022.

Whew! If you’re still with me, thanks for reading this far. I do enjoy nerding out on book data, what can I say? Next week, I’ll share my top ten reads of 2021.