Well, January has rolled around again and it’s that time – time for a bookish look-back at 2022! I don’t do too many New Years-themed posts anymore – gone are the days of painstakingly going through the previous year’s resolutions and setting new goals, intentions and words for the upcoming year. But I do still enjoy looking back at the year in reading – and especially at this post, where I break down the year’s worth of books and totally nerd out on data. Let’s get to it, shall we?

First of all, let’s look at the big picture. According to Goodreads, I read 112 books in 2022, for a grand total of nearly 29,000 pages read. Yowsa! So… that’s not entirely accurate, for a couple of reasons. One, I got credit for one book I started at the tail end of 2021 and finished on New Year’s Day. Two, I was mid-way through two books at the end of 2022 and finished those on January 1, 2023, so they’ll count toward this year’s totals. And three, as always, I’m not precious about the edition I record on Goodreads, so some of the page counts might be inaccurate. But I think it all comes out in the wash, and this was a good year of reading indeed.

The longest book I read was The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, which clocks in at 704 pages. (That’s a doorstopper. I read it on my kindle.) And the shortest book – also a kindle book, interestingly – was The Wimsey Papers, by Dorothy L. Sayers – just a little collection of letters between Wimsey family members and friends during World War II; a great read if you’re a fan of the Lord Peter mysteries.

On average, according to Goodreads, my books were around 258 pages. I’d say that’s pretty standard.

The most popular book I read in 2022 was Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart. I’m heartened to see how many other people shelved that one this year – gives me hope for humanity. But on the flip side, only eighteen other people shelved Diplomatic Passport – now that’s a travesty; y’all are missing out on a wonderful read. Go pick that one up immediately.

All right – time to get really nerdy. Who’s ready to dive into some data?

First of all, zooming in a little on the books I read this year, just over half – about 56% – were fiction. I’m usually around 50/50 fiction and non-fiction, so this is slightly more heavily weighted to the fiction side, but not by much. On the other side of the equation, I read eight volumes of poetry this year, which is a lot for me – but I think I can explain it. I usually have a poem-a-day anthology going, but this year I read my way through four seasonal anthologies – A Poem for Every Winter Day, and so forth. So that’s four titles where I’d normally have one. And finally, journals – which really probably belong in the non-fiction category but I’m not re-doing this chart – were a little light this year. I usually read each of the four quarterly issues of Slightly Foxed and possibly a few back issues, but I haven’t gotten to the winter issue yet.

Zooming in a bit more, this time on the fiction genres: 2022 was heavily weighted toward classics; my classics count was more than double the count of the next-biggest chunk (mysteries). And that’s not even accounting for the fact that many of the mysteries I read are classics in their own rights. I’ve always been a big classics reader, so this is no surprise. What is a bit of a surprise: I usually have at least a few good handfuls of other genres, but 2022 was very light on pretty much everything else – only two general fiction titles, two historical fiction, and three literary fiction – no sci-fi or fantasy at all. Perhaps it’s just that as life gets busier and more hectic, and the news on the front page gets worse, I tend to gravitate toward my comfort zone. I do like to challenge myself – don’t get me wrong – but some years I just want to read what I want to read, and that means more Bronte and less speculative fiction, ya know?

Non-fiction was a bit more varied, but with three major categories. I always read a lot in the books about books genre; my totals are creeping up year over year in the nature-and-gardens category, and I love a good memoir. This year, my biography and memoirs title is slightly inflated by diaries – I read at least three.

All right, let’s zoom back out to the total and look at the sex of the authors I was reading. No surprise here – I am heavily weighted towards female authors. This isn’t unusual at all, and I think if anything male authors might be better represented on 2022’s list than they were on previous years’ lists. (The guys probably have Stephen Moss to thank for that. I think I read four of his books in 2022?) I’m a bit disappointed in myself for not seeking out more non-binary authors; there might be some on here, and I just don’t know about it, but I definitely didn’t read any specifically last year. (Various authors accounts for collections in which both men and women were represented.)

As for the source of the book – i.e. where I got it from – this chart has flipped almost on its head from previous years! Starting in 2020, I really began to try to read more books from my own shelf (with an ultimate goal of reading every book I own – which is going to take me a few more years…). I did pick up a few books from the library, but the vast – vast – majority of my 2022 books came from my own shelves. (And by shelves, I mean not only my physical bookshelves but also the virtual shelves on my kindle and my Audible app.) Oh, and I did borrow two books last year, not from the library, so I have to give shouts to Steve for loaning me Invisible Man, and Peanut for letting me borrow and read Yummy: A History of Desserts. (Can I say, you guys? Borrowing a book from Peanut for the first time was a Bookish Mom Moment for me. Heart flutters.)

In 2023, I think I’ll see the library slice of this pie grow a little – largely because I have a list of books I want to read soon (for a reading challenge I have set myself) but don’t want to buy. But I’ll still mostly be working through my own shelves and I’m happy about that.

While we’re zoomed out, let’s discuss the format of the book. This is one area – perhaps the only area – where I definitely did diversify in 2022. While the bulk of my reading was still in physical book form, I hit ten eBooks and nine audiobooks, a definite change from years past. The eBook total was driven up by all of the traveling I did last year – between business trips and family travel I was on planes almost every month in 2022, and I prefer not to carry physical books with me. The audiobook total is new though, and represents a conscious effort I made to listen to more audiobooks in 2022. I cleared out my podcatcher and started alternating between listening to an audiobook and then going back to the podcatcher and listening to the episodes that had stacked up in the meantime, and, well – you can see the results. (Will this continue into 2023? I hope so, and I hope for even more audiobooks in next year’s version of this post. But I should note that Steve activated my Spotify account, so music is creeping back into my listening, too – not that I’m complaining.)

Finally, one more chart – always a fun one to look back on – settings! My 2022 books were heavily weighted toward England. I mean, WOW. Almost 60% in England alone, and the rest of the world has to duke it out for the remaining 40-ish%. Usually, England and the USA are roughly equal on my list, often trading back and forth, but there was no contest this year; I read six times as many books set in England as in my home country. In fact, the second largest category was books that had no setting (poetry, journals, and things like advice books or essays that were not geographically grounded in any country). Seven were set in continental Europe and/or Scotland; ten had more than one setting that was equally important to the narrative (like Patsy, where the action was divided 50/50 between the United States and Jamaica), and Africa, Asia and the Caribbean were not well-represented. (This is due largely to my reading so much from my own shelves, and the fact that most of the books I own happen to be classics of English literature. That’s a fault in my own shelves, but I am trying not to buy many new books until I’ve read more of the ones I already own, so it’s going to be the way things are for awhile yet. In the meantime, I often choose diverse authors and settings when I do go to the library, which I think I’ll do a bit more in 2023. So – no goals around this, but I’m tracking on it.)

Whew! That’s a lot of numbers and a lot of information. 2022 was a good year in reading, measured by the only stat that really counts – whether I enjoyed myself or not, and I certainly DID. What did your 2022 in books look like?

Next week, my top ten! Check in with me then.