In January I put together a “Book Blog In Review” post. Part of what I included in it was statistics about my reading over the entire year. Now that we’re at the mid point of the year, I thought it would be fun to introduce 2024 mid-year reading statistics. What I included here is everything I’ve read leading up to this post. So, technically, I’ve included a little more than six months’ worth of reading. But I say that’s close enough! It doesn’t need to be an exact science.

If this is the sort of thing that interests you, then read on for my 2024 mid-year reading statistics! Most of my statistics and images are from Reader Voracious’s Ultimate Book Blogger / Reader Spreadsheet Template.

2024 Mid-Year Summary

Ratings

I’m stingy with my five-star ratings and this chart definitely shows that! On the opposite end of the spectrum, though, I thankfully have not rated many books less than three stars. I think this shows that I know myself well with respect to what I like to read.

Reading Format and Book Length

Unsurprisingly, most of my reads are e-books. They include everything from SFINCS novellas to the dozen ARCs I’ve read and also some library books. The rest of my reading format preferences is a nearly equal spread between audiobook, hardcover, and paperback. However, obviously audiobook comes in last if I combine hardcover and paperback. I hope the counts for the physical formats continue to increase as I try to work through what I physically own.

As for the length of the books I’ve read, over 50% of them were less than 300 pages. Again, hello, SFINCS! I expect that to decline for the next couple of months. But since I plan to join the SFINCS again, it might jump back up to and equilibrate at 50% or so. It’d be great to increase the number of 500+ page books I’ve read. I’m reading one now (POISON IN THEIR HEARTS) and plan to read IRON FLAME, so those will help.

Reading by Genre

It’s no surprise that most of my reading (42.6%) falls within the fantasy genre. In second place is nonfiction, which so far makes up 20.4% of my reading. Everything else is a distant third place.

Breaking it down by subgenre provides a more interesting look at my reading preferences. When it comes to fantasy it seems I tend to prefer epic or high fantasy. I am a little surprised that approximately 21% of my reads are paranormal or paranormal romance. I think part of this is due to the novella reading I did for the SFINCS competition. Memoirs and science and tech make up the main portion (21%) of my nonfiction reading. The nonfiction total is larger by subgenre than it is for the genre because I didn’t assign a subgenre to all the books I read.

Reading by Release Date

Surprisingly, nearly half of my reads have backlist dates! Again, I partially attribute this to reading novellas for SFINCS, which were published in 2023 or earlier. I’m also surprised that I’ve read more newly published books than I have ARCs. This makes me happy because it seems I still make room for books that aren’t ARCs.

Publisher Type

I predominantly read books published by the big publishers. However, SFINCS reading boosted my indie and self-pub stats.

Reading by Identity

I split my reading identities up into three main categories: racial identities, gender, and whether there is an LGBTQ+ component. The latter doesn’t take into account whether the author identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community. I modified these categories from Kal’s original spreadsheet.

Looking at these charts, most of my reading is by White authors. I’ve joined a few reading challenges on The Storygraph to challenge myself to further diversify my reading. Although Jewish probably goes with the MENA category (at least according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative grouping), I wanted to separate the two so I could see how many MENA authors I read are Jewish.

I’m not surprised that most of the books I’ve read are by female authors. (I would like to read a sci-fi or fantasy book by a trans author, so if anyone has any recommendations, let me know!) I do have a category for “nonbinary,” but I haven’t happened to read one yet by a nonbinary author. (I’ll take recommendations for that, too!) Finally, about 20% of my reads have LGBTQ+ characters, whether it’s the main character(s) or friends of the MC.

And that’s that for my 2024 mid-year reading statistics. Feel free to share yours!