2020 Reading in Review

At my day job, one of my regular tasks is to collect and analyze metrics for the company’s intranet platform. It’s funny that I ended up with the responsibility—numbers aren’t my strong suit. But I suppose that’s what calculators are for.

In 2020, I decided to do something similar for the books I read throughout the year. Not only did I want to know how many books I read, but what kind of books. Was I reading too many white authors? How many small press books versus Big 5 publishers did I read? I kept these statistics and more in a gigantic spreadsheet, and here are the results—my first ever Reading in Review.

Overall Totals

My friends: I read a whopping 83 books in 2020. That’s more than I’ve ever read in a single year before. I’ve always wanted to read 52 books in 52 weeks, and I smashed that goal. Thanks, pandemic?

In the past, I’ve had a problem setting books down if I don’t like them—I keep reading them, even if I’m not enjoying myself. But in 2020 I made an effort to do just that, and I’m pleased to report that I set 4 books down without finishing. Baby steps.

By Gender

A bit of a tricky category—I mostly tallied this one using the author’s pronouns. Unsurprisingly (to me, anyway), I mostly read books written by women—roughly 70%. Male authors accounted for about 25%, nonbinary authors about 4%, and I read one anthology with many different authors, so that accounted for the other 1%. Not bad, honestly. Hope to boost the number of nonbinary authors in the future.

By Race/Ethnicity

Here’s a really tricky category. I started with U.S. Census categories, but added a category for Middle East/North Africa, since the Census counts that as white. It’s not a perfect system. Ultimately, my reading breakdown was about 60% white authors and 40% nonwhite authors. If you want specifics:

  • Black: 17%

  • Asian: 11%

  • Latinx: 4%

  • Middle Eastern/North African: 4%

  • Indigenous: 3%

  • Anthology with many races/ethnicities: 1%

In the future I’d like to get this to at least a 50/50 split, ideally.

By Queerness

Again, not the easiest category to ascertain. I deemed a book “queer” if I knew for sure the author was queer, or if the book contained explicit queer themes or characters. As such, about 25% of the books I read were queer—which seemed surprisingly low! Somehow in my head I thought I was reading more queer work. I’ll definitely make an effort to read more this year.

By Year Published

I also wanted to keep track of when the books I read were published—hence this category. About 25% of the books were published in 2020—surprisingly high, in this case. Typically I’m very late to the party with popular books. I suspect what happened is that I ordered way more books during the pandemic to support local bookstores as much as I could, many of which were published in 2020. As for a breakdown in centuries:

  • 2000s: 70%

  • 1900s: 23%

  • 1800s: 7%

By Genre

Unsurprisingly, fiction came out on top with 78%. Nonfiction was at 12%, Poetry at 9%, and one anthology with multiple genres for 1%. I did break things down further within the fiction category; a few points of interest:

  • About 16% of the books I read were YA.

  • Only 6% were short story collections—need to get that number up!

  • The fiction genre I read the most was Mystery, at about 11%—probably because I listened to the Phoebe Reads a Mystery podcast all year.

By Method of Access

How did I get these books, exactly? Here’s the breakdown:

  • Bought: 51%

  • Library: 27%

  • Podcast: 12%

  • Gift: 7%

  • Borrowed from friends: 3%

Bless the Chicago Public Library’s enormous selection of e-books.

By Publisher

I also kept track of whether I was reading books from Big 5 publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, & Simon and Schuster) versus small press publishers. It ended up being about 64% Big 5 books and 36% small press books. Pretty good—although it would be nice to read even more small press books in the future.

I’m glad I kept track of all this—it’s hard to change your reading habits if you can’t see what those habits are. It’ll be interesting to track the changes year to year, too! I’ve already started on my 2021 spreadsheet…