It’s August, and I’ve learned two very important things this year:
- We’re way past the halfway mark of the year (at least for these kinds of posts)
- Very late is better than never
So with that out of the way let me tell you something about myself – I love books, and, as an engineer, I love numbers and stats, which means I LOVE numbers and stats about books, especially books I’ve read. For this purpose, I’ve kept a spreadsheet for the past year or so of every book I’ve read, in case Goodreads, Storygraph, Fable, or whatever other bookish social media ever gets puts down, or we all decide to switch to a different platform, I’ve still got my handy dandy, local (ish, it’s a Google sheets spreadsheet, which I can download at any time, so I’ll count it as “local”), reading spreadsheet, which I completely own. Pretty much the same reason I started this blog to post my reviews, it’s mine, and I control what I can post on here.
The spreadsheet itself wasn’t made by me, it was made by a lovely user on Reddit with the handle Dazrin, if you’d like a copy of this spreadsheet, you can create a copy by visiting this link (not I make to guarantees that the link will still be valid in the future), just follow the instructions there and you can start using it to your heart’s content. At a glance, it’s a very complete, but simple, tool. It has worksheets to keep track of your TBR, Books you’ve read and are currently reading, complete with ratings, comments, tags (or codes, as the spreadsheet calls them), and even a basic “Stats” worksheet as well. The coolest thing about the spreadsheet, however, is actually a second spreadsheet, which is all about detailed stats taken from the first one.
With that in mind, let’s take a look, shall we?
Simple Stats
This is just the “simple stats” worksheet, but let’s break it down. At the top we can see today’s date, in which I now realize we’re 2 days into August, truly, I’m an expert in procrastinating these posts. More interesting, however, is right below it we can see a month-by-month breakdown of my reading this year (so far) (up to June, because, you know, mid year review and all that ¯_(ツ)_/¯). I do have to point out that the “Avg Rating” column is kind of weird, it takes into account the date started, not finished, so for January, my average rating for books I started in January (regardless of when I finished them) was a 3, the rest of the columns read as you would expect.
The “projected” column is also interesting, it calculates how many books you’ll likely read by the end of the year if you keep up your current reading pace across the whole year, naturally, the more books you finish, the more you’ll be predicted to read by year’s end. You might notice there’s no data for July or August, that’s because I removed that info since that just created noise for the stats regarding the first half of the year (but if you’re curious it projects I’ll read 26 books this year now). the blue highlighted cell simply highlights the current month.
I like audiobooks, but I haven’t listened to many of them, so I’ve been diving into them a little more in the past few months, it’s an easy thing to listen to while driving, or doing chores around the house, and it’s like a “free” extra book or 2 at the end of the month, highly recommended. What I don’t understand however, is how some people lift weights at the gym while listening to audiobooks. Listen, man, I’m either counting my reps, or paying attention to what I’m listening to, I don’t know if it’s because I’m a guy, but I just can’t do both, if you can, then just let me express how jealous I am of you, and I wish I could do that.
The charts on the right display a ton of information that actually pops up when you mouse over them, but the gist of it is it charts your current, actual reading vs your reading goal (which I just set to 12 books a year), and also vs your projected number of books read.
I’d also like to point out my average rating so far this year is a 3.3, which, if I’m honest, sounds pretty good to me.
Now, let’s check out some other graphs that piqued my interest.
Authors Read, Sorted Alphabetically, by Number of Books Read, and by Number of Pages Read
Unsurprisingly, the author I’ve read the most is Terry Pratchett, with 6 books so far (love me some Discworld), followed by Matt Dinniman (ditto for Dungeon Crawler Carl). Then things get into subjective territory, I read Dante’s Divine Comedy this year as part of the book club I’m a part of in my city, we read all 3 of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. I counted it all as one book, even though technically it’s 3. But it’s considered one single, big work overall? I don’t know, I just decided to treat it all as one, if I were to switch it to 3 then my boy Dante would be tied for second for most read author so far (and since I started tracking using this spreadsheet, I haven’t felt like importing all my Goodreads history here, but I could, I just haven’t felt a real need for it yet).
Pages read tells a similar story, same top 2, but at 3rd is the master of big tomes himself, Stephen King, whose book I read last year was 11/22/63. I expect this final column to change the most as I dive into some of the lengthier book series I have on my TBR in the coming months (Malazan, Wheel of Time, maybe re-read A Song of Ice and Fire?)
Series Stats
All I have to say here is that this just reiterates my love for Discworld and Dungeon Crawler Carl. Also, we’ll talk about Nevernight in a little bit.
Book Length Stats
There’s a more in-depth version of this chart available, with more granular data, but for now I think this is good enough. I think most bookish people prefer books in the 300-500 page range. Huge tomes are awesome, but they also take a while to get through, so it makes sense I’ve read fewer of those, again, I have some certified big boys™ on my TBR for the upcoming months, so I do expect to have at least 1 entry in the “> 1000 pgs” section by the end of the year (but don’t hold me to that).
Longest Books
The yellow cells indicate books from this year, as I’m writing this post, I’m currently reading Dune, which will overtake The Divine Comedy for the #1 spot in longest pages, but as of this point, Dante’s taking that prize. For the audiobook section, I don’t have enough audiobook data to fill out that chart completely, that’s why only the first few have info on the “Length” column. Last year the only book I listened to was 11/22/63, a massive 30 hour undertaking (worth it, by the way), this year I’ve been a little more tame in that regard, and both I’m Glad My Mom Died and Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone were really good, to be honest.
Genres Read
One of my big reading goals for 2025 was to read more genres instead of being just a Fantasy reader, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job. I think Fantasy will always be my favorite, but I have discovered something about myself:
- I also LOVE literary fiction (who would’ve guessed?)
- Turns out I really really like reading thrillers as well
For the first point, I always saw literary fiction as this high-brow, super complex writing that was incredibly hard to both read and understand. Don’t get me wrong, there are some books like that, but there are also so many other books that are just beautifully written, that tackle incredibly complex themes in just the most incredible, literary (har har) way. I really love literary fiction now.
For the second, this was self-imposed, I must admit. I always thought thrillers worked best on a screen, a TV show, a movie, etc. I always just felt that way, despite not reading that many thrillers. Well I’m happy to say I’ve proven myself wrong on that and have found myself really enjoying more than a couple of thrillers this year.
Book Formats Read
I won’t lie, I’m an e-reader kind of guy. Not because I think it’s better than physical, because it’s not, but because you just can’t beat how practical it is. Reading gigantic books on this lightweight device, whose charge lasts weeks, and is easy on the eyes is truly hard to beat. The big downside of the kindle is it’s very awkward and slow to write notes in books, but the new Kobo Libra Colour with its shiny pen is tempting me to try that out and see if it addresses that issue for me.
Anyway, There’s not much else to say here, other than I think it’s an interesting graph to look at
Author Gender
This is actually kind of surprising to me, I thought I’d read around 25% female authors, so it being at 36 is a welcome surprise. I’d like to up the number of books written by female authors (or who identify as women), so that’s a good goal to have by the end of the year (which, I must say, I think I’ve been doing a decent job at in July and August.
That’s it for the charts and stats, but trust me, there’s so many more in the spreadsheet I mentioned, literally over 60 different worksheets worth of stats:
I can share a link to all of them if any are interested, or you can fill out your own copy and share it, I’d love to see your stats!
Worst Read So Far in 2025
There’s not much I can tell you about Nevernight by Jay Kristoff that hasn’t been said in the Goodreads review section. I’m one of the few that didn’t really like it. Honestly, I feel that if I had read it when I was 15-20, I would’ve loved it. But now in my early 30s, it just doesn’t click for me. Also, here are a few of my favorite reviews addressing the prose used throughout. Honestly, a book about assassin school sounds freaking awesome, it’s a shame the execution didn’t land for me.
All in all, I think this book veers very strongly to a YA audience while not being a YA book, so it missed the mark for me. But hey, if that sounds like something that’s right up your alley, please go ahead and enjoy what I didn’t.
Best Read So Far in 2025
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte EASILY takes this one. The gothic setting, the themes of obsession and revenge, a big, complex story that takes place completely in a setting that is made up of exactly two houses, is incredible. This fell juuuuust shy of a 5 star book for me, because navigating who’s who in the beginning is kind of confusing and the subject matter took me a while to really “click” for me, and it’s pretty deep with its themes of revenge and abuse which did leave me feeling uneasy. This is one where I’m really interested in seeing if a re-read will alter my score on it, but so far, this has been the best book I’ve read so far.
Most Surprising Read So Far in 2025
La Muy Catastrófica Visita al Zoo, Spanish for “The Very Catastrophic Zoo Visit”, is a middle grade book by author Joel Dicker, who’s more well known for writing adult thriller novels. He wanted to write a book that would “be enjoyed by anyone between the ages of 7 and 120”, and you know what? He did it. The book is about a special needs school that gets flooded, and the 6 or so kids who attend that school make it their life’s purpose to find out who was the mastermind behind such a heinous crime. This book knows exactly what it is, it doesn’t try to pretend it’s some high-brow, complicated story with beautiful prose. It’s pure fun in the most innocent way possible. I knew next to nothing when we read this at the book club, and I left with a great book I’ll recommend to friends and family for a while to come. Full disclaimer, I believe the original was written in French, I read the Spanish translation (Spanish is my native language), but I haven’t seen and English translation for sale yet. If you can read French or Spanish, definitely pick this one up, you won’t be disappointed.
Conclusion
So far 2025 is shaping up to be a pretty good year for me, bookishly speaking, at least. I’m hoping to read at least 25 books by the end of the year, which I’m well on my way to completing, so we’ll see how all this data looks like at the end of the year.