Fun Book Stats from Goodreads!

Goodreads has come up with some very cool stats so you can look at your reading by year, by stars, by category, and they tell you what was your longest book that year. Some interesting things I've learned:

Most years my biggest category (after "other) is memoir. Not a shocker. Except that I thought I'd started that more recently. But according to Goodreads that was my most popular category in 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2005, 2003, 2002. Most books read in a year 1999: 88. However, I don't have any way to note rereads in Goodreads, so any book I may have reread will only show up in its original year. The interesting thing about 1999 is that's the year I was a junior book buyer, and decided to become an editor and move to New York. I had a lot of stuff going on. And yet I read a ton. (Longest book: The Fountainhead). It's also the year I started keeping the list of books I read. Coincidence? I think partly the large number is due to the quality of books. That's also a year when I had a huge number of 5-star reads. Some of the books I discovered that year are still all-time favorites of mine: Poachers, Straight Man, Holes, The Inn at Lake Devine, Making History, Otherwise Engaged, Redtails in Love, The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love, The Man Who Ate Everything, The Reader, The Sweet Hereafter, and everything Bill Bryson. I think when you read good books, they make you want to read more good books. If every year had a list like that, I think my numbers would be much higher.

My lowest post-college year: 1997. This was before I started keeping my lists and I am still convinced I am missing some books from this year, and these stats make me even more sure. I was working full-time at a bookstore, how could I have only read 27 books? Well, I was really scrimping to get by and that really doesn't make one very excited to do anything but lie on the sofa and watch Nick at Nite.

Most surprising year: 2004. I was unemployed for 4 months. How could I have only read 41 books? Well the simplest answer is that I was burned out. I quit being an editor, and I was again super-broke when I moved to NC without a job. But I remember spending a lot of time lying by the pool, or sitting on the patio. Surely I was reading. What else would I be doing?

When I was a road rep - 2005-2006-2007 - I was surprisingly consistent (35, 33, 35). Also those years Audio books in my #1 or #2 category. I really struggled to read those years with working 100+ hours/week, and spending 2 weeks every month in New England. Whenever a bookstore owner or manager kept me waiting, I'd always wander to the children's book section and read a picture book. When my customers asked me what I'd read lately, picture books were mostly what I told them about. Of course that's partly because some were totally awesome (Scaredy Squirrel) but mostly because they were the only books I had time to read! It's funny that in a job where keeping up with the publishing industry was vitally important, the job took up too much time for me to do so!

My goal this year is 100 books. I am on track. If you're on Goodreads and want to see your states, click on My Books, then on the left side under all your shelves is a list of 4 tools: widgets, import/export, stats, and api. I thought I had a good idea of my reading history, but this was eye-opening!