2022: A Year in Review
Some stats on my reading year + my 2023 reading resolutions
Happy New Year!
As we head into the new year I’m taking time for one final 2022 reflection. I’m always curious about the data behind my reading and figured that today I would share my reading year in review and take a moment to make resolutions for the year to come.
Average Rating
I read a lot of really good books this year. Not all of them got a 10/10, but not every book needs to get a 10/10 to be worth reading. Sometimes, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be found in a fun mystery or thriller or romance. They might not have the prose or structure to earn a 9/10 or higher, but the plot and characters propelled the story forward and made me want to flip the pages.
As you can see below, my average rating was an 8/10 (the website I used to generate the graphs uses a 5 star ranking system, so multiply everything by 2 for my normal system), and most of the books clustered between 8s and 9s.
New Year’s Resolutions:
In 2023 I want to read more highly-ranked books. I want to spend less time on duds and more time on books that I can rave about. One way that I plan on doing this is by steering away from buzzy books just because there’s a lot of hype.
I also have a goal to read every (or as many as I can) Fiction Pulitzer Prize Winners going back to 1948. I read a few Pulitzer winners in 2022 and in years past, and after looking at the list of winners, I realized that I’ve enjoyed or loved nearly every Pulitzer winner that I’ve read. Why not inject some more guaranteed quality reading into my life?
I’m considering changing the way that I publish the ratings of my books. While a book might be an 8/10 or a 7/10 for me, it might be ranked higher for another person and I don’t want readers to not consider a book because of my subjective rating system. I haven’t quite figured out what that will look like, so stay tuned.
Reading Format
Audiobooks propelled my reading forward this year. Over half of the books that I read this year had some audio component, whether that was only on audio (through Libby! and Libro.Fm!) or partly on audio while completing a task (walking the dog, cooking, cleaning, commuting) and then picking up where I left off in the physical book. I used to be an audiobook skeptic, and could only listen to audiobooks of memoirs but now I officially think that I’m a jack of all trades.
New Year’s Resolutions:
In 2023 I want to read more books that I already own. If you’ve seen my apartment, you know that I (probably literally) own a ton of books. When I’m in a bookstore I can’t help myself, and usually I try to prioritize buying books that I know I am going to love. My problem, however, is that I prioritize reading library books because of the due dates and as a result I have so many books with amazing potential just sitting on my shelves.
I want to read more paperbacks in 2023, i.e. I want to read more backlist titles. Hopefully my Pulitzer Prize project will help in this task.
Genre Breakdown
In 2022, 15% of the books that I read (26 books) were non-fiction, while 85% were fiction. Of the non-fiction that I read, I found that I was most drawn to memoirs, investigative journalism, and essays with a smattering of history. This is a big change from last year where most of the non-fiction I read was political journalism. In some ways I think that my attention span for non-fiction diminished in the pandemic and law school era - sometimes life is heavy enough without adding on a heavy read. But I miss good non-fiction, so next year I vow to change.
New Year’s Resolution:
In 2023, my goal is to read 20-25% non-fiction. The percentage is arbitrary, but the goal stands.
On to 2023! Thanks for subscribing to the Book House Blog. I’m looking forward to the new year. Until then, you can check out my favorite books from 2022 below.
