Number of books
The first thing you'll notice is that I read *a lot* less books last year. In 2016 I read 77 books, this year I read 36. I had to resist writing 'only' 36 then, it's hard not to judge myself harshly but I'm just reminding myself that some people could only dream of reading 36 books in a year, and 36 is better than none! Sometimes life gets in the way of reading, but luckily there were some awesome books sprinkled in there.
Gender of authors
Last year I read a staggering 80% female authors, compared to 2016's 68%, and this is something I'm thrilled about as I love supporting women writers. This year it might be interesting to read a few more male authors, but I'd still like to keep a majority female. This might be controversial but it's just the way I feel.
Age range
In 2016, my reading skewed more to YA so it's interesting to see that last year I read quite a lot more adult fiction. I don't know whether this is because I'm getting older or my tastes are changing, but I do still love YA and I'm looking forward to reading plenty of it in 2018, hopefully with a lot more children's fiction too.
Genres
I read a lot fewer genres in 2017 than any other year with contemporary/general fiction and non-fiction coming out on top. I read a lot less fantasy last year, around 11% of my total books read were fantasy, compared to around 20% in previous years. I guess my tastes are just changing! In last year's post I stated I was going to read one classic per month, this failed spectacularly as I didn't actually read *any* classics at all. That's got to change this year.
Star ratings
I rated a lot more books at three stars in 2017, which shows I'm becoming a harsher critic and the gap between a four and a five star is getting wider. I think I used to rate nearly all books four stars, but that's definitely changing. This one will be interesting to watch this year.
Author nationalities
Unfortunately the diversity in the nationalities of the authors I read is still very low, with most books being from US or UK authors. This really needs to change, and I'm going to be talking about this more in my 2018 reading resolutions post coming up soon.
Plans for 2018
This year instead of tracking my reading in my bullet journal, I'm going to be using Sophie's (of Portal in the Pages) wonderful 2018 Reading Statistics spreadsheet - so hopefully next year's round up will be much more in depth!
I'd love to know if and how you track your reading. Do you just use goodreads? Do you use a spreadsheet or your bullet journal? Let me know!
