Reading Roundup Year in Review 2025/26

I first started tracking my reading when I went away to college in 2007. Thus, my "reading year" starts about the same time the school year does, and so every September, I crunch the numbers on last year's reading.

Last year, I was distressed to note that I'd fallen a bit below my post-pandemic average of 134 books per year... this year I am happy to note that I had my best year since 2016/17! (I spent that school year commuting via bus, so I got a lot of reading done... on the other hand, my audiobook and podcast listening fell off a lot.) The only other year to beat this year is 2012/13, when I read for my Ph.D. exams.

The key to success is, of course, read more comic books.

SERIES/GENRE/AUTHOR	# OF BOOKS	BOOKS/ MONTH	% OF ALL BOOKS
Star Trek*	31	2.6	16.2%
Doctor Who†	15	1.3	7.9%
Star Wars*	16	1.3	8.4%
Planet of the Apes	1	0.1	0.5%
Media Tie-In Subtotal	63	5.3	33.0%
Oz / L. Frank Baum	14	1.2	7.3%
Naomi Novik	3	0.3	1.6%
Lois McMaster Bujold	2	0.2	1.0%
Nnedi Okorafor*	2	0.2	1.0%
Ursula K. Le Guin*	2	0.2	1.0%
Other Science Fiction & Fantasy	27	2.3	14.1%
General SF&F Subtotal	50	4.2	26.2%
Justice League	7	0.6	3.7%
Supergirl	4	0.3	2.1%
Legion of Super-Heroes	3	0.3	1.6%
The Sandman†	2	0.2	1.0%
Other DC Universe Comics	13	1.1	6.8%
Black Panther	13	1.1	6.8%
Other Marvel Universe Comics	3	0.3	1.6%
Avatar: The Last Airbender	2	0.2	1.0%
Other Comics	6	0.5	3.1%
Comics Subtotal	53	4.4	27.7%
Victorian Literature	2	0.2	1.0%
Other Literature	10	0.8	5.2%
General Literature Subtotal	12	1.0	6.3%
Penguin History of Britain	3	0.3	1.6%
Other Nonfiction	10	0.8	5.2%
Nonfiction Subtotal	13	1.1	6.8%

* Comic books relating to series or authors that are predominantly not comics I don't count under my "Comics" category, but under the main designation.
† Nonfiction about a particular author or series is included with that series, not the "Nonfiction" category.

It wasn't just comics, though; my tie-in reading was in general up this year, as I worked through a bunch of Star Trek and Star Wars books I got like a decade ago but never got around to. (In Star Wars, I have not yet gotten up to the Disney era still!) I can read a 300-page Star Trek book much faster than a 300-page original novel.

(One notes that there are previous years where the total doesn't add up to 100%. Apparently I made some data entry errors, but I am too lazy to track them down; I'm sure this is good enough.) 

This was Star Trek's best year since 2007/08, and Star Wars's best since 2013/14; I had gone five years with no Star Wars books at all. My combined comics went from 9.7% last year to 27.8% this year.

It might look like my general sf&f reading went down, but that's only in terms of share; in raw numbers, it actually went from 47 to 50! I just read more other stuff this year. 

Those are stats I crunch myself (with the help of ChatGPT); here are ones I used LibraryThing to generate. I make different choices between how I enter books on LibraryThing vs. in my personal files, so the total number of books will be slightly different.

Here's their breakdowns by author. (Note that these are about authors, not books by authors, if you see the distinction.) First, what countries did my authors originate from:

My U.S. share is a tad bigger than previous years, I'm guessing because of all the tie-ins I read. My U.K. share is substantially smaller. My nine "others" were one each from Croatia, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Ghana, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Israel, plus one "not set." (I am a bit skeptical of some of these identifications; Michel Faber, for example, hasn't lived in the Netherlands since he was seven, and has published every single one of his books since moving to the U.K., in English. Is he really a Netherlands author? I feel like some Thingamabarians just want excuses to pick "interesting" countries.)

Most of my books were by living authors, which is normal.

Men always dominate my reading, but this is their highest year since I started doing these graphs, in 2020/21. Again, it's probably all the tie-ins and comics I was reading. I actually read more women authors this year than last (it went from 33 to 39, which actually ties my previous record); I just read more more male authors this year too (from 56 to 87).

One statistic I enjoy a lot on LibraryThing is a breakdown of what you read by pages. This is imperfect: I only enter page counts for paginated books, and many comics and ebooks have no page numbers, and of course page numbers don't perfectly correspond to word counts. Also, multi-author books like anthologies and comic book collections can only be attributed to one person. But still, I find it interesting. Here's my top authors by pages read: 

Keith Giffen did not write all of the two (very large) comic collections where he is first credited author, so once you remove him, David Mack is my favorite author two years running! Joey Cavalieri and Jack Kirby are the other two dubious inclusions in the top ten; Cavalieri wrote just one issue in a 1,438-page collection, but it's the first one, so my method of cataloguing on LT gives him credit for the whole volume. Kirby wrote more of the Panther's Prey Omnibus, but not even a majority of it, I don't think.

The highest-placed author to get on the chart through just a single book is Ada Palmer. She beats out John Jackson Miller, who wrote four!

My tagging on books gives you a sense of genre and series and other attributes: 

Science fiction dominates, of course; lots of comics there, too, and if all comic collections were paginated, it would be even higher.

Finally, here's how many book are on my "To be read" list:

I've sort of plateaued recently. Hopefully I can get it down. At least I haven't crossed the dreaded 700 Barrier!

You can compare this to previous years if you're interested: 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2025/25. (I didn't do ones for 2010/11 and 2013/14.)

Reading Roundup Year in Review 2024/25

I first started tracking my reading when I went away to college in 2007. Thus, my "reading year" starts about the same time the school year does, and so every September, I crunch the numbers on last year's reading.

Last year, I pointed out that since becoming a parent, my number of books per year had been fairly steady (except for the pandemic year)... this year proved that false!

114 books makes this my worst year since I began tracking other than the pandemic year. I had some very bad months in there: only 5 in October, just 3 in February! If both of those had been, say, 11 (which was my average the other ten months of the year), I would have finished at the much more respectable 128. Alas!

SERIES/GENRE/AUTHOR	# OF BOOKS	BOOKS/ MONTH	% OF ALL BOOKS
Star Trek†	15	1.3	13.2%
Doctor Who*†	12	1.0	10.5%
Star Wars	1	0.1	0.9%
Media Tie-In Subtotal	28	2.3	24.6%
Oz	11	0.9	9.6%
Lois McMaster Bujold	2	0.2	1.8%
Robert A. Heinlein	2	0.2	1.8%
Other Science Fiction & Fantasy	32	2.7	28.1%
General SF&F Subtotal	47	3.9	41.2%
Marvel Universe Comics	3	0.3	2.6%
Legion of Super-Heroes	2	0.2	1.8%
Other DC Universe Comics	3	0.3	2.6%
Other Comics†	5	0.4	4.4%
Comics Subtotal	13	1.1	11.4%
Victorian Literature	1	0.1	0.9%
Other Literature	3	0.3	2.6%
General Literature Subtotal	4	0.3	3.5%
Pelican History of England	9	0.8	7.9%
Other Nonfiction	13	1.0	11.0%
Nonfiction Subtotal	22	1.8	18.9%

* Comic books relating to series or authors that are predominantly not comics I don't count under my "Comics" category, but under the main designation.
† Nonfiction about a particular author or series is included with that series, not the "Nonfiction" category.

I read a lot more nonfiction this year; the trade-off for that seems to have been that I read fewer comics. Given how much longer it takes to read a single nonfiction book than a single comic collection, no wonder my numbers were down! 

As you can see here, that's the most nonfiction I've read in a single year since I read for my Ph.D. exams! Other than that, though, things seem pretty stable the last few years.

Those are stats I crunch myself; here are ones I used LibraryThing to generate. I make different choices between how I enter books on LibraryThing vs. in my personal files, so the total number of books will be slightly different. Here's how my books break down by original publication date:

Here's their breakdowns by author. (Note that these are about authors, not books by authors, if you see the distinction.) First, what countries did my authors originate from:

The ratios are roughly in line with previous years; usually over half of my authors are U.S., with about third from the U.K., and then a smattering from other countries. (The "not set" is Michael Kelahan, who edited an anthology I read, and about whom I can literally find no information. I kind of suspect he may be a house name.)

Next, did I read books by living or dead authors:

My ratio of dead authors was slightly higher than normal, I think mostly because all eight authors of The Pelican History of England were dead. There were two authors I could find no data on in this regard: Kelahan again and Gilbert M. Sprague, who wrote an Oz book I read to my kids. (My guess is that Sprague is dead, but given I found multiple obituaries for people named Gilbert M. Sprague, I can't prove which one, if any, is the Oz author.) The "Not a Person" is James S.A. Corey, writer of The Expanse. (LibraryThing says that a group of people is not a person, which I guess is technically correct.)

And here's by gender:

I'd be curious to see how this differs by category; I suspect that if you removed tie-in books, my gender breakdown would be a lot more equal. (The "n/a" is once again James S.A. Corey.)

One statistic I enjoy a lot on LibraryThing is a breakdown of what you read by pages. This is imperfect: I only enter page counts for paginated books, and many comics and ebooks have no page numbers, and of course page numbers don't perfectly correspond to word counts. Also, multi-author books like anthologies and comic book collections can only be attributed to one person. But still, I find it interesting. Here's my top authors by pages read:

There is no author I like more than David Mack, evidently. What I find noteworthy are the two authors who landed in my top ten on the basis of a single book: Charles Dickens and Howard Zinn.

My tagging on books gives you a sense of genre and series and other attributes:

Clearly, science fiction dominates. Last year, fantasy was very close to sf, but this year there is a marked difference, and nonfiction just edges out fantasy. I read quite a bit of Star Trek, of course, and much more history than I normally do.

Finally, here's how many book are on my "To be read" list:

I was on a good track, but that slight upward curve is concerning!

You can compare this to previous years if you're interested: 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24. (I didn't do ones for 2010/11 and 2013/14.)

Reading Roundup Year in Review 2023/24

I first started tracking my reading when I went away to college in 2007. Thus, my "reading year" starts about the same time the school year does, turning over in September, and now it's time for my ever-popular annual stats post.

I read 132 books this year, just below last year's 134. COVID year aside, a very clear level is emerging for the amount of reading I can do as a parent:

Discounting 2019/20, I am averaging 136 books per year following the birth of my first child, a number I have never been more than ten away from.

SERIES/GENRE/AUTHOR	# OF BOOKS	BOOKS/ MONTH	% OF ALL BOOKS
Doctor Who*	22	1.8	16.7%
Star Trek	5	0.4	3.8%
Star Wars†	1	0.1	0.8%
Media Tie-In Subtotal	28	2.3	21.2%
Oz	12	1.0	9.1%
Lois McMaster Bujold	3	0.3	2.3%
Brandon Sanderson	2	0.2	1.5%
Other Science Fiction & Fantasy	40	3.3	30.3%
General SF&F Subtotal	57	4.8	43.2%
Black Panther†	4	0.3	3.0%
Other Marvel Universe Comics	8	0.7	6.1%
Legion of Super-Heroes	2	0.2	1.5%
Other DC Universe Comics	5	0.4	3.8%
Miracleman†	6	0.5	4.5%
Once & Future	3	0.3	2.3%
Saga	2	0.2	1.5%
Other Comics	7	0.6	5.3%
Comics Subtotal	37	3.1	28.0%
Victorian Literature	1	0.1	0.8%
Other Literature	4	0.3	3.0%
General Literature Subtotal	5	0.4	3.8%
Nonfiction Subtotal	5	0.4	3.8%

* Comic books relating to series or authors that are predominantly not comics I don't count under my "Comics" category, but under the main designation.
† Nonfiction about a particular author or series is included with that series, not the "Nonfiction" category.

The biggest fluctuations from last year is that media tie-ins were 33.6%, but down to 21.2%; I read about the same number of Doctor Who books as last year, but Star Trek books were down quite a bit (13.4% to 3.8%). On the other hand, I read my first Star Wars book since February 2019! The gap was mostly filled by comics, which went from being 17.2% of my reading last year to 28.0% this year. As always, I wish I read more nongenre fiction... but you can't read more of everything!

Here's how those categories have changed over time:

You can really see how my reading diet shifted around 2017, thanks to finishing grad school and starting to read for the Hugos every year.

Those are stats I crunch myself; here are ones I used LibraryThing to generate. I make different choices between how I enter books on LibraryThing vs. in my personal files, so the total number of books will be slightly different. Here's how my books break down by original publication date:

Here are their author breakdowns:

The two designated "Not a Person" are for duos; the pedants at LibraryThing maintain that a pair of people is not a person. (In both cases, both members of the pair are alive.)

I'm always surprised I haven't read more by female authors, but I guess the amount of contemporary sf&f written by women is counterbalanced by how few tie-ins and comic books are. Note that these charts are by author not books: 39.3% of the authors I read last year were women, but 33.6% of the books I read were by women, so apparently I had more repeat male authors. Both authors labeled "n/a" by LibraryThing were male/female duos.

A lot of different countries this year! Last year, US/UK authors made up 90% of my authors read, but this year they are down to 86%.

One statistic I enjoy a lot on LibraryThing is a breakdown of what you read by pages. This is imperfect: I only enter page counts for paginated books, and many comics and ebooks have no page numbers, and of course page numbers don't perfectly correspond to word counts. Also, multi-author books like anthologies and comic book collections can only be attributed to one person. But still, I find it interesting. Here's my top authors by pages read:

If we ignore Gary K. Wolfe (who edited two big anthologies I read, but did not actually write) and Tom & Mary Bierbaum (who received the primary credit on a comic book collection that actually had many writers), my number one author by pages was John R. Neill; I read four Oz books by him. It's also interesting to see who placed high with just one book, such as Charles Dickens, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Charlie Kaufman.

My tagging on books gives you a sense of genre and series and other attributes:

Last year, I read twice as much sf as fantasy; this year, fantasy just edges out sf. The series I read the most of by pages is, not surprisingly, "Nonestica," which is the overall designation I give L. Frank Baum's fantasy universe that includes Oz.

And, finally, here's the number of books on my "To be read" list:

It's not exactly shooting down, but you can see it really is decreasing slowly but steadily from its peak around August 2022.

You can compare this to previous years if you're interested: 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23. (I didn't do ones for 2010/11 and 2013/14.)

Reading Roundup Year in Review 2022/23

For historical reasons, my "reading year" ends in August, beginning anew in September along with the new school year. So that's the time (rather than at calendar year's end) that I do a full post on my reading for the previous year.

Despite being a very focused, very deliberate reader, this year was slightly below my historical average:

I read 134 books, but my average is 147. That said, my post-move/job/kids average is 125, so I did better than that! I think I probably read an above-average number of omnibus collections this year, which would have deflated my numbers (e.g., a three-novel Philip K. Dick omnibus counts as one "book" for my purposes).

SERIES/GENRE/AUTHOR	# OF BOOKS	BOOKS/ MONTH	% OF ALL BOOKS
Doctor Who*	27	2.3	20.1%
Star Trek	18	1.5	13.4%
Media Tie-In Subtotal	45	3.8	33.6%
Oz	12	1.0	9.0%
Pern	10	0.8	7.5%
Discworld†	5	0.4	3.7%
Naomi Novik	2	0.2	1.5%
Lois McMaster Bujold	2	0.2	1.5%
Other Science Fiction & Fantasy	25	2.1	18.7%
General SF&F Subtotal	56	4.7	41.8%
The Transformers	6	0.5	4.5%
Kieron Gillen	4	0.3	3.0%
Legion of Super-Heroes	2	0.2	1.5%
Justice Society of America‡	2	0.2	1.5%
Other DC Universe Comics	5	0.4	3.7%
Marvel Universe Comics	3	0.3	2.2%
Harvey Pekar	1	0.1	0.7%
Comics Subtotal	23	1.9	17.2%
Victorian Literature	1	0.1	0.7%
Other Literature	5	0.4	3.7%
General Literature Subtotal	6	0.5	4.5%
Nonfiction Subtotal	4	0.3	3.0%

* Comic books relating to series or authors that are predominantly not comics I don't count under my "Comics" category, but under the main designation.
† Nonfiction about a particular author or series is included with that series, not the "Nonfiction" category.
‡ Prose fiction based on a comics series is included with that series's main designation.

Finishing the Doctor Who Magazine graphic novels brought Doctor Who from 24.1% of my total reading last year down to 20.1%. On the other hand, Star Trek books went from 0.7% up to 13.4%, and brought my overall tie-in rate from 24.8% to 33.6%! Son One and I read an Oz book a month, but that doesn't compete with last year's 2.2 per month. I continue to be bad at reading outside of genre, but was slightly better than last year.

Here's how those categories have changed over time:

General sf&f rules the roost these days.

Those are stats I crunch myself; here are one I used LibraryThing to generate. I make different choices between how I enter books on LibraryThing vs. in my personal files, so the total number of books will be slightly different. Here's how my books break down by original publication date:

As you can see, these are weighted toward recent books. It's definitely not perfectly correct, though; I read a Charles Dickens novel last year but it shows no pre-1900 books, so there's at least one book misplaced.

Here are their author breakdowns:

Note that these are weighted by author not by book. That is to say, 19% of the authors I read were dead, but 29% of the books I read were by dead authors, if that makes sense. (Mostly Ruth Plumly Thompson and Anne McCaffrey, I assume.)

My percentage of female authors is down from last year, but again compare female authors read (30%) with books by female authors read (38%).

Many fewer non-American authors this year than last.

One new statistic feature that LibraryThing introduced this year breaks down what you read by pages. Again, this is imperfect: I only enter page counts for paginated books, and many comics have no page numbers, and of course page numbers don't perfectly correspond to word counts. But still, I find it interesting. Here's my top authors by pages read:

Pretty unsurprising to see Ruth Plumly Thompson crush it; I read twelve of her books this past year with my son. What's even more interesting to me is to see which authors got on this list with relatively few books. For example, I read just two books by Madeleine L'Engle... but each was an omnibus that collected four full novels. Or just two books by Naomi Novik, but one collected three novels. Ada Palmer, Brandon Sanderson, Gregory Benford, Charles Dickens, Mary Doria Russell, Rachel Hartman, and Wil Wheaton are all authors in my top twenty-five with only a single (non-omnibus) book.

My tagging on book gives you a sense of genre and series and other attributes:

Science fiction dominates; I read more than twice as much sf than fantasy. My top series is Star Trek, but Doctor Who, Oz, Pern, Discworld, and the "Kairos" novels all fared well. I read more Pern than nonfiction, and more Deep Space Nine than literature!

And, finally, here's the number of books on my "To be read" list:

It's going down! It's really going down!! Made some good progress on it last year, and hopefully that continues this year.

You can compare this to previous years if you're interested: 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22. (I didn't do ones for 2010/11 and 2013/14.)

Reading Roundup Year in Review, 2021/22

My "reading year" runs September through August, so whenever September rolls around, I crunch the statistics on the previous year. I hit a big slump in 2019/20 for some reason, but was pulling out of it in 2021/22. Did that continue?

It did! One hundred forty-one is below my yearly average of 147 as an adult, but not by much.

Here's how my reading this year broke down by category: (I typically only break out a series or author if I read more than one in the past year)

SERIES/GENRE/AUTHOR	# OF BOOKS	BOOKS/ MONTH	% OF ALL BOOKS
Doctor Who*	34	2.8	24.1%
Star Trek	1	0.1	0.7%
Media Tie-In Subtotal	35	2.9	24.8%
Oz / L. Frank Baum	26	2.2	18.4%
Philip K. Dick	3	0.3	2.1%
The Expanse	2	0.2	1.4%
Other SF&F	35	2.9	24.8%
General SF&F Subtotal	66	5.5	46.8%
Kieron Gillen	10	0.8	7.1%
Justice Society of America	6	0.5	4.3%
Legion of Super-Heroes	2	0.2	1.4%
Other DC Universe Comics	5	0.4	3.5%
The Transformers	2	0.2	1.4%
James Bond	2	0.2	1.4%
Other Comics	4	0.3	2.8%
Comics Subtotal	31	2.6	22.0%
Victorian Literature	1	0.1	0.7%
Other Literature	1	0.1	0.7%
General Literature Subtotal	2	0.2	1.4%
Nonfiction Subtotal	7	0.6	5.0%

* Comic books relating to series or authors that are predominantly not comics I don't count under my "Comics" category, but under the main designation.

Like last year, I read a large number of Doctor Who books, and for the same reason: I was simultaneously reading an issue of a Titan Doctor Who comic over breakfast, and I've been reading about one Doctor Who Magazine Graphic Novel a month. I finish the Titan stuff this year, though, so those numbers should go down a bit.

Big increase in SF&F, entirely due to reading the Oz books with my son. In fact, my number of "Other SF&F" books is the exact same as last year's! Thank the Wizard for his continued interest; my overall numbers would be much lower without it.

On the other hand, I am doing very badly at reading outside of genre.

Here's how those breakdowns have changed over time:

Doctor Who aside, my tie-in fiction reading has very much gone down... but so had my reading of Victorian literature! Bit of a boost to "other comics" this year.

As I did last year, I can provide some charts via LibraryThing visualization tools. Here, for example, is how my books break down by original publication date:

You can see the influence of the Oz books here on the 1940-49 bar. Compare the much smaller bar for the century's second half! Of course LT is guessing on this, or in some cases, not getting it at all, but I think it provides a good approximation. Here are their author breakdowns:

Note that these break down by author, not book; 13.9% of the authors I read this year were dead, for example, but 25.7% of the books I read this year were by dead writers (mostly L. Frank Baum, of course).

Lastly, here's one of my favorite stats; how many books are listed on my "To be read" list:

You'll see I've gotten decent at holding it to a slight increase since about 2015. From 2005 to 2015, I added a hundred books every eighteen months or so, but since 2015, I haven't even added a hundred books. (Will it ever go down for a protracted period of time? Ha!) Of course, I've acquired a lot of books in that time. They just haven't all ended up on my "To be read" list—they might have gone straight into my "Currently reading," for example.

Here's the size of my actual library over time:

The slope is leveling off... right? Right?

You can compare this to previous years if you're interested: 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21. (I didn't do ones for 2010/11 and 2013/14.)

Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of when I started tracking reading statistics. Stay tuned for a whopper!