2022 Reading Stats

OK, I’ve shared my total reading numbers for 2022—87 total—and my favorite fiction and nonfiction books. Now let’s talk stats.

My Diversity Stats

  • 55% POC books
  • 57% women/nonbinary authors

About in line with last year, though flipped. Here’s how that compares to previous years:

Chart showing POC and female/nonbinary books as a percentage of total reading.

And to my total books read:

Chart showing total books read each year along with POC and female/nonbinary authors.

I track these numbers because you pay attention to what you track, and if you don’t pay attention you get stuck in a rut. People question if systemic racism is real, but you can literally see it in my reading stats. As a white male, I read lots of other white males. Until I started intentionally diversifying.

Opening yourself to other stories broadens your world, increases your empathy, and makes you less of an ass to be around.

More Stats

How about some other reading stats for 2022?

  • Biggest genre: Sci-fi, by far at 47% (duh). Not as high as last year though (53%). Fiction is next at 15%.
  • New is sorta better: 58% of my books came from the last three years. Down from last year (77%). Oldest books? 1955, 1957, and 1969.
  • Format: Print still dominates my reading at about 80%. Audio at 18% and digital at 2% (making a slight comeback).
  • Quit bad books: In 2021 I was good at quitting bad books, and didn’t read any two star books. This year? FAIL. I slogged through seven 2-star books and even a 1-star book (why? It was an audio book during a drive and I didn’t have anything better). 2023 isn’t off to a better start as I already finished one 2-star book.
  • Winter: I already noted that winter is the time for reading. The Russian invasion of Ukraine (doom scrolling) and COVID (watching movies) really cut into my reading, but my numbers didn’t bounce back until the fall.
  • Lack of Latino: While the numbers above chart total POC books (which I define as a POC main character, author, or topic), I also try to break those numbers down more specifically. It’s an imperfect metric, but one thing that’s been clear the last few years is I don’t read much from the Latino culture. I need to remedy that, so I’m definitely open to suggestions.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

For more on diversity and stats, check out previous years: 202120202019201820172016, and 2015.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *