For those of you who were a reader of Nose Graze in 2013, you might remember when I shared my 2013 reading statistics. Well it’s time to do the same for 2014! Woot woot!
In 2014 I reviewed 91 books on the blog. These statistics show where I got those books, who published them, how I rated them, and more. So let’s dig in and highlight some of the best and worse of the bunch. 😀
Where I got my books
This chart shows where I got all the books I reviewed in 2014! I purchased a lot less books in 2014 than 2013 (boo!). Last year I purchased 48 books, but this year it’s only 25. I got most of my books from Edelweiss, which is almost completely due to being auto approved by HarperTeen.
| Name | Number of Reviews | Average Rating |
|---|---|---|
| ARC From Publisher | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Blog Tour | 2 Reviews | 3.75 Stars |
| BookExpo America | 7 Reviews | 3.14 Stars |
| Edelweiss | 25 Reviews | 2.70 Stars |
| Gifted | 2 Reviews | 4 Stars |
| NetGalley | 22 Reviews | 2.80 Stars |
| Purchased | 25 Reviews | 3.38 Stars |
How many books I read in each genre (and average rating)
Last year, my most popular genres were: young adult (106), romance (96), contemporary (77), then science fiction (34). This year the rankings are very similar at: young adult (73), romance (62), contemporary (43), then fantasy (22).
In terms of ratings, last year the highest were: vampires (2 books, 4.25 rating), thriller (6 books, 4.17 rating), and time travel (3 books, 4 star rating).
My favourite contemporary romances
| Name | Number of Reviews | Average Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Action | 1 Review | 4 Stars |
| Adult | 7 Reviews | 3.07 Stars |
| Aliens | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Angels | 4 Reviews | 2.88 Stars |
| Chick Lit | 2 Reviews | 3.50 Stars |
| Contemporary | 43 Reviews | 2.76 Stars |
| Crime | 1 Review | 3.50 Stars |
| Demons | 3 Reviews | 3 Stars |
| Drama | 1 Review | 1.50 Stars |
| Dystopian | 11 Reviews | 3.82 Stars |
| Family | 2 Reviews | 3.50 Stars |
| Fantasy | 22 Reviews | 3.05 Stars |
| Friendship | 1 Review | 5 Stars |
| Historical Fiction | 1 Review | 4.50 Stars |
| Magic | 3 Reviews | 3.33 Stars |
| Middle Grade | 1 Review | 0 Stars |
| Military | 1 Review | 3.50 Stars |
| Mystery | 6 Reviews | 2.83 Stars |
| Mythology | 1 Review | 0 Stars |
| New Adult | 7 Reviews | 2.57 Stars |
| Non-Fiction | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Paranormal | 8 Reviews | 2.94 Stars |
| Politics | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Post Apocalyptic | 2 Reviews | 3.50 Stars |
| Religion | 1 Review | 4.50 Stars |
| Retelling | 2 Reviews | 2 Stars |
| Romance | 62 Reviews | 2.81 Stars |
| Science Fiction | 16 Reviews | 3 Stars |
| Space | 1 Review | 3.50 Stars |
| Sports | 3 Reviews | 3.17 Stars |
| Survival | 1 Review | 4.50 Stars |
| Technology | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Thriller | 4 Reviews | 3.12 Stars |
| Time Travel | 3 Reviews | 3.17 Stars |
| Young Adult | 73 Reviews | 3.08 Stars |
Excluding the genres that only had one review… it looks like dystopian won this year with an average rating of 3.82! Poor romance is waaaaay down there at 2.81 average rating. I think that’s because 99% of the books I read have some romance element, so they’re in the romance genre. So, naturally, I bet every single book I didn’t finish (thus, 0 rating in my statistics) was a “romance” book.
Fabulous YA dystopians
I also had bad luck with new adult books (2.57 average rating). That’s disappointing because I LOVED new adult in 2013 (average rating of 3.38 back then).
New adult books that disappointed me
How many books I read by each publisher (and average ratings)
Last year the top publisher counts were: HarperCollins (38), HarperTeen (16), Self Published (14), then Simon & Schuster (13). This HarperCollins still dominates! But sadly self published has fallen down to only 5. 🙁 I wonder why that is.
HarperCollins books that rocked
This year the winner for best rating is Entangled Teen with an average rating of 4.08 stars (again, excluding the ones with only one review). Next up is Sourcebooks Fire with four stars. They also did really well in 2013, with an average rating of 4.17 stars.
Sadly I’m REALLY not doing well with Bloomsbury, which sucks because I love them. I only read three of their books this year: Dangerous by Shannon Hale (DNF), Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas (2.5 stars), and The Fire Artist by Daisy Whitney (3 stars). I guess it’s mostly that DNF that’s bringing it all down (DNF = 0 stars in my calculations).
| Name | Number of Reviews | Average Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Atria Books | 4 Reviews | 3.38 Stars |
| Balzer & Bray | 7 Reviews | 2.43 Stars |
| Berkley Trade | 2 Reviews | 1.50 Stars |
| Bloomsbury USA Childrens | 3 Reviews | 1.83 Stars |
| Crown Publishers | 1 Review | 3.50 Stars |
| Delacorte Books for Young Readers | 3 Reviews | 2.83 Stars |
| Disney Hyperion | 4 Reviews | 3.38 Stars |
| Dutton Adult | 1 Review | 4 Stars |
| ECW Press | 1 Review | 2 Stars |
| Entangled Teen | 6 Reviews | 4.08 Stars |
| Farrar Straus and Giroux | 3 Reviews | 2 Stars |
| Feiwel & Friends | 1 Review | 5 Stars |
| Forever Romance | 1 Review | 2 Stars |
| Harlequin Teen | 7 Reviews | 2.43 Stars |
| HarperCollins | 3 Reviews | 4 Stars |
| HarperTeen | 15 Reviews | 2.87 Stars |
| HEA Publishing | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Henry Holt and Co. | 1 Review | 4.50 Stars |
| Katherine Tegen Books | 3 Reviews | 3.50 Stars |
| Keyword Press | 1 Review | 2.50 Stars |
| Little Brown Books for Young Readers | 2 Reviews | 2.25 Stars |
| MTV Books | 1 Review | 5 Stars |
| Razorbill | 1 Review | 2.50 Stars |
| Scholastic Press | 1 Review | 4 Stars |
| Self Published | 5 Reviews | 3.40 Stars |
| Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers | 1 Review | 2.50 Stars |
| Simon Pulse | 3 Reviews | 2.33 Stars |
| Sourcebooks Fire | 3 Reviews | 4 Stars |
| St. Martin’s Press | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Tanglewood Press | 1 Review | 4.50 Stars |
| Vintage | 1 Review | 3 Stars |
| Washington Square Press | 1 Review | 5 Stars |
| William Morrow | 2 Reviews | 2 Stars |
How I rated books
My top rankings are similar for 2013 and 2014. In 2013 I gave out the most four star ratings, followed closely by three stars. That also applies this year!
However, I didn’t finish more than two times as many books (3 in 2013 compared to 9 in 2014). But I think that’s actually because I learned to DNF books. In 2013 I may have only not finished 3 books, but I also gave 4 books one star and 8 books 1.5 stars. Compare that to 2014 where I gave ZERO books one star and only four 1.5 stars. I’ve stopped torturing myself with books I’m not enjoying. Instead of reading through to the end, I just stop reading.
| Rating | Number of Books |
|---|---|
| 5 Stars | 8 |
| 4.5 Stars | 8 |
| 4 Stars | 17 |
| 3.5 Stars | 10 |
| 3 Stars | 15 |
| 2.5 Stars | 9 |
| 2 Stars | 11 |
| 1.5 Stars | 4 |
| 1 Star | 0 |
| 0.5 Stars | 0 |
| 0 Stars | 0 |
| Did Not Finish | 9 |
Four books I absolutely hated
That’s it!
If there’s one thing that’s clear about 2014 it’s that I read a lot less books than in 2013. I think it’s a combination of a few things:
- I’m busier. I’m working full time and always have a lot to do.
- I’m pickier. I think this is natural with the more books you read. Fewer books sound “amazing” to me so I pick fewer up.
- I’ve gone through a few slumps. They’ve been coming and going a lot throughout 2014. I’d pretty much be thrown into a new slump after every DNF.
That was super fancy with the numbers and charts, I loved it!
Thank you. 🙂
I love the stats. I think I rate 4 stars the most too, but since I don’t have a blog, I don’t know that for sure.
This was so neat to see the breakdown this way! Were you able to do that through Goodreads or did you go through all that work yourself?
Missie @ A Flurry of Ponderings
Enter my blog birthday giveaway!
No, I coded it to be calculated automatically for all the reviews published on my blog. 🙂
I really need to read Cress. Cinder was just okay for me so it’s taking me forever to get to the series.
Aww, sucks you didn’t like Cinder more.
Mannnn, I really need to utilize my UBB plugin better. Having these statistics would be interesting and fun.
I’m so picky with my books this year too, so I’m sure my stats wouldn’t be as great in detailed as yours. Lol.
I love statistics. 🙂 They’re really interesting to look at at the end of the year.
Loved seeing all the stats and I love that this is a feature on UBB. I must have a look at mine! Well done with the DNF’s, I never see the point of reading a book you are not enjoying. It’s pointless.
Totally! Life is too short to finish bad books you’re not enjoying. 😉
Love how you organised this! Have a great new year!
Thanks, you too! 🙂
Holy crap, our ratings stats are disturbingly similar! I had 1 less 5 star, but the exact same amount of 4.5, 4, and 3.5 star ratings. O_O
I had much less 3 star ratings, but I also read 30 books less than you did. I also had a high amount of DNFs this year – 12! It’s funny that we both had low numbers of 4.5 and 5 star ratings…fist bump for picky raters! (Or “tough” raters as some have called me >.<)
I love how you included the sections of 4 books in there!
Wow that’s so weird!! Hahaha. Pretty crazy how it worked out like that O_O
Wow! I love Stats. Yours are great. It is a great way to look back and helps for planning ahead. One goal I have is to keep better records. I would love to have some stats like yours, but it seems like it takes a lot of organization.
Thank you! 🙂 This actually requires zero work from me. I know some people who keep crazy detailed spreadsheets—I could never do that. I’m way too lazy, haha.
I just coded boxes in the WordPress admin panel where I fill in the book info for each book I review (rating, publisher, etc.) then the HTML gets formatted for me automatically using that info. Then, since I’ve filled in those details, I can use code to have it automatically calculate all these statistics.
I’ve included a feature just like this in the Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin.
Wow! It was really interesting seeing all the statistics! Next year I want to keep track of the books I read in this fashion (ratings, genres, publishers etc) as I think it’s fascinating seeing (in-depth) what one has read. 🙂
I agree! It’s so much fun to see it all in one place. 🙂
I love your stats. More importantly, I think I’m convinced about not having two book blogs, one for Adult and one for YA-NA. Although you read very little Adult material, I see a wide range of sub-genres listed here melding all contents on NoseGraze rather nicely.
Yeah I really don’t think there’s a need to have two book blogs. I think that would just be so much work.
Think about it like this: there are a lot of readers out there who don’t confine themselves to one genre. So if there are readers like that out there, there will be people who read your blog who also read those genres, so what’s the point in splitting it all up?
So happy to see Five Ways to Fall and The Book of Ivy on here!
Awesome books!
WOW i love the way you put the post: the gallery, the tables, the stats…amazing! i want to know how to do it XD
I love dystopians novels and i hear a lot of goodies from the lunar chronicles but i will look at the others too 🙂 i’m planning to read more in english because it sucks to have one book of the series in portuguese and the others releases got cancel by the publisher
Hope your readings in 2015 will be even better and have a great new years eve 😉
One of my best 2014 things was to discover your blog and add myself to your host 😀 and altough i don’t know a lot right now of wordpress self host site, i am learning and loving it!
Awesome statistics! Dystopian was probably at the top of my list this year and I have so many I still want to read, like Pawn and Captive. I read a lot more this year, but this was my first full year on the blog, so I think that’s why. I bought so many more books than you this year – I’m going to do a book buying ban to an extent next year though, so I can concentrate on all the goodies I have.
Anywho, thanks for sharing, happy new year!
I loved this post, having done a similar one myself recently. You’ve shown me exactly what can be done in the way of reading statistics and charts and whatnot, so kudos!
I’m going to be adding some of your favourites to my list! I really need to get going on the Marissa Meyer series … EVERYONE is raving about that one!
I love how you broke everything down, especially by publisher! I might have to start doing that, to see what publishers I read the most of …
You had a great reading year!
The Lunar Chronicles series is EXCELLENT! It’s so unique and each book is different, but still connected. I definitely recommend it. 🙂