Alli the Book Giraffe

Hello readers! This post has been a long time coming. It took forever to create this post and I hope you guys enjoy it. I didn’t start tracking reading stats until 2019, so I had to go back and create a reading tracker for the previous years, plus make another stats page comparing them all. I actually had a lot of fun doing this!

My reading has changed so much. For one, I not only was able to buy as many books as I wanted for the first time in 2019. But, I also discovered Libby. I know my reading would not be what it is today without audiobooks and also the access to Libby and Hoopla.

I guess this is also a way for you guys to get to know me and my life over the past 10 years and how those things affected how much I was able to read.

The first I have to show you guys is books and pages per year. As I said above, I was able to buy as many books as I wanted in 2019. This was mostly because I lived near a Half Priced Books. 2019 and before, most of the books I read were ones I bought myself, so that made a big difference in what I was able to read.

After that, I had Libby and Hoopla. I can now read as many books as I want without any money! Geesh, I wish that existed when I was a teen. I could’ve used Libby in my early 20s, too.

Even though I have read a lot more books in the past five years, my average pages has actually gone down.

I have noticed that I have been reading shorter books in the past couple years before even seeing this.

I used to turn up my nose as any book under 300 pages, unless it was middle grade. I thought short books were the worst.

Now, though, I find that I get fatigued from long books. In late 2023 and the future, I hope to balance this better. I do love big books, but I also have found a love for short ones as well.

My actual breakdown of this is more specific, but I squeezed it into 4 categories for this post.

I have mentioned this before, but in late 2013 and early 2014, I did Booktube. I received 2 ARCs in 2014 from that.

In the Spring of 2014, I ended up moving with my mom into her boyfriend’s house. It was super toxic there, and eventually I moved again to my uncle’s house. Then, I met my husband and moved a third time. My dad died in 2014 as well. Really, so much happened in that year and all of it caused me to quit Booktube.

I also couldn’t afford internet in most of my early 20’s and couldn’t go back to making videos as a result. It wasn’t until autumn of 2020 that I came back to the book community (other than my occasional Bookstagram post).

You guys can also see a big jump of borrowed in 2020 as I now have Libby. I also went to the library alot from 2020 to 2022. AND, in 2023 I got a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I am most definitely still the type of reader who borrows most the books I read.

I just hate taking a chance on books, especially with authors I haven’t read before. I hate when buy a book, finally read it, and then I don’t enjoy it. I feel like I wasted my money when that happens. I really just try to buy books on occasion, so I don’t get burned.

As I’ve gotten older, I have read less and less YA. I just don’t enjoy it like I used to. I try to only read it now when the book is diverse, by an author I already like, or is in a series I’m currently reading.

It’s so odd though because I still love middle grade books.

I don’t know if I’m just not picking the right YA books, but I keep having the experience where I’ll read one and just not enjoy it. I don’t know exactly why.

I have no idea what caused this shift over the last 10 years where I went from reading majority men to almost exclusively women.

I actively tried to read more men in 2020, but honestly I don’t care about it enough to keep trying.

Also in 2019, I did a challenge where I tried to finish a lot of series. Let me know if you guys want some tips on how to finish more series if you’ve made a reading challenge like that for 2024!

I had previously finished less than 10 series in my life and managed to blast through 13 in 2019! I have some really good tips on how to do it.

I think the biggest trend in the last 10 years has been the number of stand alones I have read. I have actively tried not to read so many series. I am so tired of everything being a series! Especially when I read a book and a few years later the author decides that book is now in a series. I feel bamboozled.

Back in 2014 I did have a subscription to Audible, but I only listened to a few books on it. I think I had a subscription to it again in 2017 and may have listened to some books uploaded to Youtube in 2018.

In 2020, the majority of my reading was taken over by audiobooks. They have really saved me. I love that I can listen and do other things and I can listen to books when I cannot get myself to concentrate on reading a physical book.

I honestly thought I had read more classics in the 1800s than this!

In the 2020s, I really got into the habit of reading books that are released in that year. Mostly this is because I like being able to vote in the Goodreads Choice Awards.

Does anyone really read books published from 1950 to the 90s? I realized while making this that I haven’t read much of anything from that time in the past 10 years.

Ya’ll know I track subgenres, but I had to minimize this as much as possible for it to be readable, and still had to slice it into two.

Pre 2014, I read paranormal romance and that was just about it. I now read every genre out there and I don’t know why everyone else doesn’t! There is something great in every genre.

As y’all can see, my least favorite is historical. I honeslty only read it if it’s also fantasy or something. I’m not interested in historical romance or anything like that.

It seems that my most popular is fantasy and contemporary, which includes literary fiction. I do love a good book that can make me cry.

This last one is top 5 publishers, versus independent publishers (labeled other), and self pubbed authors (labeled indie).

Can you guys believe I hadn’t read an indie author until 2021?! It was because I discovered cozy mystery books.

Once I joined Booktok in 2023, I discovered so many amazing indie romance authors and just couldn’t get enough. I have to make that Kindle Unlimited subscription worth it, you know?

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Where to find me: https://linktr.ee/Allithebookgiraffe

Add this user on Goodreads for all your trigger warning needs: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/86920464-trigger-warning-database