It’s the first year I’ve kept book stats beyond Goodreads and I’ve been inspired by Charlotte and Hanna to share some of the numbers so far. If you don’t like stats, look away now!


In the first three months of the year I read 26 books, which is about two books per week. I had a bit of a slump in March so I’m surprised I’ve averaged out at what I would have said my normal reading speed is. However I have read a few comics and novellas, with my total page count at 8745. That’s 97 pages per day.

My average rating is 3.9 which is excellent. The dent in my TBR is tiny though, with only 10 of them being books I had before the beginning of the year. Fantasy has been my most read genre.

I can’t pick just one favourite book of the quarter, so here are four:


I’ve not been going out of my way to read books by women, however I must naturally lean towards them, with 65% by women, 23% by men and the remainder being books co-authored by both. 27% were by BAME authors which is a little below what I’d like.

I have gained a whopping 66 books, 12 of which were review copies. I’ve spent £243.67 on books which works out at £3.69 per book. If I’d had to pay RRP I would have spent £726.15! If I remove ebooks and review copies from the equation, I spent an average £9.13 per book. I started tracking this due to discussions about discounting and I have partly proved my suspicions that I would just buy less books should we go back to something like the net book agreement. It’s not like I am reading them all immediately.

Because of ebook purchases my stats are skewed towards Amazon at 45%, however only 18% of physical books were bought there, with Waterstones and Wordery beating them where paper is involved. Books were generally from a wide range of sources, Waterstones being the only bookshop visited and a large portion were from subscription boxes (32% of purchased physical books). I have read 16 of the new books, meaning my TBR is still expanding at an alarming rate.

10 purchases were for books in series that I have started and I have received 7 pre-orders (I’m told these are a good thing). 6 of my review copies were unsolicited and therefore totally not my fault.

As for my challenges, how am I doing a quarter of the way in?

Beat the Backlist = 13/30 (on track)
POPSUGAR Reading Challenge = 15/50 (on track)
Science Fiction vs Fantasy Bingo = 4/25 (behind)
Read Harder = 7/24 (on track)
Goodreads = 26/100 (on track)

Note, all stats were taken as of 31/03/18 and do not include April’s progress. Where books were part of a subscription box, I have used the RRP for the purchase price and not the price of the box.