2024 Reading Statistics

As we head into 2025, and my 14th year of posting a review every single day (we'll see; I'm scheduled through May at this point), I'm not feeling terribly motivated. The extreme number of books read this year reflects the fact that I wasn't able to walk for five weeks following Achilles replacement surgery, which did not improve my mood! I'm setting my goal for 2025 at a more reasonable 700 books, and planning on spending less time reading, and perhaps more time walking and sewing!

Yes, I read 1,032 books. If you don't believe that, I wrote reviews of 856 of the books, about 83%.

I'm only buying 294 of these titles. My district budget is $6,000, and the cost of those 294 titles would be about $5,960. I donated $2,400 worth of books that I got from publishers and Young Adult Books Central  in exchange for reviewing them. I refreshed some of my nonfiction, which is expensive, so those numbers make sense. 

The graphic novels, which are about 10% of what I read, are spread across all genres. The average length of the books I read was 215 pages. Since fantasy is a harder sell in my library, and many of these books are in lengthy series, I read much more realistic fiction. 

I've seen a lot of graphics (mainly from 2018) on social media complaining that books are still not diverse, but 60% of the books I read had some significant representation of cultures. These broke down into the following categories: Asian: 122, Black: 120, Health (both mental and physical): 64, Jewish: 29, Latine: 40, LGBTQIA: 30, Muslim: 17, Native American: 12, and various (either multiple identities, or specific groups for which there were fewer than ten books): 186.

I told my students last year that I would read 1,000 books. Mission accomplished! Knowing what titles are available and being able to tell students about books when recommending them is why I read. I'd like to think that my efforts could also help other librarians and teachers who don't devote 4-5 hours a day to reading, but because I am not adept at social media, I fear that this is not the case. There are a lot of book promoters on Twitter, Instagram, and now Bluesky, but having book content does not seem to translate directly into followers or reknown. Personality leakage seems to help, which explains my misguided foray into Outfits of the Day, to no avail. 

Caring about social media also would help, but I just... don't. Need to keep in mind that I read and review mainly to be able to do my job well and get the right book to the right child at the right time. The rest is just distraction.