Left stack: TBR pile | Right stack: to re-read & reference books
Looking Back
Reading Stats
Things were good in May reading-wise. I read more than I did on average over the previous three months, which surprised me. April was my worst reading month since January 2016. Usually I manage at least six books per month but in April, I was down to four. Then came May, and I bounced back, tripling the amount I read.
So, on to my May reading stats: I finished 12 books. My average rating was mediocre at 3.344 out of 5. Altogether, I read six paperbacks, one hardcover, one ebook, and four audiobooks. I read 1,974 pages and listened to 34:45 hours on audio (equalling 1,032 pages). Converting the listening hours to pages, that sums up to 3,006 pages.
What was unusual for me, was that only a quarter of the books were YA fiction, and nearly half were non-fiction. Maybe switching things up kept me engaged with my books, as I completely indulged my moods, and wasn’t too concerned about which review copies I had yet to read.
Books Read
Print books I read in May 2017
- The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden | Rating: 3.222*
- Unfriending My Ex by Kim Stolz | Rating: 4.143
- The House of New Beginnings by Lucy Diamond | Rating: 4.438
- World Mythology in Bite-Sized Chunks by Mark Daniels | Rating: 2.125
- The Complete Portrait Manual by Editors of Popular Photography | Rating: 3.875
- We Were Feminists Once by Andi Zeisler | Rating: 4.750
- Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki | Rating: 4.000
- The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon | Rating: 3.313
- Ones and Zeroes by Dan Wells | Rating: 3.563
- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf | Rating: 0.625
- Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard | Rating: 2.944
- Cruel Crown by Victoria Aveyard | Rating: 3.125
*Note on ratings: I rate books on a scale of 0 to 5, 0 being the worst and 5 being the best. I first rate various aspects such as prose, characterisation, plot, originality, etc. Then I average these out for my overall ratings. To obtain my star ratings, I round to the nearest 0.5.
TBR Pile
TBR Reduction
My May book haul’s considerably large but I acquired four books to re-read, and another four for reference. This leaves me with seven books to add to the TBR pile. Since I read seven books I’d already owned, my TBR reduction status remained the same as April at -8.
While my TBR pile hasn’t grown beyond what it was at the beginning of the year, I’m pretty much adding as many books I’m reading. That’s something I want to be more conscious of during the rest of the year
Book Haul
I think it’s great to switch up your reading routine! Of course reading what we know we love and enjoy has its own comforts, but it’s always fun to be caught in a totally different genre than you’d expect to find your I think.
Agreed! Comfort is great, but sometimes I like to satisfy my curiosity and learn new things, or be surprised, which is where a genre where I’m unfamiliar with common tropes fits nicely.
Jo. I love how systematized you are with your reading life! And wow. 12 books. Bravo! Brava! Also? I adore the featured photo. <3
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Lol. Excel and Leio App make it really easy ;) Besides a spreadsheet to track the books I read, I also set up one that automatically tallies the number of pages and hours I listened to each week and month, as well as averages for each day of the week. All I need to do is input how much I read each day. Haha. And thank you! I’m glad to hear you like that photo.