How Do My Reading Habits Fluctuate By Month?

Posted January 12, 2018 by Cristina (Girl in the Pages) in Discussions, Features / 19 Comments

I’ve been having a lot of fun looking back at my reading statistics at the end of 2017, and I’ve already analyzed some information such as Whose Books Am I Reading? and How I Used My Kindle the First Year. However, another piece of data I was interested in looking at was when during the year I was getting the most reading done. Was I reading about the same amount of books every month, or was I fluctuating depending on the month and/or season? I also have a blast making graphs, so this post was the perfect excuse to make some bar graphs!

2017

So as I’ve mentioned before on my blog, 2017 was a great reading year for me, and also the year I read the most books (at least in recorded history- I’ve been tracking since about 2011). I figured there would be the most variety in when I was reading simply because I read more books than ever before.

As you can see, in some respects I did average a certain amount of books per month. For 6 out of the 12 months, I read 6 books per month. That number occasionally jumped to 8, especially in the winter, which tends to be when I take the most vacation time and have the most down time, so that makes sense. The two months that were major anomalies were August and April. In April, I read only 3 books. This is likely due to that fact that I was moving in April which ate up almost all of my free time on the weekends, and April is also during my work’s spring busy season. August, on the other hand, had a spike and was the month I read the most books, hitting 10. I think this is largely due to rereading a lot of books that month- 6 out of the 10 books I read were rereads, which likely led to me reading them faster.

Overall, I averaged out to 6.75 books per month. I’m pretty happy with that pace as it’s about a book and a half per week, which is manageable given my work schedule.

2016

I wanted to compare my 2017 statistics to my 2016 stats, as 2016 was the first year I actively started tracking my books read in a spreadsheet (as opposed to just through Goodreads). There’s some similarities as well as some differences, especially as I read significantly less books in 2016 (55 books as opposed to 81 in 2017).

Once again there’s a dip in April, which is probably due to a crazy work schedule that month. There was a slight increase over the summer in July, which is likely due to the fact that I read a lot by the pool in the summer. Overall though, my reading mostly stayed flat month to month between either 4 books or 5 books. The largest number of books in any given month was 6, which was actually the average number of books I read per month in 2017!

Thoughts

I’m glad I was able to push myself in 2017 to make the average number of books I read the “high” number of books from 2016- as a blogger, each year I try to push myself to read at least a little bit more. In the future, I’d like to see myself take advantage of the holiday season even MORE and fit a few more reads in the November-January time frame. While I’m hoping to exceed the 81 books I read in 2017, I’ll be happy if I can at least keep the same momentum I had this past year, as I felt 80ish books is a respectable number, and allows me to read across a variety of genres and a good number of new releases, backlist, and ARCs.

Let’s Discuss!

Do you like looking back at your statistics at the end of the year? Have you noticed that you read a lot more or less during certain times of the year, or do you stay pretty consistent month to month in the amount of books you read? Let me know in the comments!

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19 responses to “How Do My Reading Habits Fluctuate By Month?

    • It was really fun to compile- I honestly really love doing any sort of post that centers around stats/graphs and as the years go by I have been getting better about tracking information about what I read! I honestly wish I had started to sooner so I had even more information to compare!

    • It was really fun to put together, to be honest! I only really started tracking stats on what I read (aside from just the GR yearly challenge) two years or so ago but I find that it’s pretty helpful to look back on previous years to help plan out my reading for the year ahead!

  1. I love this. I should make a graph of all my books. I tend to read more towards the beginning of the year and it slows down throughout the year. Audiobooks are a big help during the school year. I have too short of a comute during the summer. Teacher problems. I love data and keeping track of statistics.

    • I am trying SO HARD to get into audiobooks (actually just downloaded one today!) I’ve historically had a hard time paying attention to them, but I could probably bump my total books read by at least 10-20 books a year easily if I could commit to them, since I could listen to them during my commute and while doing chores!

    • Yep, my reading definitely spikes during the holidays since it’s usually the only time of the year I can take a concentrated amount of time off of work. I love December/January for reading other blogs too because I’m always so fascinated to read all of the statistics posts! I only really started tracking detailed stats two years ago but I love being able to look back at the results!

  2. So awesome that you’re reading more, Cristina! It’s actually been the opposite for me–I started out reading a lot, to the point that I caved and experienced a huge reading burnout. It’s only this year, actually, that I’ve decided to get back into reading and blogging! I don’t typically track statistics, but I think I read more around April – June typically before, since that was Summer vacation for us (but vacation’s shifting to May – August this year). I DO read a lot during the holidays, too! <3 Good luck this 2018! Happy reading. ^_^

    • Thank you for the kind comment, Aimee! I’m glad to hear that you’ve gotten back into reading recently…honestly I have a fear sometimes that I’m going to burn myself out on reading as well, since reading and blogging as a hobby consume SO MUCH of my free time. However, so far so good for now!

  3. I always read more in January than every other month, probably because the new year brings new inspiration with it! I’m not sure what my worst month is but I’m going to remember to check at the end of the year!

  4. I looove stats! Mine fluctuate a lot too, because I’m a major mood reader. I tend to go through phases where I’ll focus strongly on certain hobbies for a while, then it changes and cycles. So some months I read more than others (although last year is a bad addition to stats because I only read 20 all year) depending on how busy I am with other things!

    • The end of the year is one of my favorite times because it’s so much fun to look back at all of the end of year stats! I’ve actually become more of a mood reader the older I’ve gotten, so I wouldn’t be surprised if these month by month stats change in 2018!

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