I was happy to receive my Goodreads year in books. Especially as 2021 was my best reading year ever, so I’m just going to take you through my reading stats :).
General
- I’ve read 48 books in total. That are 9 books more than in 2020 and the highest number ever.
- Those 48 books counted for 19.329 pages. Wow!
- My books were on average 402 pages long. I’m happy to have an average above 400 again 🙂 I tend to read ‘big’ books so you can see this represented in the stats.
- Ken Follett’s ‘World without end‘ with 1.014 pages was the longest one I’ve read, the 221 pages of ‘Rags in time‘ made for the shortest read.
- My average rating was 3.5 stars.
Format
- I varied a lot in formats and read 20 e-books and 28 physical books. I still love the smell of a real book, but I’m already attached to the ease of reading on my kindle before I go to sleep.
- Of those 20 e-books, I received 9 books as an e-arc via Netgalley. Of which ‘Cecily‘ was definitely my favourite.
- I only read 4 physical books that I own, so the other 24 came from the library that I visited frequently. I really hope to read more from my own shelves in 2022.
- I didn’t buy a single book in 2021. And funny enough, this wasn’t on purpose. I blame covid-19, I guess? I received some books as a gift and listed a few for my christmas wishlist. Edit: I discovered that I bought 5 books during a library sale (for 1 euro per book).
- I read 11 books in Dutch and thus 37 books in English.
Rating
- I honoured 4 books with the full 5 stars and they will no doubt make it to my top 10 of 2021.
- I also gave no less than 20 books four stars (which means I enjoyed them), so it was a good reading year. However, it will be difficult to choose my other 6 favourites to compile my top ten.
- There were also some disappointing reads that only received 2 stars. ‘Far from the madding crowd‘, and ‘Amenable woman‘ are the ones that I remember being not my cup of tea. And both books disappointed me the most.
- I only DNF one book, an e-arc from mystery author Paul Doherty. I won’t pick up any of his other books soon.
- I must admit that my historical fiction books got a higher rating in general than the 12 classics I read. I gave a lot of classic books 3 stars, while I tend to rate a historical book with 4 stars.
Setting and era
I intend to keep these stats in my bullet journal for 2022, because now I was just counting this backwards and I’m not sure if I have covered everything correctly. I consider 36 books as historical fiction (I exclude most of the classics and I also count some books rather as novels than as historical – for example ‘Where the crawdads sing‘).
These are the countries in which my historical fiction novels took place:
- England: 25 books
- France: 5 books
- Greece: 4 books
- Italy: 1 book
- America: 1 book
- Norway: 1 book
- Egypt: 1 book
- Russia: 1 book
England and France again top the list. However, I would have a liked a more diverse list here. But well, I do love books set in England. And it’s hard to find other books, when those in set in England just grab my attention immediately.
Regarding the era, I did a lot better in terms of diversity:
- Ancient Greece: 4 books
- 10h century: 1 book
- 12th century: 1 books
- 13th century: 1 book
- 14th century: 4 books
- 15th century: 6 books
- 16th century: 5 books
- 17th century: 7 books
- 18th century: 2 books
- 19th century: 1 book
- 20th century: 4 books
Most of the books were set during the 15-17th century. I read 5 novels that took place during the Wars of the Roses this year, one of my favourite periods. And it surprised me how every novel presented me with a new perspective on the same events. I didn’t read a book about the world wars, neither did I read a story set in ancient Rome (for the second year in a row).
People
These are some of the historical people I read about for the first time this year.
- Jasper Tudor (First of the Tudors)
- Catherina Sforza (The scarlet contessa)
- Dagmar of Denmark or Maria Feodorovna as we remember her (The Romanov empress)
- Elizabeth Poole (The crimson ribbon)
- Lady Evelyn Herbert (The collector’s daughter)
- Queen Eleanor of Castile (The damask rose)
So if I look back on all these numbers, I can only conclude it was a great reading year. And that I’m already looking forward to my next ‘year in books’.
Do you keep track of your reading stats? How many books did you read in 2021? Which one is your favourite?
In Another Era 
That looks like a really good reading year! I keep track of my stats, but haven’t put a post together for 2021 yet. Most of the books I read were set in England too, so I will be trying to read more books set in other countries this year.
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England also always tops my list every year, I don’t know if I will ever be able to change that. I’m looking forward to your stats post!
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