It’s no secret that I love my personal library. And it keeps expanding much faster than I can keep up (or, ehm, justify). As of 2023–12–23, I have 493 books in my bookshelves at home that are also registered in my little database. There are at least 50 or so books that I still need to register. Of the registered books, I’ve read 297 (or approximately 60%).
For most books, and especially after 2014, I also have an exact date read, and we could get this more granular plot.
A lot of books are read within a month. Some books take years. Of course, what this means is that I’ve started reading a book and put it a way for many months, then picked it up again.
But this statistic is already very skewed, because I was a much more avid reader between 2014–2018, and would finish a book per 1.5 weeks on average. This is not super impressive compared to real avid readers, but life is not a competition. (At least I’m trying to convince myself of that)
Most of what I own (and read) is non-fiction. I didn’t have the guts to classify the bible and psalm books as either fiction or non-fiction, so they got their own category spirituality.
My most owned (and read) 15 genres are, to no ones surprise, as follows:
For some books, I have also classified subgenres.
My most read author is the one and only N.N.T. Then there’s popular non-fiction writers like Gladwell. One or two textbook authors made their way in there as well.
For most of the books that I’ve read, I added a rating from 1–5, with 5 being a gripping book
that I could not put away or that made me think differently about life, and the lower ratings are just awful books. Naturally, and thank God, I have no 1-star ratings (if it were that bad, I wouldn’t have bought the book in the first place)! The 2-stars are the fallen angels, I bought them with the hopes of them being 4s and 5s, but they quickly made their way to a solid 2. The 3 stars are in actuality 2s but I either really like the author or the topic (despite my disliking of many details). 4 stars are all round great books.
I’d recommend them to folks.
Finally, and least surprising, my books are on avg 300–350 pages long. The mean is of course heavily influenced by (1) the bible and (2) Swedish law book.
I wonder if book lengths have changed drastically over time? Only problem is: 11 years of data is not enough, my book purchases are not representative of “books” in general, year published does not equal my edition’s year or the year I bought the book, and, lastly, I should get some rest and call it a day.
As usual, I love exploring my life with data! And it is beautifully flawed, skewed, and with non-random measurement errors, and all the rest. One day, I’ll merge all my datasets capturing different aspects of life on date, and it will be absolutely marvelous. Until then, take care and see you on the next BUS!
Uploaded 2023–12–21; Last updated 2023–12–21