Some statistics and trends in the books I read last year

I think I've always been in my pleasantly displayed data era, but it was only this year I learned how to make pie charts in google sheets. Except they didn't turn out very well, so I just googled "make a pie chart" and found a website that makes pie charts. And now I am going to subject you to my pie charts.

This chart displays the genres of the books I read. Since the small slices of the pie chart don't have labels, I will helpfully inform you that I also read three alleged nonfiction books, two thrillers, two sci fi books, one YA historical fiction book, one fanfiction, one children's book, and one book that I categorized as "bad" because I'm not really sure what genre Anxious People fits into, but I sure didn't like it. The alleged nonfiction books were books that consider themselves nonfiction, but I did not feel comfortable putting in categories with books that make true claims about the world. The alleged nonfiction books were The Secret History of the Court of Justinian, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, and Democracy in America. I love Democracy in America, but it makes a lot of claims about what Americans are like with exactly zero public opinion polls to back up said claims. 

The genres I enjoyed the most last year were children's books and fanfiction because I read one of each (Frog and Toad: The Complete Collection and All the Young Dudes respectively) and I gave both of those books five stars. Out of genres that I read multiple books in, my favorites, evidently, were graphic novels (average rating 4.88, or 4.75 if Heartstopper is one book instead of 4); fantasy (4.4166666); and  thrillers (4.25). My least favorite genres were YA fiction (i.e. not fantasy or historical fiction) (3.125); romance (3); and alleged nonfiction (2.66666). Actually, my least favorite genre was "bad" (1), but I feel like that shouldn't count.  

This graph shows the authors I read the most books by.

Of these authors, I enjoyed Katherine Arden's books the most (average rating 5) and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's books the least (2.5), which makes sense since I read none of his books of my own volition. If series only count as one book, I would actually have read two books by Lemony Snicket and Alice Oseman, and one book by Rachel Cusk, Katherine Arden, and J. K. Rowling (in which case my top three authors would be Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky) (in this case, my favorite recurring author would be Banana Yoshimoto (4.33333). This year, I also read two books each by Alexandra Rowland, Alix E. Harrow, Jennifer Saint, Madeline Miller, and Mary Beard. I think if you told someone the top 13 authors I read last year and nothing else about me, they would be able to get a pretty good idea of my personality.

This chart shows who influenced me to read the books I read. Most of the books I read last year were not recommended to me by anyone. The reason I didn't title the graph "who recommended books to me" is that some of these people did not specifically tell me to read the books, and I just saw them reading it and decided to read it as well. Dennis Duncan referenced the excellent book If On a Winter's Night a Traveler in his desperately boring book Index, a History of the (so I forgive him). He did not specifically tell me to read it. I also do not personally know Stephen Breyer (regrettably).

This chart displays the reasons I read the books I read: school or fun. Most of the books I read for fun. Two books (Rubicon by Tom Holland, the other one, and Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy) I read as research for a violently contrarian paper I wrote to annoy my history teacher who was mean to me. I did not read these for school, exactly, because I could have written the paper using only the book we read in class (and indeed my teacher encouraged my class to do this), but I wouldn't say I read them for fun since I read them for research and also I didn't like them. So I would say I read these books out of spite. 

The following chart shows how many of the books I read I had read previously. There is a third category for books that I read twice last year, meaning that they were not rereads the first time I read them, but they were rereads the second time I read them. There is a fourth category because I read The Song of Achilles twice last year after having also read it the year before because I am basic.

This chart shows the original publication language of the books I read last year. Most of them were originally written and published in English, but some of them were translated from other languages.

At the time of writing (January 11th), this year I have read books originally published in Chinese and Norwegian. I also have read a book originally published in Italian, but that's nothing new. I am also planning to read books originally written in several other languages because I want to read a book from every country, although I'm sure that won't happen this year.