Technically, I should have done this last month, as a quarterly check in, but I only decided to do this today after updating my Reading Spreadsheet.

This year I set myself a Goodreads target of 100 books to read. I am currently smashing that, as I have read 52 books so far this year.
The Readathon really kicked my reading into gear and April has been my most productive month of books!

In my Spreadsheet I and trying to keep track of various stats. I want to read more diversely, but so far this year I have only read 3 books by persons of colour. It looks even worse to think that those persons of colour include 2 Japanese authors and a half-Black author. I certainly need to expand my reading to include more Black/Hispanic/Arab/South Asian authors as I tend to lean towards Japanese fiction and cannot rely on that to enhance my PoC experience this year. Last year I read 131 books and only 20 were by authors classed as PoC.
15.2% of my reading total last year.
So far, this year only 5.8% of my reading has been from PoC authors.
I need to start looking for more diverse reads, so that is something I will be setting as a target for the next quarter.

I also am tracking the lengths on the books I read and as you’d expect from having read 52 books, the majority are short. I tend to read books of less than 300 pages. Just over 65% of the books I read in fact. The shortest is only 23 pages.
Only 2 books so far this year have been classed as 501 pages or above. The longest was 725, and the other was over 600 pages. My aim is to read more lengthy books.
Last year I only read 2 books over 501 pages in the entire year, so I am on track to improve this as long as I read at least one more lengthy book. 24 books last year were between 301 and 500 pages long (18.3%) so I am already on target to surpass last year.
This challenge will allow me to read some lengthy books I have been avoiding for a while!

Interestingly, 50% of my reading is done on my Kindle, with paperback being preferred over hardback. 90/131 books that I read last year were on my Kindle, which is nearly 69% of my reading. I have made efforts to try and read more paperback and hardback books this year.
I have also listened to 4 audio-books (8% of my reading). I’m not as keen on audiobooks as I was last year, but I am not ruling them out. I just feel more accomplished reading books rather than listening to them.

I think monitoring my reading will help me widen my reading experiences and push me to read more widely.

So far this year has been excellent and I hope to make some headway on the BBC Big Reads 2003 Challenge and on the Read Harder Challenge.

I may have to increase my target for the year on Goodreads as well, at this rate at least!
Next report will be at the end of June as I do my halfway through the year check in.

Stats at a Glance…

Books read so far: 52
January = 16
February = 6
March = 12
April = 18

Books written by one person (men) = 24 (46%)
Books written by one person (women) = 14 (27%)
Books written by more than one person (male and/or female) = 14 (27%)

Books written by Persons of Colour (persons not of white or European heritage) = 3 (5.8%)

Books of 1-300 pages = 34 (65.4%)
Books of 301-500 pages = 12 (23%)
Books of 501+ pages = 2 (4%)
Audio-books = 4 (7.6%)

Most pages = 725
Least pages =23

Paperback = 16 (31%)
Hardback = 6 (11%)
Kindle = 26 (50%)
Audio-book =4 (8%)