Following on from my mid-year goal update, I thought I’d quickly run through some stats and all the books I’ve bought and read this year to see what I’ve read and what I’ve reviewed.
Stats for the first half of the year
As you can see, I’m missing some pretty large regions on this map – check out my mid-year goals update to see what I plan on doing about that.
Even though Storygraph has fun statistics, including genre stats, I typically like to refer to my own stats (especially for genre, since books with multiple genres get tracked once per genre on Storygraph – this is great for seeing what types of genres are included in the books you’re reading, but it also means book with multiple genres count more times than other books, which can skew the results). A big one for me is books that are fantasy or sci-fi but with significant romance get marked as both on Storygraph, whereas I tend to just fold them into fantasy and sci-fi in my own stats since I read less romance-first books and I typically pick them up at least largely because they are sci-fi/fantasy.
As per my current stats, I’ve read much more nonfiction than fiction, most of which has been novellas although 11% of my reading has been short stories. Of the fiction, over 80% has been fantasy or sci-fi, which is very high even for me and I think it’s partially due to some rereading and reading series. I’m not necessarily complaining, but I do see that coming down slightly in the second half of the year. I’m always going to have a high percentage of fantasy and sci-fi but I would like a little more balanced.
My second highest fiction genre is literary fiction (14.9%) and that sounds about right.
As for nonfiction, I’ve not got a huge number to find trends in so far, but it seems dominated by poetry, memoir/self-help and humanities topics. I imagine there will continue to be a lot of humanities, but once I start reading more nonfiction for fun rather than for studying, some science books will start creeping in there (I love reading and learning about science, even if it’s not something I excel at myself).
Books Bought vs Read
Another thing that I’m always keen to keep track of is how many of the books I’ve bought that I then read within the same year, so I thought I’d do a recap of my book purchases so far this year and let you know which ones I’ve read and not.
Let’s first take a quick look at the books I bought for my degree/thesis research:
I’ve bought 11 books related to my degree this year, of which two were books that I had already read previously but borrowed from the library (during my undergrad). I’ve also read a decent chunk of three of the books I’ve purchased, but since I’m currently still using them for research they’re not actually finished as I’m only reading the most relevant sections. I don’t count these books towards my desired ratio of 75% of books read within the year of purchase, since I see them as separate to my ‘leisure’ reading, but I might have to think about how to deal with their TBR status once my degree is over. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, though.
Apart from that, I also bought (a lot of) books just for my own pleasure. In fact, I bought exactly 48 of this kind of book. Which seems like a LOT, especially considering that I have only read 53 books so far this year.
HOWEVER! Of the 48, 13 are books that I had already read but just didn’t own a copy of, so that brings us down to a (slightly) more reasonable 35. A lot of the books were also bought secondhand (for example, I found the whole Charlie Bone series on Vinted for 10 pounds), so it’s not quite as ridiculous as it looks.
There’s also one book that I was supposed to get last year as a present but didn’t get here until this year (that I actually forgot to include in the graphic below), and that is Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan by Rebecca Corbett. I haven’t read it yet, either. The brings me to 36 books.
Of the 36 books that I purchased/acquired without having reading them, I have read 16 and DNF’d 2 more, putting me at exactly 50% read. I would like this number to be a little bit higher, but it’s also not too bad! Hopefully I can get closer to 75% overall by the end of the year.
Books Read (and sometimes reviewed)
Finally, I thought I’d list all of the books I’ve read and link to reviews (if they exist).
If a book is marked as ‘reviewed’, click on the cover to go to my review!
I also DNF’d a couple of books:
And that’s all of the books I’ve read and bought in the first half of 2026.
Have you read any of these?
Keira x
Keira's Bookmark 