Doing end of year wrap-ups are truly terrifying. It’s exciting to see all the books I read and loved but oh my god, all the goals I didn’t meet? The number of books I bought? I can’t deny it’s scary.

2019 had many reading goals. I set myself overarching goals and specific ones. For the life of me I cannot find a post where I set myself reading goals for the year but I did make a video so I’ll base it off that.

So let’s list some of the things I aimed for:

• To read big books
• To read 50 books
• To read recommendations/gifts
• To read ARCs as the come in and not let them get on top of me

I think those goals sum up the gist of what I was going for. But did I meet them? Well. I did read 50 books so we can start with ticking that one off the list!

Given that one of my challenges was to read big books, I’m really pleased with this. 50 is a bit lower than what I usually aim for because the idea was to reduce the book count but keep the page count relatively high. I also did a really good job on this so I’m pleased to say that this strategy worked. I felt encouraged to read bigger books because I had more time.

This is quite the contrast to the mad race I’m challenging myself to in 2020 to hit 95 books, nearly doubling my pace!! Now, whilst I had specific large books I was hoping to get around to, I do confess that almost none of this TBR loiterers got read. Shame. Apparently, they’re just too intimidating. But let’s look at the stats between 2019 and 2018 to compare.

I definitely read more books, as you can see, in 2018. This statistic is intentional so I don’t feel defeated by the nearly 20 books swing happening there. But!! The most exciting statistic is to look at the difference in page count.

It’s so much closer! It was a 16% drop in page count vs a 25% drop in books. I’m honestly proud of this. If I’d read the same sized books that I’d read in 2018, we’d be looking at nearly 6.5k pages less!! I’m honestly proud to say that I made a real effort to choose larger books.

But what did I actually read? Seeing as I didn’t get around to books like Tigana, Vanity Fair or David Copperfield, how did I manage that page count? Below are the largest books I read in 2019 with one of the Outlander books taking out a massive first title win.

Many of the books I read in 2019 fell between 450 – 500 pages. I had hoped I would read a few more actually over the 500 mark but I’m pleased with my efforts nonetheless. Three out of these eight books were audiobooks. You can see below that the largest page count bracket was the 300-400 but it was very closely followed by that of 400-500.

This wouldn’t be an Upside-Down Books wrap up if we didn’t then look at the split of genres for the year. This is the statistic I’m most intrigued to see because Fantasy almost always wins but I made a really strong effort for Sci-Fi this year. I won’t include as many subgenres as I usually do in my wrap ups, however.

So fantasy and sci-fi drew! I thought the interesting thing about this chart was the fact that Historical Fiction came second after the tied first. I love historical fiction but I often find I don’t read that much of it. So it’s nice to see the statistics reflect the reality!

Considering finishing off some series was something I had hoped to do, I confess I didn’t do a good job on this one. I still have so many series to read! In fact, I started far more series than I finished.

These were the three series that I finished:

I am aware that there are more books to this series but this is technically the first trilogy, so it counts! Shhh.

Truth be told, I’m patiently waiting for Fry to release a third book in this series but so far it hasn’t been announced. I’d expect the third one to focus on Troy.

Well I’ve just seen there’s actually been a third book announced for The Belles series so poop. But for the sake of me feeling more accomplished, we’re going to say this counts towards a series finished.

Another interesting statistics is looking at the difference between books that I read that were part of a series and those that were a standalone. The result is more or less what I expected, I usually read more series than not.

Now, when we look towards how I did with tackling my overall TBR, we can see I did a terrible job. Reading a lower book count but high page count was great but not helpful towards reducing that ridiculous TBR. Add in the fact that I have no self control and this is the statistic we’re looking at for books read in 2019 vs books bought/received.

So as you can see, my TBR sure as hell did not go down last year. I laugh. 97 books?! Seriously, how did I actually manage that? I am delighted and mortified in equal parts.

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Favourites

So let’s take a look at my favourites from last year!

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Favourites in Genres

Young Adult Contemporary

Contemporary

Young Adult Fantasy

Fantasy

Young Adult Sci-Fi

Sci-Fi

LGBT+

Thriller/Mystery

Children’s Fiction

Non-Fiction

Mythology

Retelling

Historical Fiction

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Favourite Covers

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Content Statistics

Most popular blog posts

Ten Fantasy Books You HAVEN’T Read Yet
Review: A Curse So Dark and Lonely
Reading Procrastination
Characters with Disabilities
Books Worth Buying

Most popular YouTube videos (evidently book hauls are the way to go)

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And that brings me to the end of my wrap-up! 2019 was an interesting year and lots happened. Some good, an unfortunate chunk of bad, but hey! At least I read some awesome books. Here’s to achieving even bigger reading goals in 2020!

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~~ Kirstie ~~

Follow @ozbooksnail