My year in books 2021

Just as I did in 2019 and 2020, I will be sharing some insights and fun statistics from my reading year. I will not be sharing the full list of books I read in 2021 in this post. You can find the lists and reviews here, here, here and here. So let's see how my reading fared in 2021.

My year in books 2021

• Number of books read: 39 (1 less than the 40 I read in 2020 - but I did read some very long books last year)
• Total number of pages read: 15 316 (up from 13 977 in 2020)
• Average book length: 392 pages
• Shortest book: Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel at 222 pages
• Longest book: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon at 850 pages

• Most popular (i.e. most read): The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins (which was shelved 3 936 518 times)
•  Least popular: Violette Szabo: The Life That I Have by Susan Ottaway (shelved 493 times)
• Highest rated by Goodreads readers: The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell with an incredible 4.49 average
• My average rating for 2021: 3.4 stars which was rather low but I read quite a few books that didn't quite live up to my expectations and Goodreads doesn't do half stars so it does skew the ratings somewhat
• The first book I read: Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
• The last book I read: My Name Is Eva by by Suzanne Goldring
• The book I read that has been published longest: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim in 1922
• The most recently published book I read: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman in September 2020

• My 5 star reads: sadly, no book I read in 2021 made the five start mark but these came the closest: Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres (4.5 stars), The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell (4.5 stars) and The Pianist by Wladislaw Szpilman (4.5 stars)
• My favourite fiction book: Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres  - it is so very different and so much more moving than the movie
• My favourite non-fiction book: this was a tie between The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell and The Pianist by Wladislaw Szpilman
• The book I enjoyed least: Lord Robert by Jean Plaidy (1.8 stars) - this was quite unusual as I generally love her books
• Most disappointing book: Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens - there was a lot of hype around this book and it got many rave reviews but I felt it just didn't live up to its promise.
• Best suited for a book club: Lea by Pascal Mercier, The  Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain and The Collector by John Fowles all explore themes that can generate numerous interesting discussions
• Number of non-fiction reads: 5
• Month in which I read most: June (5 books)
• Month in which I read least: July and October (2 books) but the total number of pages I read in October is much lower than in July. Strangely enough, October was also the month in which I read the least amount of books is 2020. I was starting to wonder whether something strange happens to me in October but that I remembered that last October we were in Tuscany for a week and I didn't have much time to do a lot of reading while we were there. We'll see how October 2022 fares.

So that sums up  my reading stats for 2021. As you can imagine, I am looking forward to reading many more books in 2022 and sharing some of them with you. I am still debating whether to do my quarterly posts outlining all the books I read during the previous 3 months or just reviewing some of the books that I enjoyed reading most. Any suggestions are very welcome as I don't want to bore you too much with my book addiction.