I Tracked Every Book I Read for a Year – Here's What the Data Looks Like

I read 34 books last year. I only know that because I tracked them. Without the spreadsheet, I would've guessed around 20. The number surprised me in both directions – I thought I read more fiction than I did and I thought my overall count was lower.

Turns out the gap between what you think you read and what you actually read is wider than you'd expect. That gap is what got me hooked on tracking in the first place.

The counting problem

You think you'll remember what you read. Then someone at a dinner party asks for a recommendation and your mind goes blank. Everything from the last six months disappears. You know you read something good in March, but the title is gone.

I tried keeping a list in my phone's notes app. That lasted about three weeks. The problem wasn't motivation – it was that a plain text list doesn't give you anything back. It's just titles piling up with no context attached.

I wanted to know how fast I was reading, what genres I gravitated toward and whether my ratings actually correlated with anything. A notes app can't do that. A spreadsheet can.

What I track for each book

Every time I finish a book (or abandon one), I fill in a row. The columns are:

• Title and author – the basics
• Genre – fiction, nonfiction, memoir, sci-fi, etc.
• Pages – useful for understanding reading speed
• Date started and date finished – the two dates that make all the analytics possible
• Rating – 1 to 5, gut feeling only
• Status – not started, reading, finished, on hold, did not finish
• Source – library, bought, gift
• Format – physical, ebook, audiobook

The whole thing takes about 20 seconds when I finish a book. That's it. The analytics come from those columns automatically – I don't calculate anything by hand.

The genre surprise

I thought I was a fiction reader. If you'd asked me last January, I would have said I read mostly novels with some nonfiction mixed in. The data told a different story.

60% nonfiction. 40% fiction. Not even close to what I assumed.

The drift happened gradually and I never noticed it. Nonfiction was sneaking in through podcast recommendations – a host mentions a book, I look it up, I buy it and it's always nonfiction. Nobody recommends novels on business podcasts. Over 12 months, those one-off purchases added up to a completely different reading profile than the one I had in my head.

I wouldn't have caught that without the data. And once I saw it, I deliberately added more fiction to my reading list to rebalance.

Reading speed isn't what you think

My average book takes me 12 days to finish. That sounds reasonable until you break it down by genre.

Thrillers average 4 days. Nonfiction averages 22 days. The overall average is meaningless – it's just blending two completely different reading behaviors into one useless number.

Page count matters too. My fastest "book" was a 180-page novella I finished in an afternoon. My slowest was a 600-page history book that took me six weeks, partly because I kept putting it down to read other things in between.

Once I could see the pattern, I started being more realistic about my reading queue. Stacking three dense nonfiction books in a row was a recipe for a two-month reading slump. Alternating with something lighter kept the momentum going.

The most useful thing tracking gave me was an honest answer to "how much am I actually reading?" Not how much I think I read, not how much I want to read. The real number.

The abandoned book question

I used to feel guilty about not finishing books. There's something about a physical bookmark sitting at page 80 that feels like a personal failure. I'd push through books I wasn't enjoying just to avoid the feeling of quitting.

Adding a "Did Not Finish" status changed that. It's a legitimate outcome now, not a shameful one. I log the book, mark it DNF and move on.

Last year, 7 out of 34 books got the DNF label. That's about 20%. And honestly, giving myself permission to stop reading something I wasn't enjoying freed up time for books I actually liked. Those 7 abandoned books probably saved me 3 or 4 weeks of reluctant page-turning.

I also noticed a pattern in my DNFs – most of them were books I bought impulsively after seeing a single recommendation. The books I researched more carefully before starting had a much higher finish rate.

Why a spreadsheet

I used a popular reading app for about a year before switching to a spreadsheet. The app was fine for logging titles, but the social features got in the way. I don't need followers for my reading log. I don't need an algorithm suggesting what to read next based on what strangers rated highly.

The breaking point was when I realized I couldn't add a column for "source" – whether I bought the book, borrowed it from the library or got it as a gift. That's the kind of data I wanted and the app didn't support it. In a spreadsheet, adding a column takes two seconds.

I also like that my data lives in my own Google Drive. If a reading app shuts down or changes their pricing, my entire reading history goes with it. With a spreadsheet, exporting is a CSV download away. The data is mine and it stays mine.

The charts were the other thing that sold me. Seeing a monthly breakdown of books finished, a genre distribution pie chart and a reading pace line – all updating automatically – gives you a picture that no list of titles can match.

Tips for getting started

Start with your nightstand pile

Don't try to reconstruct five years of reading from memory. You'll spend an hour staring at your bookshelf, get frustrated and never open the spreadsheet again. Just log whatever you're reading right now. Add old favorites later if you feel like it – there's no rush and no penalty for an incomplete history.

Rate it the day you finish

Your feeling about a book shifts after a few days, especially after you read reviews or discuss it with someone. The gut rating is the honest one. If you wait a week, you'll second-guess yourself and anchor to other people's opinions.

I rate every book within an hour of finishing the last page. Sometimes I adjust later, but the initial rating is usually the one that sticks.

Track format – it matters more than you think

I realized I rate audiobooks lower on average than physical books. Not because the books are worse – I just retain less when I'm listening while doing dishes or driving. That insight changed how I pick which format for which book. Dense nonfiction gets the physical copy. Light fiction works fine as audio.

Without the format column, I never would have noticed the pattern. It looked like I was just rating certain books lower for no reason.