Hello hello, we’re now in October and somehow we’ve gotten through the third quarter of the year! With the end of a quarter comes my stats update which is always fun for me, y’all know I love a good stats post!
Let’s talk about my reading over the course of July, August and September!
As always, let’s start with the basics — books read, pages read, hours listened and new reads vs. rereads per month.
July, August and September saw me reading a total of 32 books. 11 of those were read in July, 12 of those were read in August, and 9 of those were read in September. Out of the 32 books read this quarter, 30 were new reads and 2 were rereads. My rereads included: We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han, and Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson.
Now for the pages read and hours listened to stats. In July I read 2,376 pages and listened to 15 hours of audiobooks. In August I read 3,113 pages and listened to 11.13 hours of audiobooks, and in September I read 1,506 pages and listened to 19.5 hours of audiobooks.
I would say that July and August were pretty average reading months, but as you can see, September was a real struggle for me. I was in a really rough reading slump after reading Hot Wax at the beginning of the month. That’s not to say that any of these numbers are bad, because they’re clearly not, but for me, it felt like a rough reading quarter and I feel like the quality of my reading quarter was far lower than the first two of the year.
This quarter I read mostly novels, with 29 of my reads being full length novels, and 3 reads being novellas. The novellas I read during this quarter were Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark, Swallowed by Meg Smitherman and But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo.
As for distribution of how I got these books; 9 owned, 9 library reads, 6 ARCs, 4 from Kindle Unlimited, 2 from Spotify, 1 from Audible, 1 from a Book Box (Book of the Month). I’m glad to see that the majority were owned books and books from the library as those two are the ones that I try to prioritize the most. I’m trying to be better about remembering to use my monthly audiobook hours on Spotify since I have them. I’ve made a folder of audiobooks on Spotify that I want to read, so hopefully that helps me continue to take advantage of that aspect of my subscription. I’ve had an Audible subscription for years, and still have some credits to use, but I am planning on canceling my membership after using the rest of the credits that I have at the end of the year.
Lastly, for this section, let’s talk reading method. It was actually a pretty even distribution this quarter which, when looking at graphs, is super satisfying for me. 10 were read physically, 11 were read via ebook, and 11 were read via audiobook. I didn’t have any tandem format reads this quarter, but I would like to get back to that because I really do love fully immersing myself in a book that way.
Now for genres! Last quarter I had a wild distribution of genres, which was great, but this quarter I had far fewer genres, which to be honest, is much easier on me when I’m putting together all of these stats 🤣
This quarter my genre breakdown looks like this: 11 thrillers, 9 mysteries, 7 horror, 3 romance and 2 literary fiction. This breakdown definitely makes sense since Summerween was in July, and mystery, thriller and horror are typically my most read genres.
If my genre distribution this quarter was low, my rating distribution was not.
- 0.5 star: 1
- 1 star: 1
- 2.5 star: 3
- 3 stars: 4
- 3.5 star: 8
- 4 star: 4
- 4.5 star: 9
- 4.75 star: 1
- 5 star: 1
Looking at it all together, the ratings aren’t actually that bad, there’s mostly 3.5 – 4.5 star reads which is great! In my mind this quarter was kind of a flop because enjoyment wise September was so mid, but I did have a lot of good reads this quarter. And some really bad ones as you can see by the 0.5 and 1 star ratings…
I thought last quarter was bad for 5 stars…girlie pop, you did not know the storm that was coming to you. This quarter was awful for 5 star reads. I had one. ONE! I mean, one is better than none, for sure, but man I had expected to have a few more. I did expect that Not Quite Dead Yet would be my 5 star, so I’m glad I was right about that. Hot Wax came so close with a 4.75 star rating, which was actually pretty much what I had expected. I thought it would end up being a 4-4.5 star read, so it did exceed my (already high) expectations but just missed the 5 star mark. However, I could see myself bumping it up to 5 stars upon a reread, but we’ll see!
Let’s hope the end of the year has more 5 stars in store for me.
Last quarter I said to myself “I’m gonna read more books on my 25 in 2025 list!” guess what…I did! Just barely…last quarter I read 3 and this quarter I read 4. From my 25 in 2025 list I read,
- Hot Wax
- Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
- The Husbands
- Diavola
Of these 4 my favorite was definitely Hot Wax, followed by The Husbands, which I really loved, and then I’d probably say that Witchcraft for Wayward Girls and Diavola are tied for third place. Witchcraft for Wayward Girls was in my “authors I’m giving a second chance” section, and just like last quarter, this book I enjoyed much more than the previous Grady Hendrix book that I read, so I will continue to give him a shot.
I now have 9 books left on my 25 in 2025 list. Truthfully, I don’t know if I’m going to get to all 9. A few of them I have plans to read this month, but I’m not totally sure about the others. I’m absolutely going to try to get all of them read, but I’ll try to not be too hard on myself if I don’t.
If you missed them, here’s a list of all my posts from July, August and September! With the exception of July, it’s definitely been a slow few quarters on the blog, but such is life! It’s actually so funny to me that July was a big posting month for me because I was so busy in July.
- Second Quarter Stats
- Mid-Year Freak Out Tag
- 30 Plays in 30 Days
- Not Quite Dead Yet Review
- Summerween Mini Reviews
- July Wrap Up
This last quarter definitely had its ups and downs, and it kinda ended on a disappointing note for me, so I’m happy to have it behind me and am looking forward to the last months of the year and hopefully ending the reading year super strong!
How many books did you read this quarter? What were your favorites? Tell me all the things in the comments!
Until next time 💜
July to September- finished only 3 books