We’re now half way through 2026…that’s just insane, and since we’re done with another quarter, it’s time for some stats! Let’s talk about April, May and June
As always, we’ll start with my general stats — books read, pages read and hours listened per month and new reads vs. rereads
Quarter 2 saw me reading 59 books, let’s go! That breaks down to 13 books in April, 11 books in May and 35 books in June. Now, I’m sure you’re all sitting there going, “so how did you go from 13 and 11 books two months in a row to 35 books in June, when you always say the summer is your busiest time of year at work?” and to that I say “I read 30 plays in the month of June”. It felt so great to be continually reading throughout the month of June with all the plays that I read and to also get some novels read. It felt a lot like I was getting back into my reading groove, which was fantastic.
As for the other stats for the quarter, they shook out like this:
April:
- Pages Read: 2,996
- Hours Listened: 14.03
- New vs. Reread: 13 new / 0 rereads
May:
- Pages Read: 1,589
- Hours Listened: 28.83
- New vs. Reread: 10 new / 1 reread
June:
- Pages Read: 3,746
- Hours Listened: 10.06
- New vs. Reread: 35 new / 0 rereads
That makes 8,331 pages read and 53.46 hours listed in this second quarter.
It took until April, but I FINALLY found a new 5 star read! It’s not at all shocking to me that my only new 5 star read of the year was one of the books I was most excited to read, and happened to be a Shakespeare retelling that I read during Shakespeare’s birth/death month. The Rest is Silence truly gave me everything that I wanted, my review is listed a bit later in this post if you wanna check it out! I think Yves Donlon is brilliant and will read anything they write — I would love it if they did some more Shakespeare retellings too!
With all of the plays I read in June, plays took up 50.8% (30) of my reads, with novels coming in at 42.4% (25) and non-fiction taking up 6.8% (4). I was really pleased with the amount of non-fiction I read in the second quarter, especially since all of the non-fiction I read were really successful reads for me.
In regards to how I got the books, 47.5% were books I got from the library (28), 33.9% were books I bought this year (20), 6.8% were books I already owned (4), 5.1% were gifted to me (3), 3.4% were from Audible (2), and 1.7% were from Kindle Unlimited or ARCs (1). We always love seeing library reads at the top of this list, support your local libraries! And while yes, it is a little astonishing that 20 of the books I read this quarter were ones that I bought this year, it is good to see that I’m doing a (mostly) good job of reading books I’m buying fairly quickly.
As for reading method, 39.0% were physical reads (23), 37.3% were ebooks (22), 22.0% were audiobooks (13) and 1.7% were multiple format reads (1). Seeing physical reads be at the top of this list is great, especially since I’m trying to read down my owned tbr with a heavy focus on my physical books. I’d love to do some more immersive/multi format reads, but it is harder to get those done with my schedule, so we’ll see if I can do a few more during the third quarter of the year.
We’ve got quite a few genres going on this quarter! Plays are, understandably coming in hot at 50.8% (30), mystery came in at 22.0% (13), non-fiction, fantasy, and romance came in at 5.1% (3), horror and mythology were 3.4% (2), and lastly contemporary, thriller, and biography/memoir are at 1.7% (1).
My star rating splits for this quarter were 50.0% 3-3.5 stars (20), 41.4% 4-4.5 stars (24), 3.4% for 2-2.5 stars and 5 stars (2), and 1.7% for 1-1.5 stars (1). Which equals out to a quarterly rating of…you guessed it, once again the rating for this quarter is a 3.5. An overall rating of 3.5 for a total of 59 books isn’t bad, but I’m hoping that I can tip the scales more in my favor during the third quarter and get my quarterly rating up to 4 stars.
This past quarter I read another 6 books on my 26 in 2026 list! That’s now 12/26 books read, leaving me with 14 more to read in the next 6 months, which is absolutely doable as that is 7 books across July, August and September and the last 7 in October, November and December. This quarter, however, I read the following from my 26 in 2026 list
- The Rest is Silence by Yves Donlon (5 stars)
- Shakespeare and the Gods by Virginia Mason Vaughan (4 stars)
- One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (4 stars)
- Tripping Arcadia by Kit Mayquist (3 stars)
- Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (4.5 stars)
- The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (4 stars)
My favorite was definitely The Rest is Silence, followed by Great Big Beautiful Life. I thought The God of the Woods was a really solid 4 star read with fantastic storytelling/weaving. I think I would’ve really loved Tripping Arcadia like 10 years ago, but it was just fine for me now. Both Shakespeare and the Gods and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This were great non-fiction and I’m glad that I finally got to them.
In case you missed them, here are all of my posts from April, May and June
- What We Did to Survive Review
- First Quarter Stats
- I Could Give You the Moon Review
- The Rest is Silence Review
- April Wrap Up
And just like that the first half of 2026 is over! It’s been a super busy year so far, but lots of great stuff has been going on and some really great reads! I’d love to hear about how this reading quarter went for you, so let me know in the comments!
Until next time 💜
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