Reading Between the Lines
My history with book tracking apps and what I deem worth paying attention to
Something I’ve spent significant time thinking about over the past several years has been my book consumption habits.
It started out with simply tracking the books I read on Goodreads back in 2016, which made me aware of how much I read and provided a nice log to look back on. It was also a nice place for noting books I want to read in the future.
Then after I’d been tracking what I read for several years, I came across this spreadsheet [similar here] that took it up a notch. It was the same basic information as what Goodreads allowed me, but with several extra dimensions, mostly about the author’s identity (think gender, nationality, POC, etc.) and where I heard about the book. I then added genre and publication year. While the latter were available on Goodreads, they weren’t that easily trackable and I felt that Goodreads’ reporting mostly focused on volume anyway.1 I wanted to focus on other aspects of my reading.
By looking at this other info, I started to become more conscious of the demographic makeup of what I read. Was any of it all that surprising? Not really, no, I knew this stuff on a subconscious level. But manually entering this information into a spreadsheet for a couple years served to bring me a new level of awareness.
I’m reminded of this quote I learned recently from psychologist Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
While I don’t think Jung was referring to something as simple as the metadata of the books one reads throughout their life, I think this quote applies all the same. By becoming more aware of the origin of the voices we consume, we understand who is influencing us.
When I first started looking at this, I realized the bulk of the fiction I read was written by women, while conversely the majority of the nonfiction was written by men. I was also reading predominantly from white, straight, American authors. Is there anything inherently wrong with this? No. But once I became aware of it, I found that I naturally started to seek out a bit more diversity in authorship. This was coincidently right around the time George Floyd was killed and our newsfeeds were flooded with books about racism and fiction by Black authors. This messaging helped to reinforce my intention to diversify my reading. And I saw it reflected in my stats the next year.
In seeing the gender makeup of what I read, I felt a little annoyed. I knew the majority of my fiction was written by women but I was a little surprised to realize the majority of my nonfiction reading over the years was authored by white cis males. This trend has since changed as my nonfiction reading has branched out from the business books I typically gravitated toward in the late 2010s.
I stopped using this spreadsheet method last year when I stumbled upon a new app Storygraph (Black-owned and an Amazon alternative!)2. However, I decided while writing this I am going to revisit this habit as I love seeing my trends. This isn’t so much about setting goals to read x% books by this gender and y% books by this race, etc., but rather to keep me aware in my consumption. Reading is supposed to be fun, after all, hence why I don’t like attaching goals to it. But I do think it’s important we don’t sit in an echo chamber, with all thoughts and ideas coming from people whose backgrounds match our own.
It goes without saying the value in seeking out diverse voices - so much of reading is already opening us up to new ideas because when we read, we are in an information-receiving state of mind. But are we consciously aware of who we’re reading? How does this change over time? Why are we reading the voices we choose?
Once you start tracking this and paying attention to it, it might get you wondering about the publishing industry in general. Because sure, we can seek out diverse authors, but WHY are so many of the business books I’ve read written by white men, for example? Does that mean there are more business books authored by white men (a publishing problem), or is it the channels I’m paying attention to (an advertising or sphere of influence problem)?
Another thing I found fascinating to look at (this is the data analyst in me) was the seasonal trends of my reading in years past. Again, was any of it surprising? No, but to see it graphed out made me giddy with geekiness—see below. I kid you not, I made my family sit down while I projected this onto our TV and walked them through it like I was giving a work presentation.
I saw that my time to finish a book generally skyrocketed in the spring and summer months, and was lowest in the winter. Not at all surprising given summer is typically my busiest season socially, but interesting as it helped me realize that I have to be more intentional about reading during the summer months.
This is just the tip of the iceberg—there’s so much you can learn about yourself by paying attention to what you read, how you read, and why you’re reading it. This goes for content of any kind, not just books, but I’ll leave it there for today.
I’d love to hear—how do you track your reading? Are there data points I’m missing?
A quick note on reading volume - I don’t think this is important. One of the cons of these book tracking apps, and social media in general, is the comparison game they’ve established amongst readers. They create pressure to perform/hit a certain number [ahem, capitalism], rather than simply reading for pleasure. While I’ve inevitably compared my habits to others, I’ve been mindful when setting any kind of reading “goal.” I have tried to gradually increase my reading volume, but I have done so for me, based on my habits and what I think is achievable. This is the pro of tracking! It allows you to see your data points so you can set informed intentions.
It looks like Storygraph has authorship stats on their roadmap, but TBD on when and whether it’ll be a free or paid feature.