Top Ten Tuesday: Changes in Reading Habits

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This week’s topic is Changes in Reading Habits.  This is a good personal one for me because my habits have actually changed a lot in the past few years, and sometimes it’s hard not to default back to them.  I attribute a lot of these changes to joining GoodReads a few years ago- which I do think, when taken advantage of, can help people reach their reading goals.

Trying New Authors – This is probably the biggest change for me in the past five years or so.  I used to find an author I really loved and just read everything they’d write until I was forced to find a new author.  While my reading stats are currently out of date- at last count 69% of the authors I’ve read this year have been new to me.  (In 2018 it was 65% new-to-me, and in 2017 it was 63% new-to-me, in 2016 I think this number would have ben 15-25%).

Reading more women – For some inexplicable reason I have a tendency to read more male authors.  It isn’t something I’ve done on purpose and I don’t even think I realized I was doing it until I started tracking my reading stats.  At my last count I was at 45% women, 52% men, and 3% non-binary.  This is up from 39% women and 61% men in 2017.

Listening to audiobooks – I’m not a good listener.  It’s just not one of my skills.  I finally started listening to audio books in 2018 and that accounted for 10% of my reading.  This year my tally is only 3%, but I also haven’t counted a lot of the short stories I’ve listened to from Amazon (or the book I’m currently listening to: The Strain!).

Reading Graphic Novels – For a long time, I sort of detested the idea of reading Graphic Novels.  It just doesn’t feel like reading to me.  Like it kind of defeated the purpose?  I still don’t read very many, but the ones I do pick up I love!

I DNF – Okay- so before GoodReads I DNF’d quite often.  But not really by choice?  Typically I’d lose interest and just set the book down one day and not pick it back up again.  This year I decided to choose to DNF because I’m not having the greatest reading year and I’m tired of slogging it through books I don’t like.

So those are the five big ones.  Habits I’m still working on: seeking out marginalized and #ownvoices authors, as well as to stop requesting so many ARCs.  I prefer to be able to mood read- and there’s nothing stopping me from picking up new books at the library if I really can’t wait.

Which of your reading habits have changed over time?