What I read in 2016

Welcome again to my annual summary of the books I read this year. In 2016, I read 82 books. I managed to read at least 100 books in 2015 and 2014, but this was a busier year for me, especially at my day job. However, I’m still happy with the amount of reading I managed to do in the last twelve months.

The ratings for the books I read this year broke down as follows:

• 5 stars - 23 books
• 4 stars - 30 books 
• 3 stars - 29 books 

This works out to an average rating of 3.93 stars per book, almost identical to my average rating of 3.92 last year!

Of the 82 books I read, 26 were indie published. This is a smaller percentage than last year’s 47%.

The ratings for the indie published books were distributed in an interesting way:

• 5 stars - 5 books 
• 4 stars - 13 books 
• 3 stars - 8 books 

For some reason, there were far more 4-star books than 5- or 3-stars. 4-star indie books accounted for 43% of all the 4-star books I read this year, while indie books comprised only 22% of the 5-stars and 28% of the 3-stars. Why did the indie books cluster so much around the 4-star rating? I have no idea, except that it seemed that the indie books I read were largely good but not great whereas there was a broader spectrum to the traditionally published books I read in 2016.

In my next post, I’ll list my top ten favorite books of the year. Stay tuned!