Hello, everyone! This is Shannon from That's So Poe, and today I am wrapping up 2019
and thinking about 2020. So in this video
I'm going to talk about my statistics
for reading and my channel in 2019, talk
about the goals that I had set and if I
met them, also reflect a little bit about
how 2019 went, and then talk about what I
would like to do, what my goals and plans
are for 2020. So let's get started with
the statistics. In 2019 I read 169 books, which amounted to about
40,000 pages. I averaged about 233 pages
per book. The breakdown of per month
reading meant that I read about 14 books
on average each month, with my lowest
months at nine books in February and June,
and my highest month in July with 22
books. Even so, 14 books a month is
actually quite a lot for me, although I
did read, you know, somewhat shorter books
this year so that makes more sense. The
breakdown in terms of pages is pretty
similar to the number of book.s My lowest
month here is June, where I had just over
1,800 pages and my highest
month is July where I had just over
5,000 pages. My average per month was
just under 3,500. Next, taking a look at
the size of the books that I read, I had
a lot of short things this year. About
half of the books that I read were under
200 pages. I did really love novellas as
well as children's books this year, so
that makes sense,
but most of the other things that I read
were between 200 and 400 pages, with a
couple of longer things thrown in as
well. The shortest books that I read were
a number of picture books which were 32
pages, and the longest thing that I read
was a Wheel of Time book (unsurprisingly)
at just over a thousand pages. Next
looking at how happy I was with the
reading that I did, I clearly was very
happy.
I had an average of 4.33 stars for the books that I read
this year and I just I think that's
right. I loved what I read. I am NOT
stingy with my five stars at all.
Clearly! I gave almost 40% of the books I
read five stars
and the truth is that I loved them. I
will link below a video that I did a
while back talking about the way that I
rate my books, but basically, for me, 5
stars means I was thoroughly engaged in
the book and nothing about that book
brought me out of the story. So I know
some other people have different kind of
meanings of five stars - things like "Oh,
this is a timeless classic" or something
like that, but for me it just means I
thoroughly enjoyed the reading
experience. And so many books did that
this year. And actually, if you look at my
chart, there are very few things that I
rated below four stars. Part of that,
however, is because I do DNF pretty
liberally. I think I DNF'd
something around like one to two books a
month. And I feel, you know, no problems
with that. I just DNF things if it's
not appealing to me. However, I did have a
number of things, about 20%, which were
lower than four stars: a couple of 3.5, 3, and 2.5, and
one 2 star read. I will leave that to
you to figure out which book that was.
Now moving on to a look at the breakdown
of what kinds of books I read. So I
thought, you know, "Man! I read a lot of
books this year!" 169 is vastly more than
I've read in any previous year. But I
also knew that I'd read a lot of graphic
works, so I wanted to see how the numbers
broke down, looking at graphic versus
just textual books. And actually, it's
fine. I read about 30% graphic
books, but I still read over a hundred
textual books. Looking at the page count,
actually, the graphic books accounted for
even less. They were only 20% of my
reading because a lot of the things that
I read were children's picture books and
they were like 30 pages long, which meant
that I read over 30,000 pages in the
textual books. So that was still pretty
significant. Next, looking at the format
of the books that I read. Most of the
books that I read were novels. That was,
you know, the vast majority. But I read a
lot of novellas this year, which I really
enjoyed, and a lot of collections - poetry
collections and short story collections
and essay collections - and I really,
really enjoyed those.
I also read quite a bit of graphic works
which are in here. And here, the lowest
category is illustrated work which was
basically I didn't know what else to
title it! I read The Electric State by
Simon Stalenhag, which is basically a
short story which has full page
paintings that illustrate the story. And
it really isn't kind of a picture book
or something else. It's it's its own
thing. So that's my lowest category.
Looking at age category, the vast
majority of what I read here was adult. I
really like adult writing. I like the
stories. I like the complexity. However, I
did read still a chunk of YA and
middle grade. I really liked middle grade
this year and even some children's books.
That was kind of new for me, but I found
I'm a fan. Next, looking at genre, I've
read quite a few different fiction
genres. But again, there was a clear
favorite: fantasy is my go-to, and the
majority of what I read was fantasy. Now,
I did lump a lot of things into
fantasy - things like steampunk I lumped
into fantasy, and urban fantasy, and
magical realism, and all these sorts of
things. But really, they're fantasy, so I
bundled it all together. I did read a lot
of science fiction this year, as well as
a lot of contemporary, and then there
were a couple of other genres that I
dabbled briefly in with a book or two. Sush
took a look at this and he was wondering,
"Why do you have two horror books?" Horror is
not my favorite genre at all. Those were
both Coraline. So I read Coraline this
year by Neil Gaiman and then I read a
spanish-language graphic novel
adaptation of it, so both of these were
middle grade horror, which maybe is a
little bit more my pace. In terms of
nonfiction genres, I again had clear
favorites. Almost everything that I read
was either a memoir or a biography. I do
actually like of a lot of other types of
nonfiction, but those are the ones that
maybe I gravitate towards a lot. So next
year I'll try to expand that and read
some other genres within
nonfiction, but I still had a lot of fun
with the nonfiction that I read this
year. Now moving on to a couple channel
statistics. I made 117 videos in 2019, which averaged
to just over two videos a week which is
pretty perfect. That was my goal for 2019,
was to make two videos a week and then
every once in a while I'd have something
else I wanted to make, something extra to
say, so I'd pop in another video. So I'm
really happy with that. In terms of my
monthly priorities, I think I did fairly
well as well. Most of the time, I read
about five or six of the books that I
put on my TBR for the month, plus a few
extras that I ended up picking up that
fit within that theme. My least successful
month, if you have seen my videos, was
unsurprisingly
November, where I only read two of the
books that were on my TBR plus a couple
of other things. But most of the months I
did pretty well in reading things off of
my TBR and often I found a couple of
other books to add i,n so I'm pretty
happy with how that turned out, and I
have a better idea of kind of what my
reading pace is for my monthly priorities
now. So those were the statistics that I
tracked for 2019. If anybody has any
suggestions for other statistics that
are good to track, please let me know in
the comments below. I find that if I
start the year with tracking it, I can do
okay, but it's very hard to add it in
afterwards. And when I track things I
tend to pay attention to them, so I'd
love to hear any recommendations that
you have. Now moving on to the reading
goals that I had for 2019. In 2019, I had
a number of goals. The main goals of
which were to read at least 75 books and
at least 30,000 pages. So I did pretty
well on these. For the 75 books, I
definitely met this goal. I read 169. For the 30,000
pages, again I met this goal. I actually
read closer to 40,000 pages. Then I had a
number of sub goals. The first sub goal
was to read at least 25 nonfiction
books, and I met this goal. I read 26,
although a couple of these were picture
books. But you know
what, they were still nonfiction so it
counts! The next goal was to read at
least ten non-English books, and this one
unfortunately I did not do so well. I
only read five of my non-english books.
So definitely this is something for me
to work on, and I will talk more about
that later when I talk about my 2020
plans. Next was to read at least 10
poetry collections, and I did this. I read
17, so that's more poetry than I
think I've ever read in a year before,
and I really loved it. I especially found
that I loved reading political poetry
and novels in verse. Both of those
really worked for me.
t=The next goal is to read at least 10
short story or essay collections, and
again, I did this. I read 18, and I
found that I loved them. I really, really
loved them. I had discovered last year
that I was finding I actually kind of
liked short stories and essay
collections, so I made it a goal this
year and I just fell in love with it. I
want to read so many more. This is
definitely a favorite new kind of
reading for me to do. The remaining sub
goals that I had were percentage based
ones because I wanted to make sure that
I was getting the diversity in my
reading that I was looking for. So the
first was to read at least 60% women, and
I met this goal. I read over 65% women, so
that was awesome.
The next sub goal was to read at least
60% authors of color, and I almost made
this goal. I read 59%,
so very, very close and pretty close to
on target, but I'd like to get it just a
little higher next year. The last sub
goal was to read at least 25% queer
authors, and again I was very close. I
came in at 24%. So those are both goals
that I'm really happy with, but I
definitely will have to just push a
little bit extra. Just one or two extra
books and I would have met those goals.
Now I'd like to reflect a little bit on
how my 2019 reading year went, both in
terms of the reading itself, as well as
in how my year on Booktube went. So first,
talking about my reading. I actually
had anticipated that my reading might
decrease a little bit in 2019 compared
to 2018, when I read about a hundred
books, because 100 books was actually
still quite a lot for me. And then too,
I thought if I'm starting a Booktube
channel, I'm gonna have to divide my free
time between reading and making videos.
However, it turned out to be sort of the
opposite, where instead of dividing my
time between reading and making videos, I
just made a lot more time for these
things, and many other things like
watching Netflix and such just kind of
fell by the wayside. I wasn't as
interested in doing them. A lot of my
free time now is devoted just to reading
and Booktube and especially, because it's
something that I do as a shared activity
with my husband, so it ends up being a
lot of real quality time for us. So I've
just gotten more into reading this year.
It has been absolutely wonderful. And I
read clearly - 169 books is more than 100 -
so I read a lot more this year. Also, I
really loved the quality of what I was
reading this year. Just such good books
in general! Last year as well I had a
very good reading year, but this year has
just topped it. I've read so many great
books, and I think it's really because of
the influence of Booktube. Not only do I
hear so many great recommendations from
so many people, but I'm really inspired
to challenge myself and to move beyond
my comfort zone into reading things that
I kind of wanted myself to read, but I
don't necessarily pick up as easily. The
monthly priorities have really helped
with that. That's made a huge difference.
And then also just subscribing to some
of the channels that focus on things
that are outside my comfort zone - 
that's just been such a great experience.
And I really appreciate everybody out
there who is working hard on their own
Booktube channels and is kind of pushing
themselves and sharing the things that
they read and that they come across,
because it has led to me having just
such a great reading year. And I also feel like
because I have read so outside of my
comfort zone and so many new authors, new
perspectives, new genres, it has really
widened my worldview. Given me a lot more
understanding and empathy for so many
different people, so many different
experiences. So I feel like as a person I
have also grown this year. Then, talking
about kind of how being on Booktube
itself has been, it has just been
fantastic. I really, really love the
community aspect of Booktube. That has
been a bit of a surprise. I'm not
generally the sort of person who's
looking for socializing in the community.
I tend to be the sort of person who has
like one or two friends, and I see those
and then I'm done. I don't like, you know,
big groups of friends, except that on
Booktube, like, I start to get it. It is so
wonderful to have these connections with
so many different people from all sorts
of different backgrounds based on a
shared interest. And I love being part of
the community. I love hearing what other
people have to say, hearing their
differences and their similarities in
terms of our opinions, hearing their
perspectives, getting their insight into
things that I, you know, wouldn't have
ever thought to view something that way.
So all of that has been really enriching.
The discussions that we have in the
comments -
everybody is so, so kind and so wonderful
and has such great things to say and
communicate with each other, so I love
participating in the discussions. And
then also, I've done a ton of buddy reads
this year and that's been so much fun. I
have loved the budding reads that I had
done, so everybody who did a buddy read with
me, thank you so much, because that was a
really good experience - not only in
prompting me to pick up a book that
maybe I wouldn't have otherwise made
time for, but also just getting that
experience to kind of discuss as we go
and hear your perspective. That was
wonderful. The other thing that was
really cool this year was getting to
meet some Booktubers in person. So
Sush and I went to WorldCon ,which was so
exciting. And, you know, when we decided to
to go, we didn't think we would know anybody,
and we got invited to join in with a
bunch of Booktubers who were going to
WorldCon. So thank you, Rachael @ Kalanadi
for inviting us into the group. And it
was just so much fun! Everybody was
wonderful. I made a video of shout
outs about all the Booktubers that we
met there, so I'll link that below. But
just such great, wonderful people. And
even now, we're continuing to meet people.
Recently we met Priscilla @ Bookie Charm
and her sister Yvette @ BookCave
because we were in their hometown and I
just messaged them and said,  "Hey, you want
to get coffee?" and so we did. And they
showed us to a really cool local
bookstore as well. So it's so much fun
being part of the community, getting to
meet people, getting to learn about them,
to hear their viewpoints. Absolutely
loving that! And I'm loving that Sush
and I are doing this together. He is not
someone who wants to create his own
Booktube channel - that would just stress
him out  - but he's totally into Booktube.
Some people may notice sometimes I'll
comment like, "WE thought that your video
is really great.." because often Sush and
I will watch the videos together. He
watches a ton of them with me. We discuss
it all the time. He comes and he guest
stars in some of my videos. So it's
become a really fun shared activity for
us as well. So thank you to everybody in
the community for making this year just
the best! Okay, so now moving on to 2020.
My reading goals for 2020 are gonna be
very similar to this year because it was
a great reading year. Again, I want to
read at least 75 books. I'll be totally
happy if I only read 75. This year, 169
was kind of crazy large. I'm totally fine
with scaling that back if I tend to pick
up longer books or things that just take
a little bit longer to work through. But
I think at least 75 is a good number for
me and I'd like to get again at least
30,000 pages. So those are my main goals.
For my sub goals, I again would like to
read at least 25 nonfiction books. And I
would like to keep my non-English goal,
but I'd actually like that up it just a
little to 12 books in the year. And I'll
talk a little bit more about that when I
talk about my channel plans 'cause I've got
an idea!
In terms of the poetry and the short
story and essay collections, I think I
don't need to put that as a goal. I just
now have discovered that I love those
types of books and I'm gonna try to read
more of them in general, but I don't need
to have a specific number for them
because that's already integrated now
into my reading. In terms of percentages,
I do want to keep the 60%
female author ratio, 60% author of
color ratio, and 25% queer author
ratio, but I want to add in an additional
15% disabled author statistic
because I found this year, you know, I did
a month focusing on disabled reads. It's
a monthly priority and that made me
really conscious that I don't
necessarily pay attention to that. That's
not something that I seek out, but I
really would like to hear those voices.
You can't always necessarily know about
somebody's disability. Often it's a very
private thing, they haven't shared it, or
it's something very hidden. But I think
that if I read a book that has on-page
really good representation of disability,
regardless of if I know anything about
the author having a disability, I'll
include that as well. And many of these
authors do talk about things about their
private lives as well and I might, with a
little bit of research, be able to find
more authors or understand more. Plus,
I'll keep the disability part of my
monthly priority so I'll get some books
in then. Now moving on to my channel
plans for 2020. Many of the things I will
keep the same. I still plan to make about
two videos a week. Sometimes I might add
in a third one. I found that in 2019 just
doing two videos
a week sometimes meant that I just
didn't have room for some of the extra
videos that I wanted to make. So I might
add in a third one here and there.
Especially in January there's gonna
be a third one most weeks because
there's a lot to say. I have a lot of things
that I want to do. I also am gonna be
keeping my weekly wrap ups. This was
something that I had toyed with the
idea of switching to bi-monthly
wrap-ups, and I really want to thank a
bunch of people who kind of talked this
out with me. Eva @ Eva Strange kind
of had made a comment about how she
really liked the weekly wrap ups and
that got me really thinking, you know,
"What do I want?" so I talked about it with
her a little bit and with Paul @ Paul
Weymouth and with my cousin Jade @
Bedtime Bookworm as well as of course
Sush. Sush got a lot of my, you know,
pondering of what style do I want to do.
But I decided that I want to keep the
weekly wrap-up format because it is a
really low-key way for me to check in
about what I've been reading right as
it's fresh in my mind and it's very good
content that I like to make. So I'm gonna
keep with that, but I'll just add in a
couple of extra videos here and there
that I was feeling I didn't have the
room for before. Jade had had a good
suggestion which was things like, if you
want to film a standalone review, just
film it as soon as you've read the book
and fit it into your schedule later. So
it doesn't have to be edited or posted
right away. Just make sure you film it as
soon as you've read the book because
that was what I found I was struggling
with - I had read all these books that I
wanted to do standalone reviews for and
I didn't have time and then by the time
I had time I had forgotten almost
everything I wanted to say. The other
thing that I'll be continuing is the
monthly priorities project. I'll have a
separate video soon kind of talking
about my plans for that for the year.
Most of it will be the same, but I have
made a few tweaks to the specifics of
how I'm gonna work that out. And then I
have some new projects, some new things
that I want to do. So the first of which
is that I do want to do more standalone
book videos. So reviews, yes, but more so
discussions and reflections. I found that
when I want to talk about a book in
addition to what I've done in a weekly
wrap-up, what I want to do is not
necessarily review whether it's good or
bad, I just want to talk about it. I want
to discuss the thoughts that I had and
the themes that it brought up and the
ideas that it had to share. And I just
want to talk more about it than is
necessarily the way I do a wrap-up in a
weekly video. So I want to do more of
these. I also want to push myself to add
closed captioning to at least my weekly
wrap-up. So closed captioning is something
that is definitely an important
accessibility issue and there are a
number of Booktubers who are awesome
about this who add closed captionings to
every video they make. Adriana @
perpetualpages does this; Priscilla @ Bookie Charm does this; Yvette @ BookCave does
this; and Kazen @ Always Doing does
this. In fact ,she did closed captioning
for every video of vlogmas. Priscilla
and Yvette and I were talking about that and
just so impressed by, you know, her work
ethic and like getting that done. And I
have been interested in adding closed
captioning to my videos for a while. I do
think it's an important thing to do, but
I was a little intimidated by it. However,
YouTube does add automatic captions to
your videos, so as part of that
processing uploading process it creates
these automatic captions based on its
kind of language model. And I took a look.
It's actually fairly accurate for me.
Whatever language model they use is
pretty closely aligned with my speech
patterns and so it is pretty accurate. So
I'm going to be trying to, at least for
my weekly wrap-ups, consistently add closed
captionings where you just go in, edit
those automatic ones by, you know, adding
punctuation, fixing words that it got
wrong, that sort of thing. And then if I
can, I'll do it for
other ones as well. If anybody out there
has suggestions for ways to be better at
adding closed captioning, like if you
have any tricks or tips or anything like
that,
please let me know in the comments below
because I'm new to it and I might not do
such a great job at the beginning. But it
will be a learning process! Hopefully by
the end of 2020 I'll be so fluent in it
and comfortable with it that from that
point forward I can just use closed
captioning for all of my videos. But for
now, one step at a time. I'm going to
start with my weekly wrap-ups. The other
things that I wanted to add this year
are a couple of new projects. And I
hadn't originally been planning on these,
but over Christmas Jade and I were
chatting and she asked me what new
things I was gonna do in 2020 and I
realized ... I didn't have any plans. So I
thought, you know what, I can push myself
a little bit. I can ask myself, "Where do I
want to grow?" and create some ideas for
that. So the first of these,
unsurprisingly, is that I would like to
read more non-English books. So I'd like
to give myself a non-English book
project where for 2020, I read one book
every month (so a total of 12) in a
different language. The languages that I
have books in are mainly Japanese,
Spanish, and French but I might have one
or two in German as well. I'd like to
read them and then I would like to do a
review in the language that I read it in.
The review is definitely a very
challenging part of this because I'm not
that fluent in any of these languages.
Japanese is okay, but even so I find that
in front of the camera I struggle a
little bit with it, whereas, you know, in
conversation I'm much better. So that's a
challenge for me,
but I feel like if I prioritize it I can
do it. So I will have a video out later
this month talking more in depth about
kind of what I'm gonna be doing for that
and what books I'm gonna be reading and
everything like that. The other project
that I'd like to do as well is another
place where I found I wasn't reading
enough, which is social justice nonfiction.
So I found that I read a ton of memoirs
and biographies this year, but there's
also a lot of much more academic, essay-
based kind of research-based books that
I would really like to read about social
justice. They are high on my interest
level, but low on my actually picking up
level. So I need to prioritize those. So I
would like to similarly create a project
where every month I read one social
justice nonfiction and I create a video
talking about that. Not necessarily a
review, but probably more of a discussion
of the topics covered in that. So again,
I'll come up with a video later this
month talking about that in more detail
about kind of what social justice is and
what I want out of the project.
So those are my plans for 2020. I am
really, really, really, really excited. I
had such a great year in 2019 and I'm
really looking forward to 2020. If you
guys have videos up talking about what
you're gonna be up to, looking at 2019
and how it went, I'd love to hear about
them.
Maybe I've already seen them. A lot of
people already have them up. But
definitely tell me in the comments below
so I can check yours out if I haven't
already commented on it. And if you guys
just have any general suggestions for me,
by the way, I am very interested in
hearing any recommendations or
suggestions for what I can do to improve
my channel. I've had a couple of people
give me some suggestions that were
really, really helpful. Things like Ian @
Nur Chaos had suggested that I put up
thumbnails of the books that I've read
for each weekly wrap-up so that it made
it a little easier to kind of go through
and remember which ones he had already
seen and, like, that was such a great idea!
So if you guys have noticed anything or
you have any suggestions for what I
could do to make 2020 an even better
year, go ahead and let me know in the
comments below. I'd love to hear it.
And I wish you guys all the best for
getting started on all of your exciting
new ideas for 2020. I will have a video
coming up soon
wrapping up - not wrapping up - talking about my
favorite 2019 books too, so look out for
that soon.
