Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

We had 143 responses to our survey this year! See below for the results!







Of the people that completed the survey, 15% completed the challenge in order (or approximately in order). Another 5% committed only using books that they already owned.

The favorite book of the year was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

Other notable favorites included:
- The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
- The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
- The Beartown trilogy by Fredrik Backman

The top three favorite prompts of 2022 were:
- Weeks 8/9/10. Three books set on three different continents
- Week 49. A book connected to the phrase "Here Be the Dragons"
- Weeks 26/27. Two books with the same word in the title
Mod Note: Interesting that two of our multi-week prompts made the top three list, considering how polarizing the multi-week prompts are in the voting process!

The three least favorite prompts of 2021 were:
- Week 39. A book from the TIME list of 100 Best YA Books of All Time
- Week 16. A book related to Earth Day
- Week 28. A book that won an award from the Powell's list of book awards

Hope you enjoyed this look back at 2022! Can't wait to see what 2023 brings!

Seeing results and metrics like this is always neat. Thank you for compiling and sharing!

Very impressive how many of our members read 100 books or more!

For once I am in tune with the group and my favourite was the overall favourite!

Robin P wrote: "Very impressive how many of our members read 100 books or more!"

Indeed. The most I've read so far was 60 books, and that only happened once! But the survey results are inspiring. I'll try to push my reading count this year.

This is beautiful to see. Thank you for sharing.

Love the results! Thanks.

I love this, thanks for compiling!

Love seeing the results, thank you for sharing.

It is amazing how much the groups members read. I wonder how much being in the group has changed peoples reading habits? I know when I first started in 2015 I thought that a book a week was going to be hard; now that seems more than reasonable.

Samantha, I love this question.

My first year doing ATY, I finished exactly 52 books. I found the challenge about midway through the year (when the voting process for the next list had just started) and that 52 was the most I had ever read. Since then, I've read more each year than the year before, hitting 115 last year as my most ever.

I found that the thing that slowed me down the most was the time I spent between books trying to decide what to read next, and the challenge provides me with a decision made for me already.

Same! With the 2015 challenge I thought 52 was almost impossible. I was so surprised with myself when I actually finished Middlesex in that first week, a 500+ page book. I ended up reading 57 books that year.

Emily, that's pretty amazing how yours is increasing every year.

I hope to just keep reading 52 or thereabouts, but my books read sometimes get lower, like 30 or even 20 books.

It's so true that the thing that slows you down is not having something you're excited to read next! Before finding the challenge I thought that I read much more consistently than I actually did — I actually would go through phases of reading a bunch of things one after another, and then a couple weeks where I wouldn't really be reading anything. Now I always know what I'm going to read after I finish my current book.

I think the other thing that's increasing my pace is getting better at picking books that I actually enjoy. Before I started the challenge, I was a new adult and I didn't really know yet what kinds of adult books I would like, so I just tried everything. But now I feel like I'm getting better at picking books I enjoy every year! If I could just get better at DNFing when I really don't enjoy something and it's dragging me down, I bet that would really bump up my pace.

Yes, I remember as a young adult picking up a lot of things randomly to see what I liked. I also used Book of the Month club and similar groups for ideas. And there was no internet to get ideas from, no podcasts, no BookTok, etc. I think that is one reason for challenges like Book Riot that get people to try all sorts of books. It seems like their staff and many of their readers are young.

When I was about 40, I joined a book group at an independent women's book store in my area. The people there were great readers and I made a list of what I called "remedial reading", authors they mentioned that I didn't know, including Barbara Kingsolver and Toni Morrison. I had a Masters degree in French literature and took some English lit too, but we read almost exclusively classics and books by men.

Now there are so many resources, including reviews and recommendations by my GR friends that my "want to read" and my "owned but not read" are each hundreds of books long. And now I have a pretty good sense of what I like and don't like. I've also gotten better at not finishing every book, but I should probably do that even more!

I so agree that not having an idea of what you want to read next slows down reading. I think being part of the group has help me have my next books planned out. I still have reading slumps but they happen less frequently when I am working on the ATY challenge!

I think having the prompts also pushes me to pick up books I've been meaning to read but just haven't yet. Books that might have otherwise sat unread for years get picked up just because I happen to need a book with a zoo animal on the cover or whatever. And the accomplishment high is real! I'm such a list person anyway and getting to put a checkmark next to a prompt is true happiness.

Because I have several challenges going on, it really narrows it down when I find a book that works for more than one of them. That does help me get books lined up and committed to.