How do you review your reading year?

Why do your own review when apps do one?

App summaries count. They tell you how many books, how many pages, perhaps your top genre. Goodreads has Year in Books, The StoryGraph builds charts of moods, pace and genres, and Fable describes monthly sharing. All useful, none of them asks the questions that change next year: why did March go well, why did you abandon three books in a row, what did you keep meaning to read?

Step 1: gather the whole list

Pull together everything, not just one app:

• Your tracker's read and did-not-finish shelves. Goodreads exports a CSV file, and so do several other trackers.
• Your library history. Libby's Timeline can be exported as a table or a spreadsheet.
• Your notes, paper log or journal.
• Audiobooks, which some readers forget to log.

Step 2: look at five things

Stats apps help with the first two rows; The StoryGraph charts most of it for you. The rest needs ten minutes of your own judgement.

Step 3: write five sentences

One per question. For example: "Audiobooks were a third of my year; I should stop pretending I only count print." Or: "I read most in months with a commute; I read least in August." The stats guide covers what each app measures.

Step 4: turn it into next year

Choose one habit change and one goal:

• The habit change comes from your strong and weak months. If bedtime reading carried you, protect it; the bedtime routine guide helps.
• The goal comes from your real total, set a little above it, as the reading goals lesson explains. If you want a theme, the reading challenge ideas has thirty.

What about the books you meant to finish?

A review often turns up two or three good books abandoned halfway because life got busy, not because the book failed. Put one of them at the top of next year's list. Coming back months later is easier with your own note or a recap that stops at your place; Magic Bookmark gives one for supported titles.

What questions make the review useful?

Numbers are the easy part. These five questions turn them into decisions:

1. Which book do you still think about, and what kind of book was it?
2. Which books did you finish out of duty, and could you have stopped?
3. Which month did you read most, and what was different about it?
4. Which format did you use most, and was that a choice or a habit?
5. What did you mean to read and never started?

Write one sentence for each. The answers usually point to next year's reading better than any total.

How do you gather the data from different apps?

Bring everything into one list before you count:

• Goodreads' Year in Books and The StoryGraph's stats give you books and pages from those apps.
• Libby's Timeline can be exported as a table or spreadsheet, which covers library ebooks and audiobooks.
• Fable shows goals and stats inside the app.
• Paper logs and journals need a quick count by hand.

Remove duplicates where one book appears in two places, then do the review on the combined list. The reading log template works as the combined list.

What do you do with the review afterwards?

Keep it where next year's December self will find it: a note in your tracker, the last page of a reading journal or a file named by year. Read last year's review before you write this year's. Two years side by side show what is changing in your reading, which one year alone cannot.

When should you do it?

Any time in the last weeks of the year or the first of the next. An hour with a drink and your list is enough. Keep the five sentences somewhere you will see them next December.