A Decade of Books

Last updated on 10 January 2020

This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase with one of these links, I recieve a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read the full Affiliate Policy.

This is my decade of books.

A decade is a long time, and when you read nearly a book a week, that adds up pretty quickly. With a new decade just starting, I suddenly got very curious about the past 10 years and all the books I’d read in that time.

There were definitely ebbs and flows, peaks and pits, highs and lows, [insert other metaphors here], in my reading journey but it has been an absolute joy discovering new books and re-reading old loves.

The beginning of the decade saw me half way through my Philosophy degree at University, and while for many that means not a lot of recreational reading at all, I managed to read a lot of books during my Uni years. In my Philosophy degree we didn’t have that many readings to do (or if we did, I didn’t do them – shhh), and holidays were long and glorious. When you were lounging around at home the majority of the year, working only on and off to earn some pocket money, there was plenty of time for reading.

It wasn’t until 2012, however, that I started using Goodreads. It was the year I moved to England, and not only did I discover the wonders of Goodreads but I lived just 5 minutes from our local library. I also found it really tricky getting a job when I moved to England, so there were months of job hunting all day and then cheering myself up in the evenings reading.

When I finally got back to New Zealand, my blog had grown into more of an ‘everything’ blog, not just focused on keeping my friends and family back in NZ up to date with what I was doing in the UK. Book reviews became a regular occurrence on the blog, and by 2015 I was working with Hachette NZ, receiving free books in exchange for an honest review. Fast forward to 2020, and I’m now working with a bunch more publishing companies and am absolutely loving discovering all these news books each month.

Instead of just writing about all the books I’ve enjoyed over the last decade (though you can check out my 100 Favourite Books of the Decade post), I thought it would be fun to collate together some stats (thanks Goodreads) and turn them into my own wee infographic. Enjoy!

If you’re interested in how I created this, I used Piktochart, which lets you create free graphics.

What’s your decade of books been like?