TIME FOR ONE OF MY FAVOURITE BOOK TAGS! In huge part because it gives me an excuse to make ALL THE PIE CHARTS.

SORRY NOT SORRY.

If you want to see how my answers have changed over time, you can see them here: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020.

How Much Have You Read?

122 books! Which…is somehow the exact same as last year?! That’s never happened before!

But it IS pretty standard for my reading to be around this number at this point in the year – exactly this in 2025, 120 in 2023, and 114 in 2022. (The 91 in 2024 was clearly an outlier!) I guess that means that the speed of my reading, and also the lengths of the books I read, tend to stay the same from year to year? Interesting!

What Have You Been Reading?

Otherwise known as, THE PIE CHART SECTION!

As usual, Fantasy dominates – as it should! – with 66% (when you round up) of my reading. That’s an increase from last year’s 59%, which pleases me.

On the other hand, Sci Fi fell a bit – to 19%, from last year’s 22%. I suspect this is due to the Horror reads – last year I read so little horror that it didn’t even get its own slice of the pie chart! So this is a HUGE bump – from some part of the 2% ‘Other’ slice of last year, to 12% in 2026! I’m very okay with that. I mean, I really would like to be reading more Sci Fi, but I’m happy to be reading more horror at last!

Slightly fewer 5★ reads this year – 28%, from last year’s 32%. And last year’s 25% 4★s have gone down to just 18%! PLUS the DNFs jumped by almost 10% (last year they were only 30% of my reading). HI I HATE ALL OF THIS.

I’m not sure how to rectify it, though? I could decrease my tolerance for 3★ books, I guess, but that would just mean more DNFs. That could give me more time for 5★s, but it wouldn’t guarantee it.

ADVICE HERE WOULD BE WELCOME, FRIENDS!

White authors still dominate, but this is better than last year! 19% BIPOC authors, up from last year’s 16%. That’s not a lot, but I’m just going to be glad there was ANY improvement. (Unknown, as you probably guessed, covers those few authors whose ethnicities I genuinely couldn’t discover.)

I do NOT track author queerness, because I find it gross to speculate/obsess over author sexuality, I think it’s none of my business, and the numbers will never be accurate because I’m sure plenty of authors are not publicly out. Thus, I only track whether the PROTAGONISTS of the books I read are queer or not.

And this is a huge improvement!!! 70% queer MCs, from just 46% last year! HELLS YEAH! This is exactly what I want this chart to look like, dominated by queerness!

(The 3% Unknown slice = Middle Grade books with characters too young to be expressing attraction to anybody.)

Now we come to the stats I have not included in the Mid Year Freakouts before! I started tracking some of these for my end-of-year wrap-up in December, and I decided they’d be fun to include here too.

I counted self-published and indie-published together under the Indie umbrella, mostly because the line can get very blurry when we get down to micro-presses and lots of self-published register as companies they then publish under/as.

With that understood… I’m quite satisfied with these numbers. I’d like the indie slice to be bigger next year, but I’m glad to know I was skewing indie even before I started paying attention!

How willing am I to try new authors? Very, apparently! A whole third of my reading so far this year have been from authors new to me in 2026. (That does mean that if I fell in love with a new author and read 8 books by them, they all went in the New slice.) This pleases me! I’d be surprised if new authors ever came to dominate; who doesn’t read mostly authors they’ve loved before? But I’m glad I’m willing to try as many new-to-me authors as I am.

Very okay with this chart too – I like to reread, and I’m not going to stop, but I’m glad to mostly focus on new-to-me books.

(I wish I could see these stats for baby!Sia – I used to turn the last page of a book and immediately start over, so I imagine rereads dominated back then!)

The new-to-me numbers got me curious about my DNFs – and not very surprisingly, the vast majority of the books I DNFed were by authors I hadn’t read before. I’m not sure if this says anything about my willingness to try new authors? I feel like there should be some connection, but I’ve never rocked at math so I’m not sure what (if anything) it might be.

The 14% of DNFs being authors I know feels like it could be interesting. I think it means that it’s pretty rare for an author I’ve loved once to then release something I can’t stand? That would be a great thing!

About a third of what I’ve read this year was 2026 releases, but the majority were backlist books. VERY pleased by this, it’s pretty much exactly what I was hoping for. As much as I love looking forward to new releases, I don’t want to ever let them drown out all the amazing books that are already out there!

How Are Your Challenges Going?

Not part of the standard tag, but I’ve spent a few years doing reading challenges and it just makes sense to measure progress halfway through the year!

r/Fantasy Bingo: 11 squares of 25 completed! (And several I COULD count as finished, but I want better fits for the prompts.)

r/QueerSFF Challenge: 10 of 12 prompts completed!

The Duck Prints Press Queer Book Challenge: 8 of 10 prompts completed!

Shimmering Worlds Challenge: 9 of 12 prompts completed!

26 For 2026: this one’s…kinda complicated. I’ve read 8 of the 26 books listed, BUT, I want to replace a bunch of the books there. Need to sit down and actually do that!

All in all, I think progress is good! The 26 For 2026 is by far the worst, which amuses me because it’s the only list I made myself.

Best Book/s You’ve Read So Far In 2026

It really has been a most INCREDIBLE book-year! For last year’s tag, there were ‘only’ eight books in this section – this year I couldn’t leave out a whole FIFTEEN! Which should say it all, really! (And honestly, there are a bunch more books I’m resisting including here, just because this post is long enough already!)

Best Sequel/s You’ve Read So Far In 2026

The sequels are knocking it out of the park too this year! (And I realise A Long and Speaking Silence is chronologically before the previous books, but it’s the most recently-published instalment in its series so I’m counting it!) (Also, the only reason To Ride a Rising Storm isn’t here is because I read it for the first time last year. BUT IT’S AN INCREDIBLE SEQUEL AND YOU SHOULD READ IT IF YOU HAVEN’T YET!)

New Release You Haven’t Read Yet, But Want To

Tragically, Agnes, We’re Not Murderers! did not get an ebook release, so it’s unlikely that I’ll EVER get to read it (I read ebooks-only for a few reasons, but most of them are disability-related, so…)

Saltswept and Funeral Song are both on my Unmissable list, but I just haven’t gotten to them yet. (There are actually several more Unmissables I haven’t gotten to, but my interest in those ones has waned. That’ll make the Unmissable stats interesting come December!)

Most Anticipated Release/s For the Second Half of the Year

I just covered this recently, but I never miss an opportunity to talk about my anticipateds!

Unusually, there are THREE YA books here – Lavender & Hemlock, Scorpion Deep, and Traitors’ Nest. Since the Scapegracers trilogy wrapped up, I don’t know if any YA has made it onto my most-anticipated lists. Interesting!

Biggest Disappointment/s

The first three were books I was REALLY looking forward to, and Scholar of Magics was the extremely lame sequel to the magnificent College of Magics. I did finish it, but wow was that a trial.

Biggest Surprise/s

All of these came out of nowhere for me, albeit in slightly different ways – On Sundays She Picked Flowers was not at all on my radar until a publicist mentioned it to me just a few days before its release, and near-instantly became one of my All-Time Favourites; Swan’s Daughter I picked up on a whim, not expecting to care about it at all and ending up enchanted and obsessed; Too like the Lightning and Children of Time were both books I read because they were part of challenges, and HOLY WOW THE HYPE WAS NOT WRONG; I knew almost nothing about Maej going in, certainly not that it’s a SHAKESPEARE-LEVEL MASTERPIECE; and Forest Bleeds was one I downloaded on a whim because it was marked queer from a publisher that auto-approved me on Netgalley – and I INHALED that book, oh my GODS.

It’s always so cool when a book you didn’t know existed or expected to bore you BLOWS YOUR SOCKS OFF INSTEAD.

New Favourite Authors (Debuts or New To You)

Alllllllll of these authors have gone DIRECTLY onto my auto-buy list!

Underrated Gems You’ve Discovered Recently

These are both indie published – Lynn Strong self-publishes, and Maej is from micro-press tRaum Books. So it goes without saying that neither are well-known. BUT THEY SO DESERVE TO BE! Chai and Charmcraft is a queer, Middle Eastern cosy fantasy that is EVERYTHING I have ever wanted (and so rarely find) from cosy fantasy; sweet and fun but clever and deep, too, hilarious and heartwarming by turns, and full of cats! Maej couldn’t be more different: it’s about an oppressed minority within a fantasy matriarchy, and all the intrigue and politics around them – and also it’s written in semi-Shakespearean English! Chai and Charmcraft is a book you can relax into like a warm bath; Maej is exciting in part because it’s challenging, daring you to keep up with it.

Both made me swoon!

My review for Chai and Charmcraft!
My review for Maej!

Rereads This Year

A Song of Legends Lost, Shape of Monsters, and To Ride a Rising Storm I reread in order to review them properly; Mercy Makers I reread to refresh my memory for Monsters. But the vast majority of my rereads were for pleasure; Kushiel’s Dart, obviously, and Anne of Green Gables was recommended by a friend on Pagebound. I last read Anne so long ago I remembered almost nothing of it, but it was a delight! I plan on reading all the sequels too, now.

Book/s That Made You Cry

Just the one, I think – the final pages made me break down and SOB. So, so heartbreaking. Heart-RENDING. How COULD they?!

Most Beautiful Book You’ve Bought So Far This Year

Not a book, but an ereader cover! Bought from Siren & Swan over on Etsy. They made it in a collab with one of my favourite artists, @Emiscape! I’m extremely in love with it.

What Books Do You Need to Read By the End of the Year?

Well, everything on the Unmissable list, obviously, and all the other upcoming releases I’ve mentioned. The 26 For 2026 books. Discounting all of those…

This is just a snapshot of my tbr, but they’re the ones near the top!

If you made it through all of that – well done and thank you!

How’s YOUR reading been going?