A Year in Review ~ 2021

Another year in the books—literally and figuratively—and I have some things I want to review about 2021. As is common among most bloggers, and many readers in general, I had a goal of how many books I wanted to read this year. which I catalogued on both GoodReads and StoryGraph. Now, both those sites count each book read in any format you enter, so the math on both sites is a little off due to my preference of reading (and reviewing) audiobooks alongside their texts... Regardless, I set my goal at a nice, even 50 books for the year. This would not only be a bit of a record for me in my post-college life, but something I hoped would fill the downtime and serve as a bit of distraction during the tumultuous year many of us have had.

Well, I'm excited to report that I did, in fact, read

53 distinct titles!
(not including 31 additional volumes of manga
and 29 accompanying audiobooks)

For those who are interested in the specific books or other statistics listed for my books, you can click the images above to be taken to each site's recap. I'd especially recommend checking out StoryGraph for its impressive array of visual stats for page length, genres, and more!

Next came the group challenges. Many of you had no doubt seen the Reading Challenges 2021, and the widgets on the sidebar, keeping track of the prompts and progress toward completing the PopSugar and 52 Books challenges. Well, my final tallies came out to be

29/40 for Popsugar and
41/52 for 52 Books in 52 Weeks

Honestly, I'm both kinda bummed and kinda proud with my results. It was pretty fun seeing all the prompts I could fit my books into, and I did get about 70% completion in both challenges. Even so, I don't think I'll be attempting these challenges again in 2022.

Notice how I said I "fit my books" into the prompts? I realize now that I really only read 2 books outside my normal reading habits, and I don't think that's really in the spirit of the challenge. Don't get me wrong, I loved reading The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick (for Book Found on BookBub), and it was nice marking off one of my many many Amazon freebies with The Specials by Kel Pollard (for Book with <1000 reviews and Author w/ 1 Published Work), but that's it for actually challenging myself. There were a few prompts I had no interest in from the beginning (like National Book Award Winner), and a few others that I lucked into (like Book in the Dewey Decimal 900s), but on the whole I didn't really read anything I hadn't already planned to read.

Still, while I'm not planning on actively participating in either of these challenges, I do think I'll stay active on their Facebook pages (PopSugar / 52), sharing what books I read and what prompts they could count for. Who knows, maybe I'll manage to hit a good percentage of this year's prompts? Some of them do look pretty fun...

As for 2022, I think I'll be taking it easier with stories I'm already somewhat familiar with. I've been blogging about my reading for about 10 years now (not counting those two where I was MIA) and there are a ton of series I've just left unread and unreviewed. So that's my goal for this year: revisit and review some of those series I've yet to finish on here.

On my new Reading Challenge Page I have 10+ series listed with titles and covers, including some of my earliest reviews like Kiersten White's Paranormalcy and Tamora Pierce's Terrier. There's also a button at the bottom revealing even more unfinished series I'd love to tackle if I have the time and motivation, but as these 11 series already consist of some 36 books, I kinda doubt I'll be able to complete many more.

You may notice that some of the series have different languages or artwork entering partway through. These are to easily display which books have been, and which books are still needing read/reviewed. The titles should also display as white instead of blue, indicating that there's no linked review. I hope this is both a clear and interesting way to display my goals and progress, as I will change covers and links as I go. I don't yet know how I'll cover the re-reads, as some of them either already have audio addendums, or don't have audiobooks easily available...but I'm sure I'll figure something out.

This isn't to say that these books or series are the only ones I plan on reading or finishing this year—since I do have some more recent series & releases I'm planning to tackle as well—but these are all ones that have been on my shelves (and blog) for ages so I'm gonna try extra hard to get these reviewed this year. And who knows? Maybe the extended goals will pool over into next year?

So, what are your reading goals? Any tips or tricks that you find helpful in tackling your goals? Any series you're looking forward to completing this year? Let me know in the comments!