2021 Wrap-Up | Review of my Reading and Blogging Year (Lots of Graphs) + Goal Setting

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. Today I am sharing my wrap-up for the year of 2021. This was my first year of blogging and I payed way more attention to what I read. It was really interesting to track my reading and see the variety of what I’ve read. Anyways, this post is going to be longer than usual, so I added a table of contents to make it easier to navigate.

Contents
★ Reading
★ Blogging
★ 2021 Goals Review
★ 2022 Goals

Reading

Books Read: 53 | Pages Read: 18,960 | Average Book Length: 358 pages

Best Book of the Year: Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

Related Post: My Favorite Reads of 2021

Worst Book of the Year: Wizard’s Hall by Jane Yolen

My reading was somewhat consistent throughout the year, with about 4.5 books per month as my average. February was my highest month, where I read 7 books. That’s because I read some books that were on the shorter side, so I finished them quicker. I think 4.5 is a good number for the amount of books I read per month. Maybe I’ll get it up to 5 this year, who knows?

No one is surprised that fantasy is my highest read genre. I mean, seriously, I live for fantasy novels. There were pirates and wizards and magical realms and swords–so many fantastic things. I’m surprised that contemporary was my second most-read genre; I read more of it than I thought. I wish I read more mystery, as it is one of my favorite genres, but I never find ones that peak my interest. On the other hand, I read more science fiction than I have ever in my life. I wasn’t really interested in it before blogging, but I heard about some sci-fi books and decided to try them out. That was a very good decision. The two nonfiction books I read for school. I don’t normally seek out nonfiction on my own.

Average Rating: 4.07

In terms of ratings, my reads were pretty good last year! That one unmarked part of the chart was my lowest rating, which was 2.5 stars. Luckily, I only had one book that I rated that low. The majority of my ratings were 4 stars. I’d like to be a little more specific in my ratings next year; I think a lot of the books I rated 4 stars could’ve been rated differently, but I didn’t feel like going back and re-remembering the book to re-rate it, so we’re not doing that.

Young adult books dominated most of my reading, which isn’t a bad thing, but I would like to read some more middle grade next year and maybe dive a bit into adult novels as well. Most of the books on my TBR are YA but I have some MG and adult books as well.

For most of the beginning of the year, I was reading physical books, but then I began using Libby again and was able to read so many more books. Not having to wait for ones I ordered made it much easier to read books at my leisure. I also started listening to audiobooks; not a lot, but some. They’re great for making long car rides feel much shorter than they actually are.

Blogging introduced me to a bunch of new authors, quite obviously shown above. I discovered so many talented authors this year, some who have become a favorite of mine.

When I started blogging, I began paying more attention to the diverse representation in the books I read. I’m happy to say that a about 73% of the books I read had some sort of diverse representation. I have graphs that break the diverse representation down into race, sexual/romantic orientation, gender identity, and disabilities, but I kept them out for the sake of the length of this post.

Blogging

Posts Published: 106 | Views: 4,102 | Visitors: 1,779 | Likes: 984 | Comments: 744

I wrote a lot of different types of posts last year. Book reviews was the category I wrote the most of, which isn’t a surprise. I would like to do some more photography posts and writing posts this year since I didn’t do very many in 2021.

Below, I’m sharing some my favorite posts that I wrote last year. There is at least one for each of the categories listed above, excluding the ‘other’ section and the ‘blogging’ section.

• Book Reviews – A Collection of LGBTQ+ Books in Honor of Pride Month | The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
• Lists & Recommendations – 8 Overlooked Books I Think Everyone Should Read
• Discussions – Libby: All About the Platform and How it Works | Let’s Talk Bookish: Top Dos and Don’ts For New Bloggers
• Photography – My Trip to Death Valley
• Wrap-Ups – September & October Wrap-Up | Back From Hiatus, Blog Redesign, and New Blogging Schedule (maybe?)
• Tags and Awards – Mid Year Book Freak Out Tag | The Mysterious Benedict Society Book Tag (Original!)
• Writing – Preparing for July Camp NaNoWriMo

2021 Goals Review

Bookish:

• Read 75 books ❌ I was 22 books off. Very much out of range. However, I still think I read a decent amount of books last year.
• Explore different genres ✅ I’d say I did. I read from seven different genres and discovered that I like science fiction which is a plus. I had an alright spread of genres this year; however, 64% of my reading was either fantasy or contemporary.
• Review books ASAP ✅ ❌ I’m saying yes and no to this one. It kind of depended on what book I was reviewing and what I had to say about it. Sometimes, I would have a review up within a few days of finishing the book; other times, the review came out a month later.

Blogging:

• Decide on and stick to a posting schedule ✅ ❌ When I first started blogging, I didn’t have a schedule at all, I just put out a post when I finished one. So, no I didn’t stick to a posting schedule because I hadn’t decided on one. When I came back from my hiatus, I said I would be posting on Tuesdays and Fridays, with occasional posts on the weekends. Have I stuck to that? Eh, not really.
• Write posts in advance ✅ Always. I schedule my posts the night before they publish, so I don’t have to manually publish them when I want them to be published, so I have to write them in advance. Once in a while, I might finish a post late and then publish it right then, but that doesn’t happen very often.
• Bloghop ✅ As of the day I’m writing this, I follow 196 blogs. However, many of them are inactive–their owners haven’t posted in months. Still, I have over 30 new emails in my inbox every day, with new posts from the blogs I follow. It’s a lot.

Writing:

• Edit + revise second draft of WIP ✅ I actually started working on the third draft. I’m not done with it yet, but I’ve been able to write some of it during break which I’m really happy about.
• Journal a few times a week ❌ I did some at the beginning of January and that was it. I just stopped doing it and never picked it up again.

Personal:

• Practice self-care ✅ ❌ Kind of? I said I wanted to drink more water–which probably hasn’t happened–and develop a better sleep routine, which has. Now that I’m going to school in-person, classes start earlier so I have to get up earlier as well. Vacation always throw my sleep routine off, but on school days, I get up at 6:30 and go to bed at around 9:30 or 10.
• Learn to play the ukulele ✅ I did, actually. I can’t play very well, but I still learned. I can do some songs, but I don’t play it very often because I’m focused on the violin, which is the main instrument I play.
• Less screen time ❌ Haha, nope. I’m the computer less because I’m back at school in person, but I’m still on it a lot. Most of the time, I’m working on my blog so it’s being spent productively (some of the time), but there’s also homework and all that sort of stuff.

Overall, I think I did okay on my goals. I got at least one goal definitely achieved in each category and then an absolute no or a yes-no in each as well.

2022 Goals

Bookish:

• Read 60 books – I didn’t want to make the challenge too hard on myself, so I lowered it. I hope to achieve this; it’s only seven books higher than what I did last year, so I think I can do it.
• Read 10 books outside my usual genres – This would mean 10 books that are not fantasy, contemporary, or historical fiction. Those were the top three genres I read in 2021, so I’m going to take those as my “usual” genres.
• Branch out to different types of books – I read mostly novels, but I’m interested in trying other forms of writing as well. I read two memoirs last year and one anthology, but the rest of my reading consisted of novels. I’d like to expand on that.

Blogging:

• Reach 200 followers – This is pretty self-explanatory. We reached 100 followers in less than a year, so I think we can reach 200 sometime in 2022.
• Complete and publish all my drafts – I currently have thirteen drafts that aren’t finished, so I’d really like to finish them so they can be posted or trashed if I decide I don’t want to write it anymore. I often get an idea for a post, so I’ll create a new post and put down a title for it so I don’t forget. Now, I’d actually like to get them done.

Writing:

• Finish third draft of WIP – I’m about half way through writing the third draft right now, so I don’t think this will be too hard. I’m not going to have much time once school starts up again, but let’s hope.
  • Improve dialogue – Along with finishing the third draft, I really need to work on improving the dialogue between characters to sound more natural and realistic. Right now, the communication between characters isn’t bad but it could use some work.
  • Work on characterization – I also would like to do some more characterization, whether it be direct or indirect. Getting to know my characters really helps make the writing process easier.

Personal:

• Learn to cook some new dinners – I’ve started learning how to cook some dinners and they’re been pretty easy so far. The most recent one I made was chicken nuggets, which is probably the most complex meal I’ve made so far. They turned out pretty good, so I hope to continue to cook meals this year.
• Spend more time outdoors – This also includes ‘exercise more.’ On school days, I spend a good amount of time outside and I get some exercise: I ride my bike to and from school–which takes about an hour in total–I have lunch outside, and walking to classes is outside as well. That’s about it on school days. On weekends, the most I do, on a normal day, is take my dog on a walk. I’d like to change that in some way.
• Get my driver’s license – Hard to believe that I turn 16 this year. My birthday isn’t until October, so this goal doesn’t apply until after that date, but it’s still something I’ll add here.

I think these goals are fairly attainable. I don’t want to make it too hard on myself, so I decided to keep things pretty easy but still something I need to work at to reach.

And that is all for this wrap-up! This was a pretty long post, so I’m not going to say much else.

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How was your New Year’s? How did you do on your goals?
What are some goals you have for 2022?