firewhiskeyreader

It’s honestly hard to believe that 2022 is here and 2021 has come to a close. It feels so weird to look back on the last year. I started 2021 with covid, finally started therapy, but not until after I booked a last minute trip across the country to go whale watching in Seattle to stave off a complete mental breakdown, celebrated my nephew’s first birthday, and got to celebrate my 30th birthday with my best friend. A lot of things went down this last year, a lot of good and a lot of questionable things. My job is shifting yet again so we’ll see how this new shift effects my reading and my time spent on this blog. Anyway, what we’re actually here for is to talk about my reading over the last year and I have a lot of bar graphs for you! And I’ll try and hit the goals highlights from 2021 as I go through, and then I’ll wrap this up with my 2022 reading goals.

I read a total of 272 books in 2021, assuming my math is correct, with an interesting range of the amount of books read in a month. The average amount of books read per month was 22.6 repeating. My lowest reading month was December with 7 books read and my highest was January with 41 books read. Here is a lovely bar graph to show my books read per month breakdown.

I read physically, both as ebooks and actual physical copies of books, and via audio as well and I love to check the breakdown of how I read books so here’s another bar graph to demonstrate that. Sometimes I read books in a mix of formats and for the most part, I try not to double count, but if my math doesn’t work out, that’s because I did.

Next, let’s look at the source of where I obtained a book. I broke this category down into owned (pre-2021), hauled, ARCs, and borrowed. The caveat here is that ARCs are frequently double counted because I was terrible at reading my ARCs as ARCs this year and bought or borrowed most of them after their publication date to get a review out in a more timely fashion. I’m super pleasantly surprised to find that owned was actually the highest category and also suspicious I somehow messed up the math.

Now that we’ve talked about how I read, let’s talk about what I read. Obviously my most read genre is romance, but here’s a bar graph to show how the books I read break down per genre. You’ll see from the graph that I only read 11 nonfiction titles, which means I failed to meet at least one of my goals to read 12 nonfiction titles at minimum. I definitely could have met this goal, but I just… November and December were months where convincing my brain to read something it didn’t want to was just not happening. So alas, but oh well.

So, obviously, we then need to break down the romances I read into sub-genres because otherwise there’s no fun to be had!

And now that we’ve covered what I read, let us talk about representation. I did not manage to stay above my 40% goal of reading from BIPOC authors, but I was close. I’m frustrated with myself because again, I know I could have done better, but it’s alright. We have a clean slate for 2022 and I’ll do better in 2022. I hope.

Then if we want to look at books with LGBTQIA+ Representation versus no, wherein I counted books with LGBTQIA+ representation if a main character identified as falling somewhere other than cis, straight, and allo-sexual, you can see this pie chart shows that I hit 12% of reads with LGBTQIA+ characters. I think that’s actually pretty good for me and that I did a better job of keeping track than I often do.

I also tried to keep track of books with mental health representation and I counted 23 books as having some kind of mental health representation. I think I probably read more than that, but there are at least 23 that I can attest to. I counted 10 books as displaying some amount of a physical disability and 8 books as showing some kind of cognitive disability. I welcome book recommendations with any of the above types of representation!

2021 Goals Wrap Up

The first two goals I had for 2021 involved actually tackling my TBR and, um, I didn’t do that well at the specific ones I’d picked out. For my tackling my physical 2019 unread books, I read a total of four and unhauled three, which means I somehow addressed 7 of 23 books. As for the second one, I read nine of 33, but also increased that shelf to 40 from 33 and probably could add some more.

I’ve addressed that I failed at reading 40% from BIPOC authors and I set a goal for reading more books by and about people on the LGBTQIA spectrum, but didn’t have a number goal. Ultimately, I increased my percentage from my mid year numbers, so we’ll go with yay on that one. I also addressed that I failed to read 12 nonfiction books but I was close!

Then we had to finish or catch up on 20 series throughout the year and, um, I think maybe I achieved that with somewhere around 5 series that I had started PRIOR to 2020.

2022 Reading Goals

1. Read more genres that I like but do not tend to read.

Specifically, I want to read at least twelve fantasy books, twelve historical fiction books, and twelve classics. I am allowed to count re-reads of classics toward this goal, I think, and I’m mostly thinking I want to finish re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series and finally re-read Sense and Sensibility. I do have a couple of new to me classics in mind though too, like The Bell Jar and The Fire Next Time. I would also like to incorporate a few more mystery/thriller books into my life, but we’ll see how that goes.

2. Read more Indigenous authors.

Because I’ve learned my lesson about the importance of a numerical goal, I’m going with 12 here as well!

3. Read at least twelve nonfiction books.

Preferably, I will read a mixture of memoirs and some of the more difficult books on my list like The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste.

4. Make sure I’m reading diverse Queer experiences.

Specifically, I would like to read at least 12 sapphic books and at least 12 books by trans or nonbinary authors.

5. Read at least 24 Black Love romances.

I think reading Black Love specifically is important and I want to make sure I’m prioritizing that and not just reading interracial romances.

6. I would like to develop a writing habit.

Essentially, what I’m thinking for this is that I want to write something every day, whether it’s a blog post, working on a writing sample since I lost my old one, or actual creative writing. I’ll even count a journal entry. Just something every day.

And there you have it! That is my 2021 wrap up and my goals for the new year! Do you set reading goals? If so, let me know what you’ve set out for yourself!

xx