2021 Reading Recap

Well, 2021 is officially over. This past year had a lot of ups and downs, managed to feel like the longest year of my life while also flying by, and finished off looking eerily similar to the world in 2020. While I was really hopeful for 2021 to be the year things went back to normal, that didn’t come to fruition. But one thing that did remain a happy and consistent thing for me was reading.

I’m happy to report that I accomplished - most - of my reading goals this past year, and of the 50 books I was able to read, I found more than a handful of amazing stories.

A look back on my 2021 reading goals:

  • Read 50 books. I just barely squeezed by, reaching my 50 book goal at 7PM on December 31st. But hey, it counts.

  • Listen to more audiobooks. Prior to 2021, I almost never listened to audiobooks, so reading “more” audiobooks for me wasn’t hard to achieve. I signed up for Libro.fm this year, and finished 5 audiobooks: You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin, Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, Sorry I’m Late I Didn’t Want To Come by Jessica Pan, The 2000s Made Me Gay by Grace Perry, and Will by Will Smith.

    *I also started A Promised Land by Obama, but that book is LONG, so more of that in 2022. I also had to DNF 2 audiobooks: Quit Like A Woman by Holly Whitaker and We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry.

  • Read more non-fiction. Again, “more” here was pretty easy for me since I didn’t read too much non-fiction to begin with. What I did find out about myself this year is that I really love listening to non-fiction more than reading a physical book of this genre. So I killed two birds with one stone and focused my audiobook goal on non-fiction. On top of the 5 non-fiction audiobooks I listened to, I also read Born A Crime by Trevor Noah and Weird But Normal by Mia Mercado, bringing my non-fiction total to 7 books.

  • Get my NetGalley ratio back to 80%. Alas, we can’t always be perfect. This is the one goal I completely failed this year. While I did improve my NetGalley ratio from 50% to 72%, I fell shy of my original goal. In fact, I fell off of NetGalley in general this past year only reading 10 ARCs total.

All my 5 star reads:

In total, I only rated 8 books as 5 stars - an even split of memoirs and fiction.

  • Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

  • Weird But Normal: Essays on the Awkward, Uncomfortable, Surprisingly Regular Parts of Being Human by Mia Mercado

  • Perfect on Paper by Sophia Gonzales

  • People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

  • The House In The Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

  • You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin

  • Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

  • Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Books you have to listen to on audio:

  • Will by Will Smith - trust me on this one, the audiobook experience is elite.

  • You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin

Books I didn’t give 5 stars to but REALLY loved:

  • The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

  • Layla by Colleen Hoover

  • The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Soloman

  • Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno

  • His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie

Books I finished but didn’t really enjoy:

  • The Dead Girl in 2A by Carter Wilson

  • Unpregnant by Jenni Hendricks and Ted Caplan

  • Emma In The Night by Wendy Walker

  • The Switch by Beth O’Leary

The ones I had to DNF:

  • Quit Like A Woman by Holly Whitaker

  • We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry - this one I MIGHT one day give a second chance as a physical book read rather than listening on audio which I had trouble following and ended up very confused

2022 reading goals:

  • Read 45 books. I’m lowering my reading goal for the second consecutive year in the hopes that we don’t take 3 steps backward in this pandemic, and I can do more and travel more. I also hit a few reading slumps this year and want to keep that in mind for the future, it’s okay to sometimes sit on the couch and scroll through TikTok for 2 hours or binge watch One Tree Hill for the 100th time instead.

  • Listen to 10 audiobooks. In 2021, I was able to complete 5 audiobooks. I want to try to double that this year, reading about 1 per month (with a little wiggle room because Obama has the nerve to have a 29 hour long book).

  • Diversify my non-fiction. I was happy to have added more non-fiction into my mix this past year but I want to step it up even further this year. The majority of the non-fiction I read in 2021 were memoirs. This year, I want to try to read 1-2 non-fiction books that are not memoirs. Right now I’m thinking Ace by Angela Chen, and Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman which are two books that have been on list for a while but haven’t been priorities.

  • Read everyday. Even if it’s just a few pages, or listening to an audiobook for 10 minutes, I want to incorporate reading into my everyday. Usually, I’m pretty good about this but this past year there were weeks where I didn’t even look at a book.

  • Read the NetGalleys I have. No more requesting for me, at least for now. I have 10 books left in my NetGalley that at this point have all been published and are out in the real world to buy. Until I check them off my list, I’m not allowing myself to request any more!

2021 Book Reviews, Book ReviewsHannah DuPontBooks, Book ReviewsComment