2021 Reading Reflections

Want to hear all about my reading statistics, breakdowns, 2021 reading goals, and more? Then keep reading this post for all of my 2021 reading reflections!

Well hello there. It’s been a while since there were consistent posts on this corner of the internet. There are some good reasons for this (I moved! And got a new job!) and some not-so-good reasons (I’m lazy!), but now that it is 2022, I’d like to get back to writing about books on a more regular basis, and I want to start by reflecting on my reading in 2021. I’m sure you’re all dying to know if I met any of my 2021 reading goals, and I promise I’ll fill you in on that soon, but I wanted to start with some stats, because who doesn’t love numbers? (For those of you who don’t actually love numbers, I apologize in advance.) So, let’s get into it.

General Information

First and foremost, I read 260 books in 2021. This is the highest number of books I have ever read, and I honestly don’t foresee matching that number in the future. Of those 260 books, I read 232 of them for the first time in 2021, and 28 of them were rereads.

I also wanted to break down my reading into age categories and overall fiction and nonfiction reads. So, 85 books I read, or 33% were adult books. 149 books, or 57% were young adult (YA) books, and 26 books (10%) were middle grade (MG) books. Out of 260 books, 252 (97%) were fiction, and 8 (3%) were nonfiction.

Obviously, when looking at the breakdowns, there is some room for improvement, but I will get into that when I post about my 2022 reading goals.

Genres

I’m not going to break down the nonfiction I read into genres, since I only read 8 nonfiction books last year, but I thought it would be interesting to look at the genres of fiction I most consumed. Also, when it comes to adult fiction, I tend to gravitate toward a few select genres, so I’m just going to focus on those. I read 26 adult romance books, 39 adult mystery and/or thriller books, and 11 other adult books, including fantasy, women’s fiction, literary fiction, and maybe something else. The majority of those in the mystery/thriller category came from a select few cozy mystery series that I discovered and marathoned during pandemic times.

When it comes to books for young people, I read 120 YA/MG contemporary (or realistic fiction, if you prefer) books. 46% of all the reading I did in 2021 was this genre, so it’s pretty obvious the type of books I most gravitate toward. Also, this does include anything that would be considered a YA romance; I feel like the line between romance and straight contemporary can be a bit blurry when it comes to books for teens, and also I am lazy.

I did read some other genres, of course; I read 18 YA/MG mystery books, 27 YA/MG fantasy books, 8 YA/MG sci-fi books, and 1 whole YA/MG historical fiction book. Additionally, I know this isn’t a genre, but I don’t really have any other place to put this information: I read 1 graphic novel in 2021.

Inclusivity

It’s been a goal of mine for many years to make sure I am reading as diversely as possible, and though I have been more mindful when selecting books, I noticed at the end of 2020 that I was reading a lot more from certain marginalized identities than others. I had hoped to improve upon that in 2021, and I think I did, but of course there is still room for continued improvement. Also, I would like to give the disclaimer that when determining these statistics, I only counted an author in one of these categories if I knew for certain that they belonged to one of these groups-is it possible that I missed someone because they are white-passing and/or not out as queer? Yes, but it’s more important to me not to misidentify anyone. So take these numbers with a grain of salt.

Of the 260 books I read, 124 were by BIPOC authors. This amounts to 48% of the books I read. Breaking that down further, 39 books were by Black authors, 24 books were by Latinx authors, 52 books were by Asian authors, and 7 books were by Indigenous authors.

Additionally, I read 51 total books, or 20%, written by queer authors. I didn’t break this down further into all of the different identities, but during Pride Month, when I was reading only books by queer authors, I did try to read at least one books for each letter of LGBTQIAP+. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite succeed-I didn’t read anything with intersex or pansexual representation.

Again, I think this is pretty good, but there is certainly room for improvement, and I’ll talk about that more when I get to my 2022 goals.

2021 Goals

Last year, I outlined 6 different goals I was hoping to work toward over the course of 2021. Let’s see how we did!

1. 50% of books read are written by marginalized authors ✅

I didn’t do the exact math on this one, because I know there is some intersection between the BIPOC authors and the queer authors that I read, but I feel like it’s safe to say that, given that 48% of the books I read were by BIPOC authors, the number books by queer authors would definitely tip that percentage over 50%, even accounting for some overlap. I’m happy to have met this goal, but I can see by the more detailed breakdown that there are some things I want to continue to work toward this year.

2. Use a spreadsheet to track my reading ❌

This was a HUGE FAIL for me. Even though I created a spreadsheet that included everything I wanted to keep track of, I opened it maybe once or twice in the first half of the year and that’s it. The reason I wanted to do this was so that when it came to the end of the year, I could just look at the spreadsheet and easily see how many romance books I read, or books by Latinx authors, as opposed to having to go through all the books I read on Goodreads and count and do the math myself. Nonetheless, this just doesn’t work for me-it turns out I’d rather take the time to figure out those statistics myself than remember to write everything down in a spreadsheet. So it’s a little disappointing that I didn’t meet this goal, because I think it would have made my life a little easier, but not all things work for all people, and apparently I am not a spreadsheet person.

3. Complete AILA’s Read Native Challenge ❌

As the months of 2021 ticked by, I was doing pretty well when it came to reading books by authors of different marginalized identities-except for Indigenous authors. As each month passed, I told myself that it was fine, I would get to all the books I needed to complete the challenge in November, when I was going to be reading all Native authors anyway for Indigenous History Month. Well. Then November actually came around, and a number of things happened-I had some stuff happen in my personal life that made me really sad, and we had a pretty bad COVID surge here that took a mental toll, and I started feeling burnt out from just how many books I had been reading this year. So, all that combined for a pretty abysmal showing when it came to completing this challenge. I read books that fulfilled 12 of the 26 categories (some I counted for multiple categories), and I started but didn’t finish 2 additional books by Indigenous authors. Although I read more books by Indigenous authors this year than in previous years, it was still a horrifically small number. I haven’t seen anything indicating AILA will have a similar challenge for 2022, and I’m not sure it would be the best idea to commit to it anyway, but I do think I will, at the very least, aim to read MORE Indigenous authors this year, and, I hope, actually stick to reading only Indigenous authors in November.

4. Read more books from my personal lesser-read genres (1 fantasy, 1 sci-fi, and 1 nonfiction book per month) ✅❌

This goal was…sort of met. I certainly did read more of each of these genres than I have in the past, but, aside from fantasy, I did not meet the threshold of 1 books from each of these genres per month. I read 28 fantasy books, I believe (truth be told I don’t remember if I read multiple adult fantasy books), which was great, because fantasy is a genre I love, but I’d been in a long-term fantasy reading slump. Meanwhile, I only read about 9 sci-fi books and 8 nonfiction books, which fell short of this goal. So, something to continue to work on in 2022.

5. Try Book of the Month ✅

This is an easy one to check off-yes, I did this. I ended up skipping way more months though-for some reason, I’ve noticed that there will be several months in a row when BOTM offers nothing I’m interested in, followed by a month when I want 3 or 4 of the options. Nonetheless, I did try it, and I did get some books I probably would not have picked up otherwise. Of course, now that I’ve moved, said books are sitting either in my parents’ house or my storage unit, waiting for me to return home. But still, I can absolutely say that I did complete this goal.

6. Read 250 books ✅

I honestly didn’t know if this would ever be something I could achieve-it was definitely the biggest “stretch” goal on this list. But, somehow (and by somehow I absolutely mean marathoning multiple cozy mystery series) I was able to cross the 250 book threshold. As I mentioned earlier, I think this will probably be a one time thing for me-I have again set my goal for the year at 200 books, and I honestly think that’s a fairly manageable number for me, given that I tend to read more YA and MG books, and given that I need to read a pretty significant amount in order to do my job well. If I reach that goal, or exceed it, I will be happy, but now that I’ve done it once, I’m not going to pressure myself to get to a larger number than 250.

Well, friends, there you have it-a LOT of details about all of my reading in 2021. Tell me-did you meet your reading goals last year? Did you learn anything about yourself when you reflected on your reading habits? Let me know in the comments or find me on Twitter or Instagram!

Looking for some new books to read? Check out these posts:

• 7 Amazing and Informative Collective Biographies of Women
• Middle Grade Books by Black Authors
• 45 Excellent YA Novels in Verse

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