Reading Reflection: 2020

 

Well, 2020 sure didn't go as planned, did it? I remember starting off the year with so many hopes - places I wanted to go, things I wanted to do, and books I wanted to read. Pretty much everything, except for the reading, fell through. Thank goodness for my reading goals! Being stuck inside isn't so bad when you've got a nice big stack of novels by your side. I always knew that I loved literature, but it ended up being my absolute saving grace this year. You know that old quote about reading giving you a place to go when you have to stay where you are? It has never been more true. 

Now that 2020 is finally drawing to a close, it's time to reflect on how each of my goals and challenges went. Here's the breakdown:

My Goodreads goal was to read at least 50 books in 2020. This was a conservative goal and I expected to surpass it. I ended up with a grand total of 91 novels read. I have always wanted to get to 100 novels in one year, but with the amount of ridiculously long classics I read, that probably won't be happening anytime soon. In any case, I'm quite happy with this number. You can view my year in reading here.

I needed to read at least 20 books from my Classics Club list this year to stay on track to finish, and I ended up reading 22. I'm very pleased with the amount that I got through, especially because this was the year I conquered the two series that I put on my list - The Lord of the Rings and the Little House books. Next year is the final year of this five year challenge, which leaves me just 18 to go. It's not going to be easy though, because I have quite a few long classics left. 

I did finish the Back to the Classics Challenge for the sixth year in a row. It was as fun and enriching as always. My final wrap up post is here.

I also finished my True Books 2020 challenge. I ended up reading a total of 14 nonfiction books throughout the year, smashing my previous record of 10. I really enjoyed most of them and I think it was a good thing to get out of my reading comfort zone. I don't think I will be repeating this challenge next year, as I want to focus more on mood reading in 2021, but I will still try to reach for some nonfiction from time to time. 

I did end up finishing my Then vs. Now Challenge as well. It took me all the way until December, but I made it! Each month this year, I read one of my favorite novels and compared it to a different book by the same author. My results in each match up were mixed. I really enjoyed some of the new books I read, but my two worst reads of the year (Imaginary Friend and The Last Man) came from here too. I did like getting a chance to reread a whole bunch of my favorites and I'm happy to have reviews for more of these here on the blog now.

There were a few instances where rereading a novel made me like it a little bit less. I wasn't so blind to Eleanor and Park's issues with race this time around, and I found myself cringing at some of the slurs in We Need to Talk About Kevin that I somehow glossed over before. It's interesting to me that it's so risky to reread a favorite. The first time you read a novel that you truly love is special and impossible to recreate. As we get older, we change quite a bit; who knows how the newer version of us will interpret an old favorite? This was an interesting experience and I can see myself wanting to do it again somewhere down the road.

The last challenge I took part in this year was the StoryGraph Onboarding 2020 Reading Challenge. The point of it was to test out the StoryGraph website and see if its personalized book recommendations were accurate. There were a total of 12 prompts, and I finished all of them.

Completing this challenge led me to read several novels I would not have picked up on my own, and I enjoyed most of them. I also ended up discovering that the StoryGraph recommendations are definitely superior to Goodreads. I'm excited to continue using this site in the future to find books. 

And that's it for 2020! I'm pleased with how much I accomplished this year. With the scary and monotonous atmosphere that COVID caused, reading was an invaluable escape from reality. I've always read for pleasure, but this year it felt necessary to do so. Thank goodness I had books to turn to!  I'm ready to embark on a new set of challenges in 2021.