Reading Reflection: 2021

 

It's almost the end of the year, and that means that it's time to reflect on how my reading goals went. This was a mixed year overall for me. I accomplished some major bookish milestones, but I often didn't enjoy myself while doing it. I ended up reading several very long classics that I either didn't love or was completely exhausted by, and those took away from the amount that I could read based on my mood. I was also a bit unlucky in what I chose to pick up when I could engage in mood reading. While I did find a few things I enjoyed, I didn't end up adding much to my all-time favorites list. 

I don't mean to be negative though--I'm still really happy with how I performed! Here's the breakdown for this year:

My Goodreads goal was to read 50 books, and I ended up reading 60. I did surpass my goal, but I fell far short of the 91 books I read in 2020. The reason for this was the aforementioned stack of long classics I ended up reading for my Classics Club Challenge. I'm hoping to bump this number up next year and get back to enjoying some shorter books again. You can view my year in reading here.

This year, I completed my Classics Club Challenge! I finished about a month early, bringing my five year quest to read 100 classic novels to an end. This was the most difficult year of the challenge for me by far. I had to read Gravity's Rainbow, which was extremely long and awful, and Les Misérables, which was extremely long and wonderful. I also had to read War and Peace again, but unabridged this time, so it would count. It felt pretty grueling at times, but I finished the whole thing. It was definitely the biggest reading accomplishment of my life so far. You can a longer version of my thoughts on it here.

Of course, I also finished the Back to the Classics Challenge for the seventh year in a row. I had a great time with it, like I always do. My wrap up post is here.

The last challenge I set for myself in 2021 was my Clear the Shelves Challenge. I set myself a goal of reading 50 books from my shelves and deciding whether to keep or donate them. I also aimed to acquire less books throughout the year. 

I did buy fewer books that I usually do. I wasn't as good here as I wanted to be, but I was still generally successful at reducing how much I added to my collection. Sadly, I didn't reach 50 books read from my shelves, but I did read 33 of them. I decided to keep 11 of those and added 22 to the donate pile. So basically, I was partially successful at this challenge. You can see all the books I read for this here.  

And that's all for 2021! As I said before, this year was both very successful for me and a little underwhelming too. I felt like I was on the verge of a reading slump for a lot of the time, and I totally did it to myself by having to read so many long classics in the same year. Without the Classics Club challenge to deal with in 2022, I'm hoping to read more than ever and focus on picking books I will enjoy. That's what this is all supposed to be about anyway, right?