Goodbye 2021: End of Year Reading Wrap-Up

It’s the moment I’ve been waiting for: nerding out over my reading graphs!

I always enjoy looking back over my reading year and reflecting on all the books I read, especially when I can see my pretty graphs and analyze my reading habits. (Yes. This is sadly what I call fun.) But I had an especially good time doing it this time around, since I’ve had such a good reading year!

If you want to read more of my thoughts on these on books, all of the book covers link to my Goodreads reviews (though whether they will actually tell you my thoughts or just say “RTC”… who knows!).

STATISTICS & GRAPHS

Number of books read: 80

Number of rereads: 4 (-9 from 2020)

Average rating: 3.57 (+0.11 from 2020)

Average rating without rereads: 3.5 (+0.15 from 2020)

I rated only one book 5 stars this year, because I am MEAN!! I had no 1 star books though, so this just confirms that I’m averse to extreme ratings on either end of the spectrum. But truly, 2021 was so good to me and I love seeing how many 4 star ratings there are!

Last year I said that I was “excited to see what this graph [for type] will look like for 2021” because I anticipated reading many more different types of books… Well, this is embarrassing, because it’s pretty much the same! I read 6.1% less novels in 2021 as compared to 2020, and this is definitely something I want to continue changing this year.

These graphs make me so happy! While fantasy and YA still make up a pretty good chunk of what I’m reading, I’m happy that I’m reading other genres and age groups! I don’t think the amount of fantasy I read will decrease much this year, but I feel like YA definitely will.

(N/A for age groups was for whatever books I didn’t know the target audiences of.)

Again, as a result of the pandemic, I read mostly digitally! I don’t think these graphs should change much in 2022, aside from a decrease in ARCs/eARCs.

(Reading both physically and digitally means I had a physical copy and read along with the audiobook.)

 

I actually read so many more 2021 releases than I realized…? 20/27 of those 2021 releases were ARCs, so I’m wondering if I’ll read less 2022 releases this year since I’m planning on reading less ARCs!

 

My ever favorite supplier, my library! And I’m still afraid of big books as usual, clearly.

Two new graphs! That spike in December makes me giggle… But also, in 2022, I want to read more books from outside of the US, so hopefully tracking this will help me achieve that. I’m honestly surprised that the number of books I read that were published in the US is as “low” as 87% (I thought it would be in the 90s)—which just makes it even more obvious that this is something I should work on!

Another new graph for this year! This somehow ended up being a pretty well-balanced selection of debut authors, authors I’m familiar with, and new to me (non-debut) authors, so I’m really happy about that.

And I’m ALSO really happy about the amount of authors of color I read this year!! I’d hoped that 75% of what I read this year would be by authors of color, and I ended up surpassing that without realizing. And since that—getting to a point where I naturally read more authors of color—I won’t be setting another numerical goal for 2022, but I do really hope to read more Latine and Indigenous authors this year!

BEST BOOKS

   
   

Read more of my thoughts on my favorite books (+ honorable mentions) in THIS POST!

DISAPPOINTING BOOKS

So… there are a lot… I’ll highlight a few that I want to talk about in particular (aka ones I didn’t talk about elsewhere):

         

• A Good True Thai: I ended up DNFing this one accidentally; I put it down at 67% meaning to come back to it, and months later I was like, actually, I don’t ever want to read the rest of this! It’s a good introduction to 1970s Thai politics but never went into as much detail as I’d hoped for, and the characters were literal sacks of flour.
• Descendant of the Crane/The Ones We’re Meant to Find: Grouping these two together since they’re by the same author, and I had pretty much the same feelings about both of them! I was very bored and did not want to keep reading, and the writing annoyed me a lot.
• Rise to the Sun: I had a lot of high hopes for this book after unexpectedly loving this author’s debut, but unfortunately, I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief about the conveniences of the plot and also the insta-love.
• Down Comes the Night: So many friends loved this one and its romance, which only made me more disappointed when I read it and didn’t care about it.
• Our Violent Ends: I felt nothing, unfortunately! And it was frustrating because I was very obviously meant to feel devastated!

Other disappointing reads (more thoughts linked in the post above):

       

FAVORITE BOOK COVERS

     

Sana Takeda & Elizabeth Story
Zipcy & Kerri Resnick
Greg Ruth & Christine Foltzer
 Aykut Aydoğdu & Aurora Parlagreco

HIDDEN GEMS

     

I know Goodreads ratings aren’t the perfect indicator of how well people know a book, but looking at the amount of ratings for these really does sadden me, because they’re all so good!!!

BOOKS THAT MADE ME CRY

   

I love that these make up half of my favorite books of the year! Mornings in Jenin was absolutely brutal to read and I was a sobbing mess by the end. Though I didn’t cry nearly as much over When We Were Infinite and Crying in H Mart, they still were heartbreaking to read and in a very personally relatable way.

BOOKS THAT MADE ME HAPPY

   

I read volumes 2-6 of Witch Hat Atelier this year, and all of them made me feel so giddy… These little witch girls are adorable and I love watching them grow, as students and witches and friends. Moon Fuentez’s romance also just had me smiling so much (which was SICKENING who am I to be like this over straight people!!!!), and though it was a reread for me, I had a really wonderful buddy read of A Wish in the Dark that made me happy! 

BEST RECOMMENDED

As part of my 12 books, 12 friends TBR, I read a bunch of books that friends recommended to me! (I didn’t succeed at reading them all, as expected, but I did read a total of 8!) My favorites were:

       

• In the Dream House, recommended by Elle
• Mornings in Jenin, recommended by Jia
• The Fifth Season, recommended by Prag and Melanie
• The Rape of Nanking, recommended by Lily
• The Space Between Worlds, recommended by Joel

OTHER NOTABLE BOOKS

I always end up featuring the same books to fit with the “prompts,” so here are some other books that I wanted to talk about!

    

• The Tangleroot Palace: I feel like people never love a majority of short stories in short story collections/anthologies, including myself, but this book broke that curse! There was only one I disliked, and every story was so unique and beautifully written.
• Pet: The one and only YA fantasy I rated above 3 stars this year! (I didn’t read many, but still.) This is such a brilliant book, and I’m so happy that I read it because I love Akwaeke Emezi’s writing style and can’t wait to read more from them.
• No Longer Human: This was the first book I started tabbing (since there were so many intriguing and thought-provoking ideas I wanted to return to), which has now led me to want to explore annotating! 
• Mirage: I had so many high expectations for this book, which unfortunately were not met. I was so confident that this would be 5 stars, especially since I’ve been meaning to read it for years, and while I did enjoy it, it unfortunately was nothing more than 3 stars.

#1 PRIORITY BOOKS FOR 2021

     
     

All of these are books I own physically, since I’m trying to cut down my owned TBR!

The first row is called my Row of Shame, because those were all books I wanted to get to before the end of the year and clearly did not. The second row is books I am 100% going to read (half of them because of peer pressure), strategically chosen so I won’t look back at this at the end of the year and feel guilty for not getting to them. If I fail at reading all of these, I will die out of embarrassment.

*I’ve already finished The Last Mapmaker. I am a god. (It was very good.)

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how was your reading year? how many books did you read in 2021? what genre did you read the most? please recommend me all the books that made you cry!!

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