Goodreads can be kind of a nightmare for authors (I generally don’t read reviews of my books there), but I enjoy it as a reader. In particular, I like keeping track of the novels I’ve read (I don’t track my picture book reading) and for the yearly reading challenge with the handy wrap-up they give you at the end of each year. That’s where the screenshots in this post came from.
My 2021 reading goal was 50 books, which has been pretty typical of my reading habits of the last few years, and I came in at 51. Yay for consistency and meeting goals! Most of my reads were young adult or middle grade novels. In addition to that, I’m positive I’ve read hundreds of pictures books.
One of my goals was to read more graphic novels. My kids are obsessed with them! It was fun to share a lot of these with my 10-year-old and chat about them. I was quite successful on that front. A few stand-outs in that category were Séance Tea Party by Remena Yee, which was beautiful on so many levels, and Witches of Brooklyn and the sequel What the Hex?! by Sophie Escabasse. I did a lot of witchy reading, so it’s no surprise that these ended up as favorites.
I also read more romance than I usually do because I found those easy to read at times when I was having trouble concentrating. Helen Hoang and Jasmine Guillory are two of my favorite romance authors.
I read less non-fiction than usual, probably because those can require heavy concentration and I was lacking that in my reading this year. The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack was fascinating and not as heavy a read as the title suggest. Though I didn’t read a ton of adult non-fiction, I made up for that in how much non-fiction I read to the kiddos. We read lots of science books, particularly space-related ones.
Reading a diverse list of authors has been an important reading goal for me for years now, and I think I did a good job with that. This is also an important factor in what my kids are reading, so I make sure that they have books with all different kinds of people in them and written by diverse creators. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop introduced the phrase about children having “windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors” in their literature. My boys have plenty of mirrors in their reading, so I make sure they are also getting windows into other peoples’ lives.
Malinda Lo’s historical YA novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club won the National Book Award, among many other awards and starred reviews, and totally lives up the hype. I’ve enjoyed reading her stories ever since her first book Ash came out over ten years ago, and I was really happy to see her have such a successful year.
I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I don’t really read books that I don’t enjoy. So if you see a book end up on my read list that means I’ve enjoyed it. I also don’t buy as many books as my reading habits might suggest. The boys and I are big patrons of the public library, and I stop by there pretty much every week. Borrowing books from the library is a great way to support literacy, your community, and authors.
Unfortunately I still haven’t been able to get into reading audiobooks. Seems the efforts I talked about in my post from 2019 “Training My Brain to Read Audiobooks” haven’t worked. I continue to enjoy podcasts, so at least something came of that attempt.
What did you enjoy reading this year? Did you face any challenges or try anything new?
As one who reads slowly, I am in awe of readers like you. My more-or-less ambition (I refuse “goals”) is about a fifth of yours: about ten novels a year, not including re-reads, Beta reads, and picture books. Good for you, Katie, and with the three musketeers on your hands, it’s impressive.
I’ve found a way to fit reading into all the cracks of life. I admire the way you know yourself to have a realistic ambition about your yearly reading. That makes much more sense than setting a lofty goal and failing miserably.
I’m a new user of goodreads but don’t update it often enough. I might list 3 books and then come back after a month and jot a few notes on 5 different books. lol. I’m mulling what I loved best. Hmmm, best writing book Secrets of Story by Matt Bird; the most comforting book In Sinu Jesu by an anonymous monk (I’m still reading it because I’m so moved I cannot read more than a couple of pages at a time–it’s a book that leads you to contemplate); best children’s fiction would have to be Janeen Zaio’s Treasure with a Face; the most unconventional mashup, Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue. And lots and lots of picture books.
I’ll have to check out Secrets of Story…I haven’t read that one. So many picture books here, too.
You’ve inspired me to keep a list of books read this year. I know I read a lot, but I have no idea how many that entails. Also I want to remember the ones I really liked.
That’s great, Barb! I find it doesn’t take too much time to keep track of my reading and it’s worth it to me.
This year I did a lot of what I call comfort reading–rereading books I know I like. Our books had been in storage for two years and in June we got to start unpacking all these old friends! I enter books on Goodreads, but often not my old favorites. I read pbs, mg, ya, adult, including: contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi, romance, women’s fiction, mystery.
It was definitely a good year for comfort reading. I’ll reread favorite books when I’m in a reading slump.