What I read in 2021

 

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal for myself to read at least 100 books in 2021. I'm happy to say that I surpassed the goal, ending the year with 103 books read.

 The average rating for the books I read was 4.03 stars, broken down as follows:

• 5 stars - 33 books
  
• 4 stars - 40 books
  
• 3 stars -  30 books
  

The 4.03 stars average was higher than the 3.96 stars in 2020.

Undoubtedly, my Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge contributed to the higher ratings this year since the 28 books I read as part of the challenge resulted in a 4.11 average. Unlike last year, when the New York Times Bestseller challenge pulled down my average, this year's reading challenge raised it. I'm planning to continue the challenge in 2022, so we'll see if the 2021 Goodreads Choice Award finalists are as good as the 2020 books.

In my next post, I'll list my top ten reads of 2021. Stay tuned!

 

Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge recap

For my reading challenge this year, I chose to read at least twenty books from the list of 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards finalists. I ended the year reading twenty-eight of them.

The books I read were (in alphabetical order by title):

• Anxious People - Fredrik Backman
• Beach Read - Emily Henry  
• Confessions on the 7:45 - Lisa Unger
  
• A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik 
• Devolution - Max Brooks
• A Good Girl's Guide to Murder - Holly Jackson
  
• The Hollow Places - T. Kingfisher  
• Home Before Dark - Riley Sager
  
• The House in the Cerulean Sea - T.J. Klune 
• House of Earth and Blood - Sarah Maas
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V.E. Schwab
• The Kingdom of Back - Marie Lu 
  
• The Loop - Jeremy Robert Johnson  
• Luster - Raven Leilani 
• Malorie - Josh Malerman
  
• The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
• Migrations - Charlotte McConaghy
  
• The Night Swim - Megan Goldin 
• One by One - Ruth Ware
• Oona Out of Order - Margarita Montimore 
  
• Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
  
• Solutions and Other Problems - Allie Brosh
• The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson
  
• Strange Planet - Nathan Pyle
  
• Such a Fun Age - Kiley Reid  
• The Sun Down Motel - Simone St. James
  
• To Sleep in a Sea of Stars - Christopher Paolini  
• When No One is Watching - Alyssa Cole 

Of the 28 books, I rated 12 as 5 stars, 7 as four stars, and 9 as three stars. The average rating came out to be 4.11, which is higher than my overall average of about 4.0 stars for the books I've read and logged on Goodreads. It was also much higher than the 3.5 average from my New York Times Bestseller reading challenge in 2020. As far as reading challenges go, this one was a success. I read a lot of books that I really enjoyed, including some that will end up on my top ten favorite reads of 2021.

There were a couple of interesting observations from this reading challenge. First, the category winners didn't perform as well as the other finalists. My average rating for the books that won in their category was 4.0, the same as the typical book I read. The real gems were the finalists that didn't win in their category. I also found that I usually either really liked one of the Goodreads Choice Award finalists or thought the book was mediocre. As noted by the ratings above, there were more 5-star and 3-star ratings than 4-star ratings. This was unusual because normally, 4 stars is the most common rating I give a book.

Since this reading challenge went so well, I'm planning to continue it again next year, using the 2021 Goodreads Choice Award finalists. I hope I'll enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the books I read this year!

NaNoWriMo 2021 recap

Another NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is behind us. I started this year's NaNoWriMo with the same modest goals as last year: to write 20,000 words in the month of November. The good news is that I accomplished the goal, ending the month just over the target with 20,040 words.

November started out well for me. After the first week, I had already written nearly 7,000 words. And then work kicked my butt. During week 2, there were days when I barely had fifteen minutes to write, and my average daily word count for the rest of the month was less than 400 during the work week. Yet, thanks to the fast start, I hit the midpoint of my 20,000-word goal by November 13. The weekends also helped because I was able to write more on Saturdays and Sundays. However, it still came down to the last day before I crossed the 20,000-word threshold.

My WIP is now at about 40,000 words, and I estimate the first draft to be 50,000 to 60,000 words long. Given that I still want to finish the first draft by the end of the year, that means another mini-NaNoWriMo for me in December to accomplish my goals. Now that I've already written 20,000 words in November, another 10,000 to 20,000 in December looks more doable than it did a month ago.