My 2021 Reading & Blogging Goals: Year-End Wrap-Up

It’s that time of year when I like to reflect on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year and see how I did.  Some of my goals this year were repeats of goals from prior year, while others were new this year.  A few were also ways of challenging myself without officially participating in any challenges aside from the Goodreads challenge. So…how did I do?

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1) My number one goal was to read more of the books on my own shelves. I set a goal for myself of 60 books I already owned and at the end of 2020, I posted a MASTER LIST of pre-2021 books I own that I was hoping to put a dent in this year.  Being the mood reader that I am, I only ended up reading 29 books from that list.  That master list part of my goal was somewhat of a fail, but overall I crushed the goal because I actually did end up reading 78 pre-2021 books I already owned.

2) My second goal was to only participate in blog tours where I had already requested review books.  I hardly participated in blog tours at all this year and the ones I did were definitely for books where I actually had ARCs, so this goal was a success.

3) Goal #3 was to address my long-time struggle to finish book series. My goal was to finish more series and to finally start some series that have been sitting on my shelf for a while.  Below is my original list and I’ve crossed out all the series I actually completed.  Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Series I Want to Finish or Get Caught Up On: 

• The Nevernight Chronicle (1 book left)
• An Ember in the Ashes (2 books left)
• Arc of a Scythe (1 book left)
• Red Winter (2 books left)
• The Wrath and the Dawn (1 book left)
• Legacy of Orisha (ongoing series, but I’m one book behind)
• Cursebreakers (1 book left)
• The Mortal Instruments (3 books left)

Series I Want to Start:

• Daughter of Smoke and Bone
• City of Brass
• Legend

4) Goal #4 was to continue to work on my Bookstagram account — to work on posting more consistently, taking better photos, and on interacting more on the platform.  I started out doing pretty well with this but then fell apart after my son got sick and work got even more short-staffed than we’ve always been.  Bookstagram was just one too many things to keep track of.  I also lost a lot of followers when I stopped posting consistently, so I didn’t grow my account at all. Overall, a fail.

5) Goal #5 was to re-read more.  Below is the list I posted and how I did.  I had set a personal goal of 1 re-read a month so although I did actually re-read a few this year, the goal was still a fail.

• The Night Circus – actually started to re-read and lost interest, so DNF’ed 🙁
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Rebecca
• Children of Blood and Bone
• Red Winter
• The Chronicles of Narnia (7 books) – As of 12/29, I’ve re-read only the first book.
• The Wrath and the Dawn

6) Goal #6 was to try to keep my Netgalley percentage at 85% or above all year.  I kicked butt on this goal and actually stayed at 90% or above pretty much the entire year.  As of 12/29, I’m at 91%.

7) Goal #7 was to read more Nonfiction.  I usually only read 1 or 2 nonfiction books a year, so I had set a personal goal of 1 nonfiction book per month.  Below is my list and I marked through all of the books I managed to read.  I clearly didn’t reach my goal of one a month, but I did read several more than I usually do and one of those was Hamilton which is 818 pages long so I’m somewhat happy with my progress here.

• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
• My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
• Hamilton by Ron Chernow (I started this in 2020 but haven’t finished it yet).
• What Unites Us by Dan Rather
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win WWII by Liza Mundy
• D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win WWII by Sarah Rose
• A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win WWII by Sonia Purnell
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle

8) Goal #8 was to get more organized. LOLOLOL.  Yeah, that didn’t happen. Better luck next year.

9) Goal #9 was to have some guest posting on my blog and this one was definitely a success since my bff Sharon has been posting her Thriller Thursday posts all year. I’m hoping she’ll stay on board in 2022 and continue sharing her thoughts on those mysteries and psychological thrillers.

10) Goal #10 was just my Goodreads Challenge and I crushed that goal as well.  I had set a goal of 150 and as of December 28th, I’ve actually finished reading 210 books. Woo Hoo!

I’ll be posting my 2022 goals sometime in the next couple of weeks, but I imagine there will be a lot of repeats from this list since I clearly still have some room for improvement. 🙂

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Did you have any reading or blogging goals in 2021? If so, how did you do?