A Year in Reading: 2021

Hey, remember I was totally shocked by how much I read last year? A whopping 258 books?

2021 was apparently my time to shine. And by shine, I mean completely immerse myself in fictional worlds.

How did I pull this off? A few reasons come to mind. My day job finally got rid of its office space (something we’d actually been working toward before the pandemic) and I officially continued working from home full-time. No commute, even on my non-telework days, helped a lot. I also continued my Kindle Unlimited subscription, which is probably the most financially sensible choice I’ve ever made in my life. This led me to discover a ton of excellent new authors and even build an official “to-be-read” list to track everything that interested me. I was apparently one of the first readers to get the new 20-book borrow limit, which was both awesome and slightly overwhelming. I eventually stopped tracking the KU books that I abandoned, which is why that number drops off in the list below.

Finally, I’ll also freely admit that a lot of those books were romance, usually quicker to read and also on the shorter side of the average novel length. That number also includes some short stories and novellas. I’ll also weed out the abandoned books for my final total below.

Even though I didn’t review everything I read on the blog, I was still reading so much that at one point I had blog posts scheduled out over 3 months in advance. Last spring, I started combining reviews of series into single posts, so I’m interested in my final review tally as well. Let’s dig in.

• January
  • Read: 55 (2 abandoned)
  • Reviewed: 16
• February
  • Read: 58 (3 abandoned)
  • Reviewed: 26
• March
  • Read: 87
  • Reviewed: 36
• April
  • Read: 57
  • Reviewed: 38
• May
  • Read: 59 (2 abandoned)
  • Reviewed: 46
• June
  • Read: 68*
  • Reviewed: 23
• July
  • Read: 67
  • Reviewed: 30
• August
  • Read: 59
  • Reviewed: 22
• September
  • Read: 60
  • Reviewed: 42
• October
  • Read: 49
  • Reviewed: 39
• November
  • Read: 53
  • Reviewed: 27
• December
  • Read: 43
  • Reviewed: 15

^{*This month looks weird on Goodreads. I later stripped my ratings and reviews of 12 books once it came out that the author had significantly plagiarized at least one and probably more of their works.}

Total Books Read: 715
Total Books Reviewed: 360

Honestly, I’m pretty proud of myself for all of that. You should never feel embarrassed by your hobbies, and I love that I’m supporting authors by sharing their work with the world.

I hope you’ll continue to join me in 2022 for more excellent books. I’ve only read 2 so far this year, but blog posts with 14 book reviews are currently scheduled through January 26 and the to-be-read list is certainly not getting any shorter.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to set up the brand-new Kindle the spouse got me for my birthday.