Thursday, December 31, 2020

2020 Reading Goals Review & Yearly Stats

Reading Challenges Review

My first goal was to read 70 books, but I later upped that to 100 books. I'm proud to say that I managed to read 135 books, my best reading year ever!! 

View my Goodreads Year in Books here to see all the books I read in 2020!

My next goal was to read five completed series and finish three series I was currently reading at the start of the year. I managed to far surpass this goal, reading 12 full series and completing 4 currently-reading series, listed below in completion order. 

1. Magisterium series by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare (finished)
2. Delirium trilogy by Lauren Oliver
3. The Folk of the Air trilogy by Holly Black
4. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
5. The Girl from Everywhere duology by Heidi Heilig
6. The Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown
7. The Dragonriders of Pern trilogy by Anne McCaffrey
8. Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman (finished)
9. Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld
10. The Blood of Stars duology by Elizabeth Lim
11. The Carls duology by Hank Green (finished)
12. The Poppy War trilogy by R. F. Kuang
13. The Hallowed Ones duology by Laura Bickle
14. A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas
15. A Conspiracy of Magic trilogy by Megan Crewe (finished)
16. Forward Collection by Various Authors

My next goal was to read as many books as possible from my TBR and have at least 70% of the books I read be from my TBR because I own sooo many unread books. Unfortunately, I did not complete this goal. Only 71 of 135 books (53%) were from my TBR. My list of owned and unread books was at 350 on January 1, 2020, and I wanted to reduce that as much as possible, but now my TBR is at 390 books! Obviously, I have a book buying problem. . . . I had 16 books that I've owned since high school that I really hoped to get to this year, but I read only 6 of them. This goal will carry over into my reading goals for 2021. 


Yearly Statistics

Number of books I read in 2020: 135
Number of those books that I listened to on audio: 61
Number of books I read from my TBR: 71
Number of books I read that were published this year: 27
Number of series I started: 26
Number of series I completed: 16
Number of books I DNFed: 9
Number of books I reread: 3
Number of books I acquired this year: 135
Number of books I unhauled this year: 31
Number of books on my TBR at the beginning of 2020: 350
Number of books on my TBR at the end of 2020: 390

Books I read that were . . .
Middle Grade: 17 (12.6%)
Young Adult: 39 (28.9%)
Adult: 79 (58.5%)
*Note that I categorize anything not specifically labeled as middle grade or young adult as an adult title, such as nonfiction, humor, graphic novels, or religious books that could be enjoyed by any age group.


Graphic Novels: 9 books
Short Stories or Novellas: 19 books
Nonfiction Titles: 21 books
ARCs I read before the publication date: 5 books

Star Ratings:
1 star: 14 books (10.4%)
2 stars: 26 books (19.3%)
3 stars: 37 books (27.4%)
4 stars: 35 books (25.9%) 
5 stars: 23 books (17.0%)


Reading Survey

Favorite book of the year: Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
Least favorite book of the year: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green
Most surprising book of the year: Most Likely by Sarah Watson
Most disappointing book of the year: Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Longest book of the year: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (1,001 pages)
Shortest book of the year: Randomize by Andy Weir (28 pages) 
Book that was on my TBR the longest that I read: Delirium by Lauren Oliver (9 years)
Biggest accomplishment: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson 
Most read genre: Fantasy (63 books) 


Reading Reflections

Well, this was certainly an interesting and unprecedented year. I read more than I've ever read before in one year, but I also gave out more low ratings this year than any previous year. Quantity does not equal quality. I hoped to read a lot of my TBR books, and I was doing pretty well on that goal for about six months, but then I veered away to non-owned books over the summer and never got back on track. I'm not mad about it though, because one of the main reasons I read books I didn't own was because I wanted to read some books relating to the Black Lives Matter movement and further my education as a white ally. I own an extremely small amount of nonfiction, so all of these were titles I read from the library, and there were a lot of them. 

Another contributor to my outrageous number of non-TBR books I read was that there were tons of novellas and short stories relating to series I own that were available only as ebooks, and of course I read them all. Plus I had a handful of books I wanted to read that I only had access to via ebook, and I had another set of books I wanted to read before I purchased them because I wasn't sure if I would like them enough to purchase them in the first place. Lots of contributing factors, but overall I'm happy with my reading this year, especially because while only slightly more than half of the books I read were from my TBR list, that was still 71 books! Some years I don't read that many books in the whole year, so while the number of books I read from my TBR was low percentage-wise, it was still high quantity-wise. 

I read some books this year that I had hoped to get to for years. I read new books by some of my favorite authors, and I read some disappointing books that I had hoped to love. I don't think I can ever beat 135 books in a year, but I still can't wait to see what books lie in store for me to discover next year. 

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