End of the year wrap up 7/7: reading goals for 2021

 Ah, the time has finally come for me to write my personal favorite part of my annual reading wrap-up, i.e. my reading goals for the coming year!

Apparently I do love creating goals for myself that I never end up completing. Oh well. At least I'm having fun, right? ;-)

Anyway, seeing as I flopped massively with doing my reading goals this past year I've decided to lessen my goals somewhat and to make them a bit more interesting.

Are you interested in seeing what I'm planning on reading this coming year? Well, click on through if you are!

End of the year wrap up [6/7] : books I'm looking forward to reading that will be released in 2021

 
Hi guys, we're approaching the very last days of 2020 and thus I figured it'd be appropriate for us to start looking forward to the coming year. Today and tomorrow, we'll look at what's happening in the world of reading and literature in the upcoming year.

Today we'll start with a not-much-researched, half-assed list of 10 new releases I'm looking forward to in 2021. Honestly, I'm generally a bit crap at keeping up with coming releases and whatnot so the half-assedness of this list is due to that, and I apologize in advance.

Despite my ramblings, are you interested in seeing what I'm hoping to read in 2021? If so, click on through and enjoy!

End of the year wrap up [5/7]: top 5 best books I've read this year

 

Hi guys! It's finally become that time of the year again where I look back on books I've read and pick my top five reads of the year! 

Do you want to find out what books I cared for a lot this year? Click on through and you'll find out!

End of the year wrap up [4/7]: how I did with my reading goals

 So last year I was very ambitious with my reading goals, setting a whopping total of 7 for me to try to meet during this year.

Like I've stated in previous posts, I felt my reading being hindered and myself being thrown into a reading slump thanks to these challenges. Long story short, I eventually gave up on them. I gave up on them sometime this fall, and naturally I did read books that fit into these challenges even after I stopped paying attention to them. So, which I guess I have to consider myself beaten, I did enjoy reading for these challenges and I think I did pretty well with them, all things considering..

If you're wanting to see what books I read for specific challenges etc, you'll find that over here. 

Do you want to see how I did? Click on through and you'll find out!

End of the year wrap up [3/7]: even more stats!

 Hi guys,

today's post will be a continuation of sorts of yesterday's post; i.e more stats! I do love me some stats and I figured I might just do more because these interest me (especially now that I've finally figured out how to do graphs in Microsoft Excel, woho go me!). If you, unlike me, isn't a stats ners you can just skip this post and come back tomorrow.

I, however, am very excited to be sharing more stats and graphs with you! Click on through and you'll find them :)

End of the year wrap up [2/7]: the year in stats

 The day has come for a stats nerd like me to really go OFF on all of these glorious, glorious stats! Unfortunately I'm not too good at handling Microsoft Excel, so my graphs sadly look pretty bad. But for the first time ever I'm actually including some kind of graphs so yeah, I'm proud of myself for doing this!

Are you interested in seeing my stats? Well click on through and you will!

End of the year wrap up [1/7]: Review of the year 2020 in books

So, the year of 2020 is finally coming to a close. Needless to say, this year has been very, very different from all other years in my life so far. The events of 2020 have affected each and every one of us, in different ways and there's no point in me going on about how much this year has sucked, because I'm pretty sure we all know it has sucked! 

The pandemic is, needless to say, very, very serious and something that's so vast and horrible it's hard to comprehend. Before I begin my yearly "review of the year in books", let me just start off by saying that I'm fully acknowledging how very...not serious the way this pandemic has affected my reading is, especially in the greater scheme of things. I definitely don't mean to belittle the seriousness of the pandemic nor do I mean to equate it to my reading struggles...

Moving on, let's get started!

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Overall rating; I think I'd give this year a 2.5/5.

All in all, everyone that knows me know I'm usually quite generous with ratings no matter what I'm supposed to rate, be it books, tea, movies, whatever. So basically, a 2.5/5 means "not very good at all", and is a rating I don't normally give (because I'm usually and typically very generous).

This year was sponsored by Reading Slumpes Galore, brought on by my general anxiety and also by some pandemic-induced anxiety and stress. My reading goal is usually, as I put it on Goodreads every year, 50 books. That's a goal I normally hit with ease. 50 books isn't hard at all for me, normally I end up somewhere between 60-70 books read. As I'm writing this, however, I have finished 48 books, meaing I'm not even done with my goal. And that, my friends, is just straight up bad, at least for me. I think this is the first time since I started using Goodreads that I've actually struggled to hit my goal.

Last year, I feel like my slump-ness was a constant thing throughout the year where I'd read maybe 4 books a month. This year, however, it's run havoc and lead to me basically not picking up any books at all for months on end, for me to then suddenly find my will to read, and then slumping again because I somehow ended up reading 8 books in a month. Yeah, I have no idea how that happened honestly. Even if I'm trying to pick up books I know I'll love, I just...don't.

I'm sure most of us have felt anxious, apathetic or simply just hopeless in ways related to the pandemic, and I definitely have. With the calls to stay at home and to limit social interactions, one would think it would bring on a larger will to read for me. Sadly, I can't say that's been the case for me at all. Combine this with my general anxiety that I deal with always (I think I probably have GAD, but I haven't been diagnosed officially with it), this year hasn't been fun for me. It definitely hasn't left me wanting, nor capable, to read.

I also suspect that I took on too many reading goals/challenges this year year. In trying to meet my reading goals/finish my challenges, I was constantly worrying about finishing this month's TBRs. I would create these very elaborate reading goals for myself. I ended up feeling like my reading had no room for what I actually wanted to read at that time, which had me slumping because it took away any spontanity reading had always contained for me (turns out I'm a bigger 'mood reader' than I'd ever thought). Like, I could spend an hour or so a week just trying to figure out how to maximize the 'usefulness' of the books I chose to read the coming month, like if I could pick a book for next month's TBR that fit into various different categories, while stressing out about the fact that I didn't read nearly enough to finish this month's TBR...let's just say I ended up stressing myself out, which caused me to read even less...! If I've learned anything this year, it's that too many reading goals crushes my will to read because I do nothing in moderation apparently and always stress myself out about everything (yay, anxiety...). I finally dropped my reading goals/challenges a couple of months back and lo and behold, my will to read finally returned from the war!

All in all, I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew reading-wise, especially in combination with how I dealt with a lot of anxiety in general over other things. So, long story short: I definitely wasn't super impressed with my reading this year. The reading I did get done was good, I just didn't read a lot and I stressed out a lot about reading which is never a good thing.

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Now, let's not forget about the good things in reading this year!

I shall be posting a more thorough post tomorrow where I go through and break down my reading stats with you, so I won't bore you with that kind of stuff right here and now. Let's just say that, without indulging in ~stats~, there were some good reading things that happened to me this year too:

- The quality of the books was overall great/good and definitely better than last year, there weren't that many books that were total duds for me, most of them were good fun and some even found their way into my all-time favorite books. I think I have grown as a reader because

- While I pretty much didn't complete any of my reading goals (apart from hopefully reading 50 books this year), I think I did well with my goals after all. I actually for the most part kept to them and read plenty of books in the different categories, even if I technically didn't finish any of them. 

- The books I requested on Netgalley I mostly got approved for, which was fun.

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And I guess we'll have to add some additional bad things, and then we're done:

- I technically abandoned my reading goals in like, October, so I stopped doing all challenges and haven't even given them much thought at all after that..does this mean I failed all my challenges? Do I really care if I did? i totally did fail them and yes i care too much 

- I ended up pretty much abandoning my blog, which is really bad form for a book blogger, I must say.

- I did a lot of rereads and audio books which I guess technically isn't following/keeping to my reading goals but you know what? I. DON'T CARE. Let a lazy girl live!!

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so that's it for today,,, let me know in the comments how you think my year was!