Hi everyone,

Today I’m looking back at all the books I read in 2020, and seeing how sucessful I was at meeting my goals! I opened up my 2020 goals post from early last year before writing this post and…..well I can’t say I did too sucessfully. It was actually rather depressing to see how much I’ve failed. I think I’ll need to make my 2021 goals a lot more manageable this year so I have even the slightest chance of meeting them.

My reading stats

Let’s start with the really fun stuff: statistics! I love doing different stats on my reading to see where I need to improve and get a more holisitc view of what I am reading. Across 2020, I read 109 books for a total of 37, 436 pages! This is 9 over my goal of 100, but 1 less than my stretch goal of 110 (which was what I managed in 2019 and so I wanted to match or beat it). But I’m still really happy with this figure, particularly as I haven’t counted any of the reading I needed to do in my new job this year (where I now get to read lots of manuscripts to assess for acquisition!)

The longest book I read was of course the magnificent The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon at 848 pages! My shortest read was the novella Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh, at 112 pages. My average rating across the year was 4.1 – my average rating usually sits quite high because I’m generally pretty good at picking books I know I’ll like to read.

Of the 109 books I read this year:

• 49 were fantasy
• 12 were science fiction
• 13 were horror
• 20 were contemporary
• 4 were mystery/thriller
• 5 were nonfiction/memoirs
• 6 were historical fiction

I am very unsurprised by the fact more than half of my reads – or 68%! – were speculative fiction (fantasy, scifi, horror). 61% of all the books (or 66 in total) were queer, with 20% being about or by trans, nonbinary or gender diverse people. I’d love to get the percentage of trans/nonbinary/gender diverse books up, and I definitely think I’ll be able to since there are so many great trans books coming this year!

Of the 109 books, 47% were by authors of colour (or 51 books). This is another area I want to improve on in 2021, I’d like to get to 50% at a minimum, but I’ll be aiming for 60%. For a more specific goal, I’d like to focus on reading more books by Indigenous Australians in particular.

My favourites of the year

Here are five of my favourite books of the year. I also have a longer post talking about my 17 new favourites of the year, which you can check it out here! But for this post, I thought I’d just pick five from different genres for variety!

• In horror, I adored Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• In fantasy, I loved The Unspoken Name by A.K Larkwood
• In YA contemporary, I loved Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
• In nonfiction, I loved How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
• In science fiction, I loved The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

My worst of the year

Annnnnd these are my least favourites of the year. This list is filled with several of my most anticipated books of 2020! And it particularly breaks my heart to see Empire of Gold here. Because half of that book was pure excellence (yes hi Dara, you carried that book). Still one of my favourite series of all time though!

• Queen of Coin and Whispers by Helen Corcoran
• The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow
• The Empire of Gold by S.A Chakraborty
• Tarnished Are the Stars by Rosiee Thor
• Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles

Did I meet my 2020 goals?

And now it’s time to go through my list of 2020 goals and embarass myself with how much I failed. Pretty sure I completely forgot about most of these goals by the second week of January

• I want to review at least 60% of the books I read – and ALL of the 2020 releases I read.

Well this was definitely a fail, what was I thinking?! Reviewing every single 2020 release? WHAT. I think I reviewed approximately 64 books in 2020, which actually, having now counted it up, is still 57% of all the books I read so I almost got there. However, I definitely didn’t review every single 2020 release, particularly the ones I read in the last few months of the year when I just needed a bit of a break.

• Read 100 books.

Woohoo, okay this one I managed!! Go me. I did find myself rushing at the end of the year to try get it completed, so I might lower it for 2021 to reduce the pressure on myself.

• Year of the Asian Readathon – get the Malayan Tapir award, which is reading 21-30 books by Asian authors.

And I managed to sucessfully complete this one too! I was aiming for 30 books, but I’m still happy I reached the range for the Malayan Tapir award with 23 books by Asian authors!

• I also had several very intense writing goals, including finishing my WIP (which I failed), researching two other books (also failed both these) and joining a writing group (failed). Although to be fair to the last one, I did try go to a writing group in early January but did not click with any of the people and then covid happened. So at least that one isn’t totally my fault?

Anyway here’s to making more achievable goals in 2021!

2021 goals!

This year, I’m trying to make more sensible, achievable, less overwhelming goals. So far, I’ve got:

• Read at least 1 nonfiction book every month.
• Read 75 books total – I’ve reduced this from my 2020 goal, even though I did sucessfully read 100 books, because I’d like to put less pressure on myself.
• Read 60% books by authors of colour.
• Read 75% queer books.
• Read 30% books by/about trans, nonbinary and gender-diverse people.
• Work on my physical TBR instead of getting overwhelmed with ARCs and library books. I can’t remember who, but someone on Twitter said their goal was going to be for every ARC read, they must then read a book they own and I absolutely love that! So for every ARC or library book I read, I immediately need to read a book I own after it! Hopefully that will get me get my physical TBR down.
• I’m also putting finish my current writing WIP on here as well – and that’s my only writing goal after having four or five last year failed me horrifically.
• Regarding all my social media, I would love to reach 300 followers on my blog and bookstagram, and reach 450 on Twitter! It’s approximately an increase of 100 followers on each platform….Is that achievable in a year??? I hope so!

And that’s my 2020 wrap-up, as well as a sneak peak at the goals I’m hoping to achieve in 2021! I’m excited to get started on my 2021 reading. This year has so many incredible books coming and I can’t wait to read them all! What goals have you made for 2020? Let me know in the comments!