I’ve been thinking a lot about my 2021 reading lately, between the new year, the change my reading took at the end of the year, and compiling my reading stats, so I thought it’d be fun to talk about it a bit.

I think the biggest thing that’s made me reevaluate my reading is the fact that I’m in the middle of a big science fiction and fantasy (SFF) binge, and it’s…weird after reading exclusively romance for so long, but also great! It’s been so fun diving back into one of my favorite genres, and it really highlights how repetitive romance has gotten for me lately. Not to say the books are repetitive by any means! But they tend to follow similar emotional paths and stretch the same parts of my brain, and it’s been reinvigorating to change things up with more SFF (though there’s still plenty of romance in most of what I’m reading!).

This kind of ties in to my realization that my reading this past year was just…kind of mediocre. Like, I read some amazing books, don’t get me wrong! And I did a lot of rereading, which I think is largely what saved my reading year in 2021. But I picked up a lot of stuff that was just ok or not for me, and I didn’t realize I was doing it so often. And I think a lot of that is because I stayed too long in romance for my personal taste when it comes to my overall reading.

Speaking of rereading, I did a lot of it in 2021, which has been awesome!! I’ve really enjoyed rediscovering some of my favorites and seeing how well some of my favorite books from childhood have held up, and I love that I basically have the Hidden Legacy books memorized and am rereading them at minimum on an annual basis! I have lots of plans for rereading in 2022, though a lot of them are still older books. Hopefully soon I start making it a habit to reread some of my newer favorites! Maybe next year I’ll challenge myself to reread my 2021 and 2022 favorites.

It was also cool when compiling my stats to realize that I read almost exclusively in digital formats these days. I think my audiobook consumption is going up, and I expect that to continue in 2022 as I start doing more puzzles and crafts. It really reinforces that I should only be buying physical books when I want to add them to my collection, because if I buy it to read it, it’s never going to happen unless I borrow a digital copy from the library. This also pushes me to take advantage of kindle sales of my favorite books, because when I reread, I do it digitally!

Apparently all of my physical books are purely decorative at this point, which I’m not actually sure how I feel about. I love seeing my favorites on my shelves, and I can’t imagine not having my home full of books, but also, I really don’t need them? Idk, it’s something for me to think about more in the future.

So yeah, 2021 was another weird reading year, which is not at all surprising. But I’m hoping 2022 is a better reading year, and that I remember to pay attention if I think a book is just ok and DNF accordingly. Stay tuned for a blog post with more details about my reading goals for the coming year!

How was your reading in 2021? Let me know in the comments!