Reflecting on 2021: Blogging Milestones, Reading Stats, and New Year’s Resolutions | 2021 Mega-Wrap-up

I simply refuse to believe that today is the last day of 2021.

2022 is going to be a big year. I will be graduating high school in the spring, starting college in the fall and turning 18 in November. Somehow I feel like I missed something– could I have skipped a year somewhere in my childhood? It did not feel long enough.

But existential musings aside, New Year’s Eve is one of my favorite days of the year because it’s so satisfying to reflect on how you grew in the past 12 months.

Today I’ll be sharing my reading and blogging stats as well as my bookish New Year’s resolutions for 2022.

Alexa, play “Auld Lang Syne”.

Reading:

Total books read: 102

Total pages read: 32,056 (technically, if you count the books I DNFed, this should be higher…)

Average book length: 314 pages

Average rating: 3.4

Worst reading month: September (4 books); Best reading month: January (13 books)

Books by “Age Group”:

(Yes I know classics is not an age group but this is simply my system)

Books by Genre:

Books by Format I Read Them In

Blogging:

Total posts published in 2021: 77

Follower count at beginning of year: ~345

Follower count at end of year (all platforms): ~1,470

Personal Favorite Posts of the Year:

I Taught An AI To Generate My Book Reviews | RNN Text Generation With Tensorflow– this post was really fun to write and I loved finding a way to combine my interest in computer science with the more bookish side of me that I showcase on this blog– something I want to do more often in 2022.

5 Oddly Specific Categories of Fiction Books You Have Definitely Read | Recent Bookish Trends– Not gonna lie, I was proud of myself for writing this post that is pretty funny if I do say so myself. Anyway, despite the awkward title, I like this one because it was not too serious and very fun to write and I’ll probably do a part two eventually.

Trigger Warning: Trigger Warnings | Why I Don’t Use Trigger Warnings in my Reviews– Fun fact: I wrote my Common App college admissions essay about this post. It seems trivial, but publishing this was actually a pivotal moment in my blogging journey. I was extremely nervous to post it, but I ended up getting (mostly) positive responses from it, and it gave me the confidence to begin writing about more controversial and/or politically charged topics on here.

Most-Viewed Posts of the Year:

1) Book Review: As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson (A Rant) | SPOILER REVIEW– this post started ranking on the first page of Google for search terms like “book review as good as dead” and the last time I checked, it ranked first when you search for spoiler reviews of AGAD, so it has been racking in search engine traffic. Maybe I should begin writing more spoiler reviews?

2) Trigger Warning: Trigger Warnings | Why I Don’t Use Trigger Warnings in my Reviews– yep, the trigger warnings post again, this post did pretty well on top of being one of my favorite posts I wrote this year

3) Thank You For 500 Followers! My Future Blogging Goals– eh, this one is kind of boring, but the milestone posts always get a lot of views for some reason

Most-Viewed Book Reviews of the Year:

Because book reviews almost always get fewer views than anything else…

1) Book Review: As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson (A Rant) | SPOILER REVIEW

2) Book Review: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

3) Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

2022 Goals (Reading & Blogging Edition)

1) Abandon my posting schedule

*Gasp*– well, not totally abandon it, but greatly relax it. Recently I’ve noticed that my rigid posting schedule has basically just been enabling my procrastination, so in 2022 I think it’s best if I resolve to post what I want when I want instead of sticking to Monday-Wednesday-Friday

2) Stop reading books I am not interested in

I want to start DNF-ing more often, because there’s nothing worse than slogging through a book just to mark it as read. I don’t like DNF-ing, but this year I want to read only things I am genuinely enjoying.

3) Read more poetry and short stories

I am a bit of a poetry skeptic (look me in the eye and tell me it’s not just prose with pretentious line breaks) but I actually do want to try reading more of it. Same thing with short stories– which I do like.

4) Read more underrated and backlist books

The book world is saturated with reviews and discourse about new releases and/or hugely popular YA and romance books from the past couple of years. That’s totally fine, but I want to try breaking away from that and finding some older and/or underrated books to read. This was a goal I followed decently well last year, and I want to continue that this year.

5) Shout out other bloggers in my wrap-ups

I have noticed so many book bloggers linking to other people’s posts, etc. in their wrap-ups, and it is such a great way to boost other bloggers in this somewhat underappreciated niche.

6) Experiment more with my posts/try different ideas

Compared to the stuff I published in 2020, I think my 2021 blog posts were on average a lot more interesting– and I want to continue improving that in 2022. Hopefully I will think of ideas that are cool enough to be considered fulfillment of this goal…

7) Review more of the books I read

Last year I began writing brief mini reviews (of sorts) on Goodreads, and this year I’m planning to begin elaborating just a bit more on these so that I can start publishing reviews more consistently here on this blog

That’s it for my 2021 mega-wrap-up post! How was your reading/blogging year? What was your favorite blogging milestone/post in 2021? Let me know in the comments!

(And stay tuned for my “best books of 2021” post coming soon!)

Related:

Rating All 100+ Books I Read in 2021

Reflecting on 2020: Blogging, Reading, Stats & Goals

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