Thursday, January 6, 2022

Deanna's 2021 year in books

Reading goals

I have a few reading goals I set each year and they are quite modest. I don't like to set difficult goals for myself because I'm one of those weird people who will dig my heels in and not go for that goal, but if I set a reasonable goal then I challenge myself to exceed it and set an unofficial (higher) goal to get to.

This year, as always, my reading goal is 100 books. I set that in my Goodreads reading challenge as well as my Amazon Reading Insights. I need to explain the difference between the two goals. The Goodreads reading challenge tracks all the actual books I read for the year. My Amazon Reading Insights tracks EVERYTHING I send to my Kindle app and read for the year which will include all the books I read, books I read for work, partial manuscripts, completed manuscripts, bonus content, and anything else that needs to be read that I'd like to read in the Kindle app. Therefore, my Amazon Reading Insights tends to be a lot higher than my Goodreads reading challenge since a lot of what I read isn't found on Goodreads and can't be counted.

2021 Goodreads reading challenge

As always, my 2021 Goodreads reading challenge was set at 100 books. I had an unofficial goal of breaking my record from 2020 which was 346 books. When I got close, I wanted to achieve the goal of 365 books in the year so that I can say I read a book a day. I thought that was a cool goal to achieve and a good record to set.

And I did it. In fact, I kinda overshot it by about 28 books and I left those to be counted to my January 2022 numbers. I'm well ahead for 2022 already. I really wanted that 365 books number for 2021. As you can see from my year in books, I had a good reading year with some diveristy in it. The average length of books I read for the year was at 157 pages which is really about my sweet spot when it comes to the length of a book I like to read, though I did read longer and shorter books too.

2021 year in books 1  2021 year in books 2

On the Amazon reading front, you can see that the number is much higher for 2021. I read exactly 700 documents (I looked towards the end of the year and saw I was at 695 so decided to hustle and read a few more books to get a nice round number). I'm pretty impressed with that number since I really only set that at 100 documents too. I say documents because some of what I read are partials or very short couple of chapter bonus content from authors so they do not qualify as a full book. It's a good number though and I do not know if I will exceed it, but it will be my unofficial record to beat for 2022.

2021 Amazon Reading Insights

So, goals for 2022. It's the same as always. 100 books on my Goodreads reading challenge and 100 documents on my Amazon Reading Insights. I'm pretty sure I'll exceed those numbers but by how much is always a surprise. Wish me luck!

Do you set goals for your reading? How many books do you think you are going to read for 2022?

4 comments:

  1. I've not thought of including documents etc in Amazon insights. I have some kindle and KU magazines regularly. Might think about that.
    My average pages per book was 221. Which I find about right. The Longest was 480 by Allison Brennan but I read it at a fair clip. Other shorter books can sometimes take longer to read if they are slow paced I find. I can't count Pets in Space as I've only read one of the stories so far!
    I can usually get about 200 a year these days. When I started my spreadsheet in 2006 it was about 40 to 50 a year. Mind you, I was working then!
    Gill

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amazon tracks everything you mark as read in the Reading Insights and I wasn't consciously thinking about it, but I was marking everything I completed reading as "read" and they just started showing up in my Reading Insights and I ran with it.

      Delete
  2. Good luck Deanna :)

    I set a Goodreads challenge every year and have done for some time now and there was only one year a failed by 2 books I think it was, I set it at 170 last year and read 230 so this year I have set it at 220 and we will dee how we go :)

    Have Fun

    Helen

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You've always been fantastic with your Goodreads challenges.

      Delete