Hello friends, here’s me trying to get all of my end-of-year posts up on time and not post them in April. Which I DEFINITELY have never done before…

*crickets chirping*

I should do double *crickets chirping* because I disappeared for 2 weeks again. I explain why later in this post but IM SORRY. I’m ~trying~ to get better at not abandoning you all for weeks on end.

Anyways… let us take a minute to THANK THE HEAVENS it is 2021. Even though the year has maybe not been off to the best start already lmao. And just because it’s a new year, it doesn’t mean all of our problems will magically disappear. It’s really just the number that’s changed. But STILL, you all get it.

Anyways, I absolutely loved doing my mid-year goals check-in last year so here we are reflecting on 2020 as a whole. Feast your eyes on a couple of pie charts and my 2021 goals.

READING STATS AND OVERVIEW

So,,, unfortunately, there wasn’t really any drastic change in my reading from the last update. My reading year didn’t improve a ton, I still ended up with a very short list of favourites. I haven’t reread all that much since my last update, I think only one other book. My reading turned out to be quite sporadic due to my university work, but almost all of the books I read in the latter half of 2020 were all new reads. Which looks fine and dandy but were they books on my physical TBR? No. Though I did complete my reading goal, which is great.

Let us get into the stats.

CHARTS!!

AGE CATEGORIES READ

I made these charts a couple of days ago and only just sat down to and realised that YA is the largest chunk. Which is indeed very surprising and Ruby must have very few brain cells to only realise that now but whatever. It must be all the YA rereads welp.

As you can also see by the number, I read very few children’s/middle grade books. I think that small sliver consisted of a children’s classic and 2 graphic novels, so that’s for sure something I want to change.

GENRES READ

I didn’t do this category last time because I didn’t know how to separate them into individual genres as most books span multiple genres. But I was curious so I’ve just sorted the books according to the genre I think fits most, like the head genre (if I’m making any sense idk)??

It is to nobody’s surprise that romance and contemporary are the highest, with romance ahead by *more math equations* 1.92%. I also love that I can tell you exactly which books make up the dystopian section.

NEW VS REREAD

I think since the last update, I’d reread about 10 books at that point, maybe 9, so as you can see I practised my very rare self-restraint. By rereading only like 1 other book. Is a round of applause in order?

No, really not Ruby.

FORMATS READ

Even though I’m disappointed in my self, I LOVE looking at this section. Idk why I just find it so interesting to look at HOW I read books.

As you can see I, for the majority, read ebooks last year, which I did expect even though it is shameful. My Kindle and I have had an on-and-off relationship for quite a few years at this point, it’s very old. But in 2020, it was my greatest companion, carried me through the hardest of times. We read my top two favourites together. You can stop laughing because this is no joking matter.

Though I might to not read you as much this year friend, I have far too many books on my physical shelf. I say that having read 4 ebooks in 2021 already oh well.

Evidently, my self-restraint has been exhausted.

STAR RATINGS COMPARISON

I don’t know how many of you are new readers to this blog, but I wasn’t known for having very low ratings. It was rare that I’d rate 3 stars, let alone a 2 or 2.5. It may have just been that I knew my taste well or maybe I wasn’t very critical, I hope it is not the latter.

I branched out a lot in 2020, and the majority of the books I disliked were the ones outside of my comfort zone so I think it was me just exploring tastes. Which I don’t regret but I do want to go back to my roots more because eh it’s tiring not liking books.

Anyways, here’s the chart:

So technically, 2 and 2.5 stars are the lowest and I have quite a big chunk of 4 stars. The 5-star section is skewed because as we know I reread tons (and I had a 90% expectation that I’d still like them). Of the 11 books I reread, 10 of them remained 5 stars, so I have technically only read 7 new five stars. Which makes the number pretty similar to the 3 and 3.5 chunks. Interesting.

I’ll stop now.

Whoops just kidding, Goodreads gave me more stats so I may as well share:

PAGE COUNTER & POPULARITY

Continuing with my Goodreads stats, here’s a smol size comparison:

As well as the size-average book that I read in 2020. Which is pretty cool. It seems pretty accurate considering my most popular genre. 300ish pages are pretty standard for contemporary and romance.

Also, LOVE that The Hunger Games has made an appearance. It’s very accurate. And a very interesting stat. I feel special being one of the 8 million readers *wink wink*

BLOGGING STATS & CHARTS

This section is a lot shorter but I was interested in what my blogging year looked like. My blogging was quite sporadic last year, which I hope to change and we’ll get into that later. Anyways, I did share the first half of my blogging year in the previous update and in comparison I think I improved a bit.

It’s not amazing and I definitely could’ve done better. I think my best posting months were definitely April, July and December.

WHAT I ACTUALLY POSTED

This is excluding recaps, because I posted one once a month, apart from January and February, which were combined.

I’m glad to see that lists and reviews are tied there. Discussions are coming up a close second (btw they’re not all necessarily a blogging “discussion”, because I categorise multiple kinds of posts as discussions).

And as you can see, I only posted 2 tags. Which I find quite surprising, and maybe my memory is betraying me, but I used to do a lot more of them. But I’ve found myself struggling with tags lately as I feel like I talk about the same books over and over again. Is that just me?

Anyways, some more quick maths:

• Total posts of 2020 (which do include the 10 recaps) = 45 posts
• Which means I posted almost once a week, give or take

So overall, not too bad. But I have goals, which I guess is a good segue into the next section of this post.

2020 GOALS IN REVIEW

So let’s see how I did with the goals I set. I wanted to see if I stuck with my original ones also, so I have two sections here. I don’t really feel like talking through them because 2020 is over and I just feel like starting fresh so this section is rather brief I’m afraid:

Did I continue with my original goals?

• Make more use of audiobooks ✗
• Read more classics ✗
• Read more adult and historical fiction ✓
• Post once/twice a week ✗
• Get to 400 blog followers ✓
• Write discussion & advice posts ✗
• Reach 2k followers on Instagram ✓
• Make more use of Twitter ✗ and Pinterest ✓
• Post more movie content ✓

Total = 5/10

How did I do with my mid-year goals?

• Focus on books I own aka my 2020 tbr ✗
• Diversify my reading as much as possible ✓
• Read more middle grade ✗
• Start another blog series ✗
• Reach 500 blog followers ✗
• Increase my engagement ✓
• Reach 150 Youtube subscribers ✗
• Finish my WIP ✗
• Play more piano ✗
• Learn to balance all my hobbies ✗

Total = 2/10

Anyways moving on. That didn’t go as well as planned. Did I mention I’m done with 2020???

THE NEW 2021 GOALS (REVISED)

So to wrap this post up, let’s start off with some new goals. I’m keeping them fairly short and easy because I think I set out far too ambitious last year for my chaotic brain. Most of them are quite similar to last year but they are slightly adapted haha. Anyways, I’ll stop rambling now (though that it was you signed up for)…

READING GOALS

➵ Read 50 books

This is the most basic goal and I’ve made it very easily reachable.

I hit 50 in 2019 and last year I set my goal to 45, to be safe and hit 52. So it should be no problem and I guess we’ll just see how much reading I get done. As you can see, I’m already off to quite a strong start

➵ Read an audiobook alongside a physical read

For a short while, I was doing this and I found that it was quite a great system. As long as they were different genres, I loved listening to like half an hour of my audiobook when I was getting ready, as I always have something on in the morning. But my audiobook listening petered halfway through the year, honestly don’t know why. So I’d like to incorporate it into my routine more as I have plenty to listen to between Libro.fm and Anyplay, maybe do shorter audiobooks or just be a bit pickier.

➵ Branch out into other genres

I’m going to combine a couple of my past goals and just collectively add them to a goal and we’ll just see how the year goes:

• classics
• middle grade
• historical fiction
• adult mystery
• non-fiction

➵ FOCUS ON MY PHYSICAL TBR !!!!

My 2021 tbr is coming soon my friends, I’m thinking it’s going to be rather short in terms of actual content to read but the list is long because I have a whole bunch of sections. But I think everybody is aware that I FAILED at reading books off my physical shelves in 2020. As you could tell by the above ebook stats. I didn’t read the books that have been glaring at me for ages. I have so many that I know I’ll love or just ones I’d like to read that people were talking about like 3 years ago and I just,,, haven’t gotten around to it.

So this year, I want to make it a goal, a promise rather *knocks on wood or whatever* that whenever I’m picking my next read, I first look at my shelves. I made it a bad habit to impulse read last year and though on occasion I’d really enjoy them, on the whole, I disliked or had meh feelings about a lot of those books. I’d rather read a physical book that I’ve been excited about for ages instead of a random one. Cross your fingers and toes for me folks!!

➵ Continue to diversify my reading as much as possible

I think I’ll always have this as a goal, and it’s 1000% something I’ll be doing in 2021. I’d like to be more aware of what I’m reading, who’s written it and make a conscious effort to have as diverse a ‘read’ shelf as possible. Especially in terms of supporting authors of colour, queer authors, authors with disabilities and neurodiverse authors.

BLOGGING GOALS

➵ Schedule posts/post once a week

This is sort of a rough and incomplete goal but I’m not sure how else to put it. I developed this terrible blogging habit where I’d have nothing to post, would come up with a random idea and spend all day working on it, post and then that’d be it. Which is why I was so sporadic when it came to blogging. And I’d have spurts where I’d have 4 consecutive ideas, would get them all out and have no creativity left in me.

So… to combat this and I think to form a better schedule, is to have more posts planned. I don’t think I’d ever be able to have a calendar or have my work be scheduled months ahead of time, but I would like to at least take a day once a week and post something/draft something for later. Idk how this is going to work or even how successful I’d be at it because as I write this post, I haven’t posted in 2 weeks. I just haven’t felt like it. But I’d like to be more conscious of my posting schedule and how frequently I create content. Because I love this blog and I’m proud of all the work I put in and I put a lot of effort into everything I post.

Woweee that was long. I hope I made some coherent sense.

➵ Start another blog series

I, unfortunately, did not complete this goal last year so it’s definitely back on the list. I have one in mind that I was going to post ages ago but I haven’t quite got there yet. Keep your eyes open, it should be good when I do get around to it.

➵ Continue to grow steadily

I’m not going to add the numbers goal again, though I’ll say that I would ~tentatively~ LOVE to hit 500 blog followers and 150 Youtube subscribers.

However, my main goal is to grow this blog. I’ve been revamping it and making it (slowly but surely) as professional as possible. Even made a media kit and adjusted my footer. I’d like to eventually make a small income on here because I put in A TON of work into this. So, growing here and being my best blogging self would surely benefit that.

➵ Blog hop every few days

This is sort of a new kind of goal and as you can see, quite specific for me. BUT I did definitely succeed at blog hopping last year and I love going through people’s posts. But again, another bad habit is that I’d abandon my WP Reader for like 2 weeks and have a ton of my faves to work through. So if I did it more consistently, then I’d only have a few blog posts to read every few days and I could keep up. See, I can be smart…

OTHER GOALS

➵ Learn to balance

This is so very similar to the goal from the last post but at the same time, it is VERY different. The one thing I struggled with last year was managing to juggle university and my other passions. I literally just got my grades back and though I did super well at uni, I don’t think my relationship with it was very healthy. I lived and breathed my assignments for weeks on end and had a terrible work cycle. I was constantly stressed and I wasn’t making any time for reading or watching movies, which is what would destress me. Basically, I was just a ball of anxiety and it wasn’t working.

So what needs to happen is I need to get organised. I’m going to be online for the first semester in 2021 still and have one less course than first year. And I need to fit in reading, watching movies and content creation. Set time limits. Have a routine that allows me to do other things because otherwise I just won’t get anywhere. I have no idea how I’m going to accomplish this but I need to for my own sanity oof

➵ Make more time for writing

See I’m being very ambitious because I honestly have no idea how I’m going to manage this alongside my content and academic writing as it is. But I would like to be better at writing. Even if it’s slow progress, at least do something. Writing is what I want to pursue and I would like to incorporate it into my schedule more. Again no idea how but we can try.

I worked on my WIP for like 2 weeks straight (not very healthy again but still) and I haven’t touched the document since April. I think it was because I got slightly burnt out and because my book didn’t have a clear direction but I was having so much fun and I loved doing it. Going on a bit of a tangent here but bear with me: I just had to complete a creative writing project for my film class. We had to write an 8-page script so I used a sliver of a novel idea and adapted it into a short film and IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. And I was just reminded that I seriously need to get back to my WIP.

➵ Be more active

I’m going to be brief here but I thought it was a goal worth mentioning. I’ve never been an active person and I enjoy very few sports, but I was doing a tiny bit in high school. When I went to uni, I was walking ALL THE TIME. But since I’ve been at home, I’ve felt very inactive. I’m privileged in the way that I don’t live in the city so there are plenty of places around me where I can go for walks where no-one is around. So I’d like to just get out more because sitting around all day I think has affected my mental health so I’d like to get a bit active this year.

➵ Get my driver’s license

Also, a random goal but Lais had this on her list and I thought YES I SHOULD ADD IT. My friends, it took me like 2 years to go and get my ID and I only got around to it so I could write exams. I’m terrible at getting things done if I don’t NEED to, so I’ve put off doing this for ages. But now I really want to challenge myself and work towards it, so that I can say “yeah I can drive” even if I’m not that great at it. My whole family thinks I’m going to be a terrible driver, which is mostly true because I’m the actual worst at remembering places and directions. But I’m turning 20 so it’s about time.

Before I leave, I wanted to ask if anyone wants to see my “worst” books of 2020 list? Because I do have a list, it’s very short, only 4 or 5 books long. I just don’t really want to dedicate a whole post to it and was interested if anybody ACTUALLY wanted to know what they are? I’d add it to an upcoming post, just like a small section, but I just thought I’d ask.

This post has become quite long so I’m going to stop here.

I hope you found this semi-interesting. This one was more for me, to document progress. So I hope it did not bore you.

See you hopefully quite soon *wink wink*

HOW DID YOUR 2020 READING YEAR GO? HOW MANY BOOKS DID YOU READ? WHAT WAS YOUR GOAL? DID YOU COMPLETE ANY OF YOUR OTHER GOALS? WHAT ARE YOUR 2021 GOALS? I’D LOVE TO KNOW!

Happy reading

xo

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