20,210 Pages
Last year, I set an aim of reading 20210 pages in 2021. As of December 13th (which is the date GoodReads last updated my reading stats), I hit 22,402 pages with 64 books. I will probably finish two or more books before the end of the month. Not mind-blowing but not too shabby.
The interesting thing is that my job changed mid-year, which meant my reading habits changed mid-year when I started work earlier. I didn’t have time to read for 15 minutes in the morning, so I stopped reading non-fiction. But I clearly moved some of that time to the night because I was able to read more books overall.
I guess I should set 20220 as a goal for 2022.
My favourite things I’ve read this year:
- Finna (Nino Cipri)
- The Wife Upstairs (Rachel Hawkins)
- The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey)
- Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro)
- Good Neighbours (Sarah Langan)
- Bruno, Chief of Police (Martin Walker)
- People We Meet on Vacation (Emily Henry)
- The Other Black Girl (Zakiya Dalila Harris)
- The Guncle (Steven Rowley)
- Moonflower Murders (Anthony Horowitz)
- The Secret Bridesmaid (Katy Birchall)
- Still Life (Penny Louise)
- Tokyo Ever After (Emiko Jean)
- In the Woods (Tana French)
- For Your Own Good (Samantha Downing)
- My Lovely Wife (Samantha Downing)
- The Great Godden (Meg Rosoff)
- Dial A for Aunties (Jesse Q Sutanto)
- Rock Paper Scissors (Alice Feeney)
- Under the Whispering Door (T.J. Klune)
- The Man Who Died Twice (Richard Osman)
- The Hawthorne Legacy (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)
What is on your list of favourite reads this year? (Feel free to list movies or television shows if books are not your thing.)
5 comments
I really liked the Man Who Died Twice too. I read mostly light murder mysteries this year (and a lot of them) because my brain was somehow too busy to process anything deep. I read all the Keeper of the Lost Cities books because Elizabeth insisted and I liked them a surprising amount. The Charlotte MacLeod books were good but only the series about the woman, I gave up halfway through the other series. Vicki Delany was my favorite pun based title mystery author this year. There was a new Phryne Fisher book this year for the first time in ages (eleven years or something like that) so I re-read all of those and they are so good. The Ginger Gold series was good.
Goodreads tells me that I’m at 43,798 pages read as of December 21 — wow!
I read and enjoyed some of the same books as you this year, and more of them are on my “Want to Read” list. Here are a few of my favorites from 2021:
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
False Witness by Karin Slaughter
I also enjoyed several books by Jasmine Guillory, Joshilyn Jackson, Elly Griffiths, Tana French, and Georgette Heyer, all of whom are new authors to me over the past two years.
It is fun seeing the stats on Goodreads, isn’t it? I got my Year in Review a few days ago. I’ve read 58 books so far, 17,577 pages, and I’m hoping to finish one or two more before 2021 ends. That’s by far my best reading year since I started keeping track in 2013. I read a LOT of really good books this year — my average rating on Goodreads was 4.1. Very hard to pick favourites (let alone one “best”) but a few that I especially enjoyed or still find myself thinking about would include:
* “The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman
* “Confessions of a Forty-Something” by Alexandra Potter
* “The Bright Side” by Cathrin Bradbury
* “The Blue Castle” by L.M. Montgomery (a re-read of one of my all-time favourites)
* “Widowland” by C.J. Carey
* “American Baby” by Gabrielle Glaser
* “The Windsor Knot” by S.J. Bennett
* “Sorrow and Bliss” by Meg Mason
* “Us” by David Nicholls
* “Hungry” by Grace Dent
* “The Storyteller” by Dave Grohl
These have all been reviewed on my blog as well as on Goodreads.
I’m impressed with how many books you have read. My husband gave me a Kindle for Mother’s Day. I’ve read 10 books since then for a total of 4,193 pages. That is a huge jump for me because most years I would only read 1-2 books. My kids are a little older now (8, 6, 6) so I feel that bedtime is easier and I have a little more time to myself. Apparently I was drawn to WWII fiction. I did not preview what books were about before I started reading them, rather I just chose based on recommendations from friends.
My favorites were:
The Nightingale – Kristen Hannah
The Things we Cannot Say – Kelly Rimmer
The Nature of Fragile Things – Susan Meissner
Hmmm, we are going to have to talk about Rock Paper Scissors, because I did not like that one at all, and was disappointed because I loved Sometimes I Lie. Under the Whispering Door was wonderful but didn’t top The House in the Cerulean Sea for me… That one is a near perfect book, to me! That’s probably my top. I also loved The Last House on Needless Street. And Finna! And Before the Coffee Gets Cold. Now I have to do my annual list of books read in the year and look it over… So many recommended by you!