2022 Reading Wrap-up + Goals for 2023 + First Quarter 5 Star Predictions

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE….!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have survived another year – some of us may not have been affected too much but the pandemic is still ongoing – I did get a booster finally after coming to the US, and I have hardly gone out much. Hope you all had a not too bad 2022 as well. Now that it’s already 2023, I want to talk about how I did fare on my last year’s reading goals and what plans I have for this new year. Let’s get started.

2022 Reading Challenge

I chose a goal of 120 in 2022, and I was fairly confident that I would reach it. And I did manage to read 172 (this Storygraph stat is wrong coz they don’t have a few of my Chinese webnovels and short stories listed). Ofcourse it was only possible because I read a lot in the first quarter and then slowed down a lot later.

As you can see, Jan to Mar were great reading months. I guess I was still in a new year high. Then it was just slump after slump except August which was great fun, mainly due to Tropeical Readathon. Let’s see how 2023 works out for me.

Blogging Goals

I think I managed to follow a schedule for the most part, which is not too bad considering there were weeks where I just couldn’t focus on anything.

I wanted to write more recommendation posts but I have never been good at lists. But I did manage to write a recommendation post for r/Fantasy Bingo, and one for PRIDE. However, I did have fun posting multiple favorites of the year posts for 2022 – Non SFF, Nonfiction, SFF.

I also wanted to create a couple of original tags, but I totally gave up on them the whole year and only managed to do a few throughout 2022.

Final goal was to be brave enough to ask an author for an interview. I actually did ask and we tentatively agreed to do one, but then I had issues with my preorder of the book and I haven’t managed to read it yet. So, hopefully I will read it soon and the author won’t be too annoyed at me for delaying the whole thing so much.

Other Reading Challenges and Goals

Reading Spreadsheet

My first goal was to make my own Reading Spreadsheet and use it, and I’m glad to report I have had so much fun with it in 2022. I created my own, used it to wrapup every quarter and even made a couple of changes for 2023.

Read more Owned books and buy less

As you can see, this didn’t happen, which I should have expected. I’m too damn impulsive and I can’t control my purchases. And I’m also too enamored by shiny new releases to get to my older purchases.

Read a quarter non fiction

I’ve definitely managed this goal quite well. It’s my spreadsheet, so I split up nonfiction into multiple categories. Totaling up Science & Tech, History, Memoir, and Other, it all comes to around 27% which is good.

Read more books by Trans/Enby authors

I totally failed at this. 4% is nothing and I should try to keep reading more transgender and nonbinary authors.

Read more translated books

This is not too bad I think considering I used to hardly read translated books before. But I think I can do better.

Read backlist series and other yearly challenges

I made a list of Backlist series I wanted to start/catch up over the year but I failed at it spectacularly, so I don’t even want to share the initial list with you all. Let’s just ignore it for my sanity. I also planned to participate in a couple of yearly challenges but I gave up on them too.

The only thing I’m still on with is the r/Fantasy bingo. I need 3-4 more to finish the card, so I hope I can manage to do that before the end of March.

More Fun Statistics

This is from Storygraph and I thought it looked nice. I wish they had been tracking audio lengths for stats from the beginning, but I’m looking forward to this graph at the end of this year.

I don’t think I have balanced new releases and backlist much, but there’s nothing I can do much about it. I just have too many arcs which don’t let me mood read older books.

As always, too many books below 500 pages. I’m very good at getting comfortable in this zone and ignoring all my chonky books.

I can’t believe this happened. My audiobooks count crossed my ebooks. This is all thanks to my horrible slump in Nov-Dec when I couldn’t make myself pick up a book or my kindle, and only kept listening to nonfiction audiobooks one after the other.

I was planning to read lot more short stories but after Jan, I think I gave up. Even novellas seem to have reduced but I can’t pinpoint a reason for it. My anthology count also has gone down a lot even though I had quite a few on my TBR which I just ignored. Let’s see if I can balance them a bit better in 2023.

I actually crossed an average rating of 4 and have no books below 3. I’m delighted at this stat because it means I’m not picking books which I have a gut feeling I won’t enjoy. I also DNFd only one book, which was due to triggering content and not the writing, so I’m feeling good about my reading choices.

Ofcourse a majority of my reads are by the Big 5 publishers (thankfully not soon to be Big 4 due to that very entertaining trial) but I don’t mind that too much. But what does make me a bit satisfied is that my Indie numbers have gone slightly up. But I could definitely work towards reading more self published books.

Yearly Reading Challenge

I have decided I want to be a bit more chill in 2023, so I’m going for a century – 100 books. This seems manageable and not stressful, and maybe I’ll have some scope to read non-arc backlist or non-sff books.  

Blogging Goals

My stats have gone for a toss in 2022 – it’s so bad that I don’t even wanna share my graph. So, I literally have no goals for blogging anymore, as long as I post what I enjoy. Doing interviews will be cool, so maybe I can try for those. But otherwise, I’m not even bothered about schedule anymore. I will post what I want, when I want. Maybe I can use more graphics to beautify my posts though. Nothing wrong with having some color.

Other Reading Challenges and Goals

• Read more translated books. I don’t wanna choose a number but let’s hope it can be more than 10% of the reading and maybe even read a couple not in English.
• Read more owned books – this is a perpetual goal.
• Diversify my nonfiction reading into more subgenres.
• Take more notes, and annotate on very special physical books. Try and journal regularly (reading or otherwise).
• I have a made a list of lesser known classics and not all from the American/UK canon, so let’s hope I can read 3-4 of those books.
• Request less ARCs. This will be a test but it’s also a necessity because I have already gotten many many 2023 arcs and it’s gonna be a pain even trying to get to them all.

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I’ve also decided to participate in a few yearly reading challenges to motivate myself, so those details are below…..

The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt

The awesome Jordyn @ Birdie’s Book Nook is hosting this scavenger hunt with mostly SFF relevent 31 prompts. This is for the whole year, so I feel like I should be able to read books satisfying most of them without trying too much.

The 2023 SFF Title Challenge

This is another challenge hosted by Annemieke @ A Dance with Books to read the SFF books which have the above words in their titles. I don’t know if I have enough books on my TBR for all of them, but let’s see how many Bingo rows or columns I can finish.

2023 Nonfiction Reader Challenge

This challenge hosted by Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out seems like the perfect one for me so that it’ll help me read books from various nonfiction categories. There are 12 categories in the challenge but that might be too much for me, so I’ll try to be a Nonfiction Nibbler: Read & review 6 books, from any 6 listed categories.

5 Star Predictions

I actually managed 4 of these books which almost surprises me because I had a pretty bad fourth quarter 2022. While Strike the Zither totally lived up to my 5-star prediction, The Genesis of Misery, Ocean’s Echo and The Stars Undying were decent 4-stars.

Now, coming to what I feel will be 5 star reads in the first quarter of 2023….

I’ve been repeating Babel from the past two quarters now, but hopefully it’ll work out now because I have a buddy reading plan for it. A couple more are backlist and the rest are January releases and I really have high hopes for all of them.

That’s it for closing off my reading year of 2022 and making some plans for 2023. What plans do you have for the upcoming year? Are you doing something differently this year? Do tell me in the comments below if there any interesting yearly challenges that you think I should participate in….

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