2021 was a year of many forgettable books. I didn’t quite realise how forgettable until I struggled to pick 10 favourites for my list this year… I don’t think that’s happened to me since high school. Like I mentioned in my first Year in Review post: I’m blaming it mostly on the circumstances of this year, and the way it took up 95% of my mind-power all the time, leaving little room for anything else. Despite not usually being big on New Year’s resolutions, I set up a few loose “reading goals” to prevent a repeat of 2021…

1. Read fewer books

Yes, you heard me right. Breaking the trend setting your Goodreads- or Amazon reading goal higher and higher each year, I’m going to lower mine quite a bit. For the previous 3 years, I’ve been reading around 120 books a year, including audiobooks, poetry and novella’s. Although I’ve never consciously felt this way, the idea within the community of reading more, more, more can lead to a feeling of rush. A feeling that I’ve too often taken home from work this year as well. My Goodreads Reading goals is going to be 80 books, a number that about 2/3 of my previous years of reading, and it very feasible without any rush for me.

2. Read more mindful

By lowering the amount of books I “set myself” to read, I hope to read more mindful and with more intention. Hopefully, this will improve the quality of my reading year, instead of the quantity. I want to be more selective about the new releases I pick up, and feel less pressure to review everything before release date.

3. Prioritize rereads of old favourites

Rereading favourites has been a great comfort and joy to me, but I do it far too little. This year I’m making a conscious effort do so. To encourage myself I’ve brought back my master-TBR in the form of “22 Books to Read in 2022”, and made a substantial portion of the list rereads. I also have a new series planned, that I’m calling (Re-)Viewing my Favourites, in which I’ll reread my all-time-favourites to review them (again), and actually put my thoughts about them to paper.

22 books to read in 2022

Anticipated releases

1. Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel

2. Lakelore – Anna Marie McLemore

3. Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armsfield

4. Yerba Buena – Nina Lacour

5. Seasonal Fears – Seanan McGuire

6. The Oceanography of the Moon – Glendy Vanderah

7. How High We Go in the Dark – Sequoia Nagamatsu

Backlist

8. The Rain Heron – Robbie Arnott

9. Shards of Earth – Adrian Tchaikovsky

10. The Gray House – Miriam Petrosyan

11. Firekeepers Daughter – Angeline Boulley

12. Shorefall – Robert Jackson Bennett

13. A Face For Picasso – Ariel Henley

14. The Sentence – Louise Erdrich

15. A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

Rereads

16. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

17. The Glass Hotel - Emily St. John Mandel

18. Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

19. The Book of Strange New Things – Michel Faber

20. Latitudes of Longing – Shubhangi Swarup

21. Creatures of Passage – Morowa Yejide

22. The Gloaming - Kirsty Logan

I wish you all a wonderful New Years Eve, and all the best for 2022. Have an amazing reading year, and an even better one all round, and I hope to see you back soon.