Hey!

Today it is time to look back on my reading throughout 2020! I’m not going to lie, it was a struggle with reading. I wasn’t even sure I would complete my Goodreads challenge. I had to adjust my reading “rules” just to accomplish that goal alone. I wanted this post to be full of different pie charts and stats, but I just didn’t have the time to do everything I wanted for it. I also just wanted to get it posted since it’s already January 8. I do have a couple numbers to share with you in this post and give an update on my reading goals from 2020 and if I accomplished them or not. First, let’s start with my Goodreads reading goal…I wanted to read 50 books in 2020…

51 of books read for challenge.
12 of those were audiobooks.

Compared to last year, I read 34 less books than I did in 2019. That number is kind of depressing, but as I am sure I will say countless times in this post, it was a crazy year! My mind was elsewhere and my drive and motivation to read was almost non-existent at times. I am happy that I at least completed the challenge though even if it wasn’t by much.

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I don’t do half star ratings and I use Goodreads’ rating system with how I rate the books that I read. Below is how Goodreads has their star ratings set up.

5 stars – it was amazing
4 stars – I really liked it
3 stars – liked it
2 stars – it was ok
1 star – did not like it

I feel like I used to give three stars out in previous years if I thought it was okay and 2 stars if I didn’t really like it and forgot about 1 star altogether. So over the last few years I tried to use the way Goodreads has their stars when it came to rating books and continued with that in 2020. With that being said here are my star rating counts for the books that I read in 2020!

My numbers look a lot different than they did last year. I don’t know if it was because I was mentally in a different place and nothing “wowed” me much in 2020 or if I just didn’t read that many amazing books this year. I know that I read 30+ less books than I did last year, so that could have played a big part in it too. Last year I gave out 29 five stars and in 2020 I only gave out seven! This year it looks like the four star rating was my best friend because I gave out so many four stars. Overall, I think that I still read a lot of great books. It was just a bummer that I didn’t have a lot of five star reads.

You can check out all the books that I read in 2020 over here with links to reviews if I did one. But I will be doing a series of blog posts coming soon of all the books that I read in 2020 with their star ratings. My first post will be all the five star books of the year and so on. I did it in previous years and decided to continue with those posts, because it’s always fun to look back on the books that I read and share what I loved and maybe didn’t love so much.

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Now onto my 2020 reading goals and whether I think I accomplished them or not. You can check out the actual post I made in January 2020 of my goals over here, but here is just a small recap of what they were. That post has longer explanations of what each of these goals were. Sorry in advance if I repeat myself a bunch of times throughout this next section lol.

2020 Goodreads Challenge.
I was able to complete my 2020 Goodreads challenge of reading 50 books. I was only able to read 51 though, which was a little disappointing because I was hoping to read a lot more. I’m still happy that I was able to read 51 books though.

Read 25 of my own books.
What I meant by this was any books that I bought in 2019 or earlier. Nothing I bought in 2020. With this goal, I only read 12 of my older books, so that was a bummer.

Don’t fall behind on ARCs.
I did fall behind on ARCs quite a bit, because I wasn’t reading as much as I hoped that I would. It was a crazy year as you guys know, so my mind was just elsewhere.

Continue to buy less books. 
I did very good with this goal, because I honestly hardly bought many books compared to most years. I think I bought around 30 books, not including e-books. You all know I probably went crazy with those e-book deals. 😛

Re-organize my bookshelves and my Goodreads shelves.
I don’t think I did this at all. I honestly just didn’t really have it in me to mess around with either of them. There was one point that I had to take all my books off my shelves because we were redoing the flooring, but I honestly just put them up almost exactly like they were before. I missed my opportunity haha.

Get rid of books I didn’t like or plan to read.
I did get rid of a ton of books at the beginning of the year. I took them to a used book store. I could probably go through my shelves again and get rid of more. For now I am pretty happy with where things are at.

Get back into bookstagram.
I attempted to get back on bookstagram, but that didn’t last very long. I posted 21 pictures in 2020 over on my bookstagram account “sociallyawkwardbookworm”. I wanted to post more and I was excited to, but then my motivation to do that just dropped and I wasn’t into it.

Focus more on my blog and new content.
As I previously said, it was a crazy year and I just didn’t have the motivation or drive to come up with new content for my blog or put very much focus into it like I really hoped. Seems like lack of motivation was a big theme for 2020 lol.

I hope to be around more in 2020!
I lost my job in December 2019, then covid hit shortly after, and the world changed so much, so my love for everything just dropped so much. I got insanely depressed and my mind was just not here anymore. I wasn’t around much on my blog or anywhere, honestly. It was a really sad year.

How did you do this year with your reading goals? How many books did you read in 2020? Feel free to link me to your posts!

I think I will end this post here. My next post will be my reading goals for 2021. You may see a repeat of a couple of these, but also a few new ones. I’m actually thinking about keeping it pretty short for this year, because I am still in this weird place and I just want 2021 to be as stress-free as possible. We’ll see what happens! I’ll catch up with your posts and reply to comments this weekend as I don’t work the weekends, so I’ll have some time to finally catch up! Feel free to link me to any posts that you REALLY want me to see ASAP and I’ll make those priority. 😀

In case you missed it;
Wrap Up|| December.
Book Haul|| December.
Happy New Year, 2021.

I hope you have a great day!