Book Ramblings from a Lifelong Bookworm: December 2022

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

2022 Year In Review

Happy soon-to-be New Year!

As I sit down to write this post and reflect on my reading year, I realize that this year has been the most different for me. Perhaps because I had a lot going on in both work and my personal life this past year, with the first few months of 2022 being especially chaotic, so I did not get a chance to read as much as I wanted to. In 2022, I only read 52 books, which is the fewest it has been in years (as a comparison point, the previous years I’ve read between 59-62 books) – not only that, I’ve also had to adjust my reading goal down a few times this year, which I hate doing, but the “completist” in me wouldn’t have it otherwise.

Looking back through the year, I realize that part of the problem with me not being able to reach my reading goal was too much “indecision time” – basically, spending too much time in between books deciding what to read next instead of just picking up the next book and going with it. When I reflect on why this happened, I honestly can’t pin it down to one particular reason (though I’m leaning towards having too many choices in terms of books and perhaps being overwhelmed?), but of course, it bothers me enough to want to do something about it. I’ve been thinking about this for a little while now (I actually came to this realization several months ago) and have come to the conclusion that I didn’t plan my reading well enough this past year. While I did set reading goals as well as reading intentions at the beginning of the year, I pretty much left it at that and didn’t revisit those goals throughout the year to see if I was making progress. In addition, even though I did have a list of books each month that I wanted to get to, most on the list were ARCs and new releases – I didn’t think to put some of the backlist books I wanted to read on there as well (seeing that one of my goals last year was to read more backlist books, that I was a huge miss on my part).

So with all that said, going into 2023, I’ve decided it’s not enough to just set my reading goals and reading intentions at the beginning of the year. Instead, I’m going beyond that by actually planning out my reading for each month in a physical book journal that I can have in front of me all the time, with the added benefit of being able to reflect on each month as I go and make adjustments where necessary. My hope is, with this intentional planning, I can reduce the amount of “indecision time” and actually get to more of the books that I’ve been wanting to get to but never could (i.e. the books that have been on my TBR for ages).

Speaking of 2023 goals, here is what I would like to focus on for the coming year:

- Read as many books as possible from my own shelves: I buy a lot of books, but because I’m not a fast reader (plus I’m only able to read 1 book at a time), my shelves are always bursting with books that I haven’t yet read.

- Work through my list of backlist “must-read” books: These are books that have been on my TBR forever and I keep meaning to read them, but never seem to get around to it.

- Read widely and diversely: Just like in previous years, I always try to incorporate a good number of books by authors of color into my reading and 2023 will be no different in this regard.

- Re-start my “completist” project: Last year, I talked about a project I started wherein I wanted to read all the books written by my favorite authors. The goal was to finish at least 1 author on my favorites list each year. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen in 2022, so I am hoping 2023 will be better.

- Incorporate books about Writing into my reading schedule: A few months ago, I talked about being inspired to finally start my book writing project (yes, I definitely started and it’s slow-going, but making progress). Because of this, I’ve started to incorporate some books about writing into my reading schedule and I intend to keep this going in the new year.

Okay, so back to 2022 recap. Similar to past years, I’m starting with stats from my 2022 Reading Log, then will follow that up with my lists of favorite books this year.

Favorite Reads of 2022

Below is my list of favorite reads this year (in no particular order) – all of these books I rated 5 stars:

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

The Unseen World by Liz Moore

The Winners by Fredrik Backman

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro

The following books I rated 4.5 stars, which for me means that they were all excellent books in their own right, it’s just that they didn’t give me the 5 star “vibe” (I still loved these books nonetheless):

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

Our Last Days in Barcelona by Chanel Cleeton

Counterfeit by Kirsten Chen

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford

Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Central Places by Delia Cai

The following books I rated 4 stars (which means they were particularly enjoyable reads for me). This year, I actually struggled to rate most of these, as they were technically more than 4 stars, but I didn’t want to get too much into the weeds with the ratings, so I kept them in the 4 star category. Many of these books I still loved as much as my 4.5 and 5 star reads.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson