We are halfway through the year and it feels like well into summer around here! This year I’m writing up a reading life check in for each quarter to share how my 2021 reading goals are going.
At the start of the year, I selected goals that would help me branch out to new authors, new romance subgenres, and read more diversely. Since rigid expectations and planning don’t work well for me, I wanted to pick broad and flexible challenges.
I didn’t want to take the fun and joy out of reading or the spontaneity of coming across the right book at the right time. My hope is this check in practice helps me monitor my reading life and keep the right balance of serendipity and intention with my book choices.
Total Books Read
My reading life has been on a roll in the second quarter of 2021. I read a whooping 43 books in the past three months! Even factoring in that 11 of those were graphic novels that’s a lot of books for me.
That brings my total books for the year up to 75! My reading goal for this year is 100 books. According to goodreads, I’m about 26 books ahead of schedule for my reading challenge.
This year I have been consciously trying to stay ahead of my reading goal. My reading life always seems to slow down near the end of the year. As I’ve shared before, we’re expecting our first child in that final quarter too. Since I’ll be a new mom, I really no idea what to expect or how that will affect my reading time.
New Authors
One of my 2021 reading goals is to check out at least one new author each month. These aren’t debut authors but rather new to me writers or people I haven’t read before. My first quarter check in really surprised me with this. The majority of my reading was new authors – 25 out of 32 books!
The numbers this time are a little different. In the second quarter of the year, I only read 18 new authors. That’s still a lot more than one a month though. How often I pick up new authors isn’t something I’ve tracked before. Looking at the stats, I’ve been better about it than I realized.
The new author trend might be different for these months because I read less romance this quarter. That’s a genre where I tend to give many different authors a try.
I also reread a favorite quartet, The Lunar Chronicles, continued reading series like Lumberjanes and Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache, and picked up amazing authors like Celeste Ng, Mary Kubica, and Katherine Center for a second time.
She Reads Romance Books Reading Challenge
At the beginning of 2021, I wanted to read more romance and decided to follow the She Reads Romance Books Reading Challenge for the year. I hoped it would encourage me to explore different subgenres and tropes. I definitely had a lot more success with this challenge in the first quarter of the year than this last one.
April’s category was billionaire romance. I read the first two books from Janice Maynard’s Men of Wolff Mountain series, Into His Private Domain and A Touch of Persuasion. The series follows a billionaire family, reclusive after a family tragedy. These were my first Harlequin Desire books. I found them to be quick steamy reads. I enjoyed the luxurious settings and the family dynamics at play.
The theme for May was sports romance. I read The Deal by Elle Kennedy which takes place on a college campus where the hero is a hockey star. It’s the first book of hers I’ve read since discovering her Out of Uniform series last year. I didn’t like this one as much. It might have been the college setting. If you’re looking for great hockey romances, I highly recommend Helena Hunting’s Pucked series.
By the time June came around, my reading tastes were shying away from romance. Last month’s category was gay romance. I started and stopped a couple of books, including Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur and Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall. I think it was a matter of timing with my reading mood so I hope to pick these up again one day.
Upcoming themes for this reading challenge include a summer romance for July, the friends to lovers trope for August, and a teacher/student romance in September.
Diverse Authors
Another reading goal for 2021 was to read at least one diverse author each month. This could be an author of color, #ownvoices story, or a member of another marginalized group. In the first quarter I read 8 diverse authors and had a 1:4 ratio with my total books read.
I didn’t do as well in the second quarter. I read 7 diverse authors in the last three months including Mia Sosa with The Worst Best Man, Kiley Reid’s Such A Fun Age, and The Mothers by Brit Bennett. With my total books read that’s a 1:6 ratio this time. I still met my goal but there’s definitely room for growth.
Year of Health Experiment for Nonfiction Reads
I only read three nonfiction books in the second quarter of 2021 and all of them were for my year of health experiment. So even though my nonfiction reading has taken a dive, I’m still meeting that goal of one nonfiction read a month through that project.
In April I read The Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington. May’s book pick was How to Be Everything by Emilie Wapnick. Last month for June, I read The Nature Fix by Florence Williams. Every book this quarter was one I already owned too. It was nice to cross a few titles off that list.
Book Buying Ban
My husband and I live in a tiny space and keep our possessions pretty minimal as a result. In an effort to stop buying books that sit on my limited shelves or digitally clutter up my kindle not getting read, I implemented a self imposed book buying ban.
I’ve done a pretty good job continuing this. For Father’s Day I did buy my husband a parenting book from me and a board book from our baby-to-be. I couldn’t resist purchasing Queen Move by Kennedy Ryan, the third book in her All the King’s Men series, when it popped up on a daily deal. I also had to purchase one other ebook to read for my local book club because my libraries did not have it. At least it got read right away.
Of the 43 books I read last quarter, 34 came from the library, eight I already owned, and one I purchased.
Do you have goals for your reading life this year? How did the second quarter of 2021 go?
