Read-at-Home Mom: 2022 Reading in Review

Stats

This year, for the second year in a row, I tracked only novels and children's chapter books (and some short stories and novellas for adults), no picture books or board books. I set my Goodreads goal arbitrarily at 52 knowing I would surpass it, but having no inkling that I would complete it more than six times over. In a lot of ways, this was an odd year, because I spent a lot of time walking the twins in the stroller to keep them from destroying the house. I was also able to increase my listening speed for most books to 3x, so there were weeks where I was completing more than one book a day. I don't expect to keep this pace in 2023.

I averaged 27 books per month. My slowest reading month was June, in which I read 17 books. I read the most books (44) in December.

I read 235 books for adults, 18 for teens and 72 written for children.

The adult books included: 18 literary fiction, 83 romance, 32 nonfiction, 43 mystery, 21 classics, 5 poetry collections, 5 plays, 5 fantasy, 7 historical fiction, 2 comics and graphic novels, 9 women's fiction and 5 general fiction.

Among these 325 books, there were:

at least 188 audiobooks, including 16 Audible originals
5 short story collections
27 read-alouds with my kids
37 from my physical TBR
13 from my digital TBR
56 from Hoopla
42 from Scribd
19 from Kindle Unlimited
27 review copies from publishers

The breakdown of star ratings was as follows:

5 stars: 121 books
4 stars: 108 books
3 stars: 83 books
2 stars: 13 books
1 star: 0 books

I marked 24 books as DNF.

Goals Review

Goal #1: Re-read 40 books before I turn 40.
This was really fun and fairly easy to complete. I made it last right up until the week leading up to my birthday and got them all read. It was really interesting to see how my opinions of each book changed or didn't.

Goal #2: Read 22 classics.
I did this relatively easily for the second year in a row, but after reading along with a lot of older Close Reads episodes (and some newer ones about classic books) I burned out a bit on classics, so for 2023, I'm not going to devote a specific goal to them.

Goal #3: Read 6 historical fiction books.
This was really touch and go all year, but with the help of one middle grade title, I made it! I actually found a bunch of historical fiction I'm interested in through The Book Bumble podcast, and I have a feeling it will become one of my regular genres in 2023.

Goal #4: Try 12 new-to-me authors.
This wasn't a challenge, so I'm not sure why I bothered making it a goal. I think what I might do next year is what Krista from Books and Jams on YouTube does and choose a few authors to focus on in 2023 instead of leaving the goal so open-ended.

Goal #5: Finish 2 series.
I set this goal with some longer series in mind, (Armand Gamache, Scarpetta, Mitford) but while I made progress on those, I ended up completing (or catching up to the most recently published title of) some shorter ones:

Vanderbeekers series by Karina Yan Glaser
Maple Falls series by Kathleen Fuller
Bird Face series by Cynthia T. Toney
Aurora Teagarden series by Charlaine Harris
Library Lover's Mystery series by Jenn McKinlay

I also made huge progress on the Country Club Murders series, and the only one I have left just came out on audio this week, so I will probably read it to kick off the new year.

Goal #6: Write something 4 days per week.
I mostly did this, but I don't think this goal will serve me well going forward. I'm working on figuring out what will motivate me to write in 2023 without becoming overwhelming.

Challenges

I wound up participating fully in three challenges hosted elsewhere, and I created two challenges of my own for a total of five.

I enjoyed the Goldberry Books Reading Challenge, but I didn't love some of the very snobby posts I read from other participants, and it made me feel like I had to choose books that were "good enough" for the Close Reads audience instead of what I wanted to read. I ended up reading:

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
1984 by George Orwell
The Lightning Dreamer by Margarita Engle
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
The Patron Saint of Second Chances by Christine Simon
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr
The Clock Winder byAnne Tyler
The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
The Hero of this Book by by Elizabeth McCracken.

I haven't heard whether this challenge is happening in 2023, but if so, I think it's unlikely that I will participate.

I think the Buzzword Reading Challenge was my favorite because the prompts were so fun and open-ended so I could always find somethig to suit my mood. For this challenge I read:

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Biloxi Blues by Neil Simon
The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman
Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons
All in Good Time by Carolyn Astfalk
How to Write a Mystery by Lee Child
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Under the Lights by Abbi Glines
Sleeping Tiger by Rosamunde Pilcher
The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe by Tricia Springstubb
Eight Winter Nights by Liz Maverick

I am planning to join this one again in 2023.

For the Read Your Bookshelf Challenge, I didn't always own a book that matched the prompt, so I did supplement with audiobooks and ebooks from the library. Here's what I read:

The Other Side of Silence by Margaret Mahy
Must Love Books by Shauna Robinson
In Bloom by Fern Michaels
Thankful for Love by Kristen Ethridge
The Treehouse on Dog River Road by Catherine Drake
Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson
The Gilded Years by Karin Tanabe
My Big Heart-Shaped Fail by Cindy Callaghan
Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories by Colin Dexter
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Broken Spine by Dorothy St. James
Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

This challenge is doing something different in 2023, and I'm planning to join in again!

My big personal challenge was to re-read 40 books before I turned 40 in mid-November. These are the titles I chose:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
The Rainmaker by John Grisham
A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate Dicamillo
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
T-backs, Tee shirts, COAT, and Suit by E.L. Konigsburg
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Nothing But the Truth by Avi
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
That Summer by Sarah Dessen
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson
On Writing by Stephen King
The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Professor's House by Willa Cather
One More Thing by B.J. Novak
Very Sincerely Yours by Kerry Winfrey
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
There's a Girl in my Hammerlock by Jerry Spinelli
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Book Girl by Sally Clarkson
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Rose Round by Meriol Trevor

My other personal challenge was a collection of different categories of books I wanted to read from. I read:

3 Book of the Month books

Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott
Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

3 books about reading and/or writing

Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku by Natalie Goldberg
Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Word by Word by Anne Lamott