Dancing Out of 2021 | Wrapping Up the Year, Goals and Reading Challenges

Man 2021, you had some pretty bad lows, you had some highs, but mostly I’m happy I’ve got to say goodbye to you. How was your 2021?

Life

2021 was the year that many of us hoped that we were going to kick covid’s butt. Unfortunately covid continued to kick our butts. As I am typing this The Netherlands is in its 3rd big lockdown (shops, schools closed etc). I don’t think I’m the only one when I say that it is not feeling very encouraging after almost 2 years of this. It makes life so much harder than it already is for most of us.

We started 2021 with the second lockdown. The schools were closed until the second week of February. That kind of unstructured life was not good on Merijn who was just getting used to school. And it hit my depression and anxiety very hard. I hit a very hard low at the start of the year.

I spend most of the rest of the year still gathering myself back up. But a lot of the threats of school being closed throughout the year cost me a lot of anxiety. I am working hard on therapy. But it is a long process (aren’t trauma and fear always?) and my psychologist left at the end of December so I’m going to have to get used to a new person. That is challenging but I hope that I can continue moving forward with them.

Moving away from the negative. I think I made steps in taking more room for myself. I had a few stands at markets with my little etsy shop. And I was at a young adult event as well. Super fun. I’m still not a great sales person and online marketing, what even is that? I would like to make more money with it as a whole but doesn’t have to cover a whole salary or anything. And I don’t think I could at this time anyway.

A lot of this reflected back in my reading. My depression and shop have taken some time away from my reading. I still read plenty of great books though.

Goodreads & The Story Graph Challenge = COMPLETED

Unlike the optimism in my December wrap up I didn’t actually manage to finish Jade Legacy before the turn of the year. My ereader battery was too low. Meh. My initial reading goal was 120 for 2021 but as you know, reading didn’t come as easy to me the whole year and it wasn’t until November that it kind of started picking back up again.

So I changed the goal on goodreads and the Storygraph to 100. I ended up hitting that pretty easily because in November I just read so many (Patricia Briggs) books. I would have read more in December but with the lockdown and Merijn’s school closing down there just wasn’t enough room to read.

You can see that there is a different number here. Two less. There are two books I couldn’t enter in apparently. But I am also too lazy to go check through 110 books on goodreads to see which those were and if I could add them now. More books have been adding to the storygraph every month so… Oh well.

I find the pages goal interesting. Because I tracked my own pages and I thoguht it would differ because with different editions and page counts not always matching. But my count is 35,523. So that doesn’t actually differ that much at all.

5 Books I Think Will Be 5 Star Reads =COMPLETED

Book	Read	Rating
The City We Became	Yes	5 stars
The Year of the Witching	Yes	4,5 stars
The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne	Yes	4 stars
The Book of Dragons	Yes	4 stars
Men At Arms	Yes	5 stars

I actually read all 5 books this year! Go me. Only 2 were the expected 5 star reads but in the end I loved all the books and nothing was a disappointment in that regard.

Debut Author Challenge = COMPLETED

I did the Debut Author Challenge and I choose to go for 6 books. Basically you had to read 2021 debut authors releases. I read 11 books that counted so I totally completed this challenge. Go me.

Winter’s Orbit	Everina Maxwell
The Conductors	Nicole Glover
Amari and the Night Brothers	B.B. Alston
Rea and the Blood of the Nectar	Payal Doshi
The Unbroken	C.L. Clark
Nora and the Sacred Stones	Laura Hatch Ruper
A Strange and Brilliant Light	Eli Lee
A Dragonbird in the Fern	Laura Rueckert
Bad Witch Burning	Jessica Lewis
Dark and Shallow Lies	Ginny Myers Sain
Payback’s a Witch	Lana Harper +

+This turned out to be a pen name for another author but as this person they debuted so I’m making it count.

Pop Sugar 2021 – 60%

I thought I’d give Pop Sugar a try again but in the end this challenge doesn’t really work for me still. So I didn’t complete it but this is what I got done anyway.

A Book That’s Published in 2021	Siege of Rage and Ruin
An Afrofuturist Book	Riot Baby / The City We Became
Book with a Heart Diamond Club or Spade
A Book By an Author who shares your zodiac
A Dark Academia Book	Ninth House
Book with gem mineral or rock in the title
A book where the mc works at your current or dream job	The Lost Plot
A Book that has won the women’s prize for fiction
A book with a family tree	The Year of the witching
A bestseller from the 1990’s	Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook
A Book About Forgetting	Cry Wolf
A Book You Have Seen on Someone Else’s Bookshelf	Take a Hint, Dani Brown
A Locked Room Mystery	Once Ghosted, Twice Shy
A Book Set in a Restaurant	By Book or by Crook
A Book with a black and white cover	Alpha and Omega
A Book by an Indiginous Author
A book That has the same title as a song
A book about a Subject you are passionate about	Tilly and the Map of Stories
A book that discusses body positivity
A book found on black lives matter reading list
A genre hybrid	A Master of Djinn
A book set mostly or entirely outdoors	The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
A book with something broken on the cover
A book by a Muslim Amercian author
A book published anon
A book with an oxymoron in the title	Winters Orbit
A book about do-overs or fresh starts	The Shadow of the Gods
Magical Realism
A book set in multiple countries	Duftapotheke 4
A book set somewhere you’d like to visit in 2021
Book by online personality	The Rogue’s Seduction
A book whose title starts with Q X or Z
A book featuring 3 generations	Dragons in a Bag
A about a social justice issue	The Unbroken
A book in a different format than what you usually read
A book with fewer than 1000 reviews on Goodreads	The Conductors
A book you think your best friend will like	The City We Became
A book about art or artist	Hunting Ground
A book Everyone seems to have read but you	Men at arms
Your Favorite Prompt from a past pop sugar

Bonus – 70%

The Longest book on your tbr	The Book of Dragons
The Shortest book on your tbr	Dragons in a Bag
Book on your tbr with the prettiest cover	The Beautiful Ones
Book on your tbr with the ugliest cover	Fire with Fire
Book that has been on your tbr the longest
Book from your tbr that you meant to read last year but didn’t	Tilly and the Map of Stories
Book from your tbr you associate with a favorite person
Book from your tbr chosen at random	A Winter’s Promise
A DNF book from your tbr
A Free book from your tbr	In the Ravenous Dark

Diversity Reading Challenge = COMPLETED

For this challenge it was of course to diversify one’s reading. I committed to 5 to 8 monthly themes and I managed 8 so I am quite pleased with myself.

January	Diverse Folktales/Retellings/Settings	Dragons in a Bag
February	POC: Black African American	Amari and the Night Brothers
March	Own Voices	The Unbroken
June	Sexuality & Gender Identity	A Master of Djinn
July	Sexuality & Gender Identity	A Strange and Brilliant Light
August	Mental Health	Heartstopper Volume 4
September	POC: Hispanic/Latinx	The Book of Dragons
November	POC: Native American	Cry Wolf

There was also the chance to fill in the 8 letters of LGBTQQIA during Pride Summer. I only managed 3.

Gay	Heartstopper volume 4
Bi	Fire with Fire
Asexual	In the Ravenous Dark

The 2021 SFF Badge Collection – 80%

Close, so close. I could have maybe hit this had I read a bit more sci-fi but this year was what it was.

The Artificial Intelligence Badge	Fugitive Telemetry
The First Contact Badge
The Space Opera Badge	Winter’s Orbit
The Epic Fantasy Badge	The Shadow of the Gods
The Non-Human Badge	Corpses and Cognac
The African Inspiration Badge	Reaper of Souls
The Monster Badge	Moonglow
The Debut Badge	The Conductors
The SPFBO Badge
The Big Battle Badge	Siege of Rage and Ruin
The New Release Badge	Lava Red Feather Blue
The Animal Companion Badge	The Bone Shard Daughter
The Big Un Badge	The Book of Dragons | Jade Legacy
The Asian Inspiration Badge	The Empress of Salt and Fortune
The Uncovered Diamond Badge	Judgement Day
The Dragon Badge	Fire with Fire
The Big Screen Badge
The Sea Setting Badge	The Bone Shard Emperor
The Standalone Badge	The Beautiful Ones
The Post Apocalyptic Badge	The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
The Collector 2021 Badge

Anderwereld Prompt Challenge – 84 %

Book Bought At Anderwereld
Novella	Beginnings
Middle Grade	Dragons in a Bag
LGBTQ+ Character	Siege of Rage and Ruin
Out of Comfort Zone	Firelight
Non-Western Culture	The Unbroken
Different Expectations	In the Ravenous Dark
Long Title (6+words)	The Weirn Books Vol 1: Be Waryof the Silent Woods
School Setting	Amari and the Night Brothers
Black Author	The Conductors
Different Format	Alpha & Omega
Animal MC	CryWolf
True Story
Element in the Title
Took Effort	A Strange and Brilliant Light
Death Author	Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook
Title/Author reminds of own name
Dragons	Fire with Fire
Graphic Novel	Monstress Volume 5
Test/Exams/Riddles	Rea and the Blood of the Nectar
Female MC	A Winter’s Promise
Magic	Reaper of Souls
Reread	Mort
Mythology	Tiril en de toverdrank
Fairy Tale Retellings	The Tangleroot Palace