Wrapping Up 2022: Reading and Blogging Stats, Challenge Updates and More

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s hoping 2023 is going to be a much better year than 2022. Although we do seem to be saying this every year and I’m yet to make peace with a year, lol. But one of my favourite things at the end of a year and the beginning of a new year is all the reflection and planning.

I love seeing nice coloured graphs and pie charts of all my reading tracking and blog stats, all thanks to the lovely Kal at Reader Voracious whose spreadsheets serve me every year 🙂

Now let’s have a look at how my reading year was.

So I had initially set a goal of 90 books but I realised very soon I had to lower it and I’m glad I did so to take off the pressure. 70 is such an achievable goal for me and I did read a great many good books this time around.

2022 was the year I fell out of love with YA Contemporary. Even now I’m trying to sort through my overwhelming YA shelves to find something I’m in the mood for and I’ve been happily gravitating more towards fantasy and sci-fi. I’ve always wanted to read more graphic novels as well and they’re finally becoming a little more accessible for me personally thanks to well-stocked libraries and lovely friends.

As I said, I had a good year when it came to reading so I mostly had four-star and five-star ratings. It’s also partly because four stars is my go-to rating for a book I like, so you could say it’s my average, hehe. Either way, my lowest rating was 2.5 stars, which makes sense since I usually do DNF books that I’m not liking.

As usual, audiobooks and ebooks have my heart because the ease with which I can read them and travel with them is incomparable. Don’t get me wrong, I love paperbacks as well but I usually don’t have the time or space for them and end up listening to audiobooks on the go or reading ebooks on my phone.

I know the graph says I read a lot of YA books but a lot of these were fantasy and oh my god look at that adult bar! I don’t think it has ever been that high and I’m loving it. I also started reading more and more middle-grade towards the end of the year and I have to say, 2023 will be the year when my middle-grade reading increases because gosh mg authors are crushing it these days with beautifully written books. One of the biggest pros is that they’re a bit shorter and get to the point faster than YA books instead of meandering too much and I’m all here for that!

Who is surprised that I didn’t stick to my TBR? I really want to go through my physical TBR much more quickly than I have been but I just – audiobooks are so much more convenient oof. And then there’s the whole thing of travelling back and forth from my hostel to home with my books like my suitcases are usually bursting out. But you know, on a whole I am proud that only 18-ish percent of my owned books are unread. I have been making an active effort to buy fewer books over the years and it has truly been paying off 🙂

Conversely, the graph says I did purchase a lot of books but that’s because I included all the audiobooks I finished under my Storytel subscription cause I am paying for the subscription after all.

I’m not going to do 2022 favourite books because it always, always stresses me out so much. But here are some of my monthly favourites which were hard enough to pick as it is 😛

	January	Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
	February	The Charm Offensive
	March	A Death in Shonnagachi
	April	The Genesis Wars
	May	A Magic Steeped in Poison
	June	She Drives Me Crazy
	July	Night of the Dragon
	August	Here and Now and Then
	September	See You Yesterday
	October	Weather Girl
	November	The Ex Talk
	December	The Gift of Therapy

Coming to bookish challenges, for Beat the Backlist 2022 I completed 39/52 of the prompts and read a total of 44 backlist books! My goals with this challenge have always been to have fun and complete as many prompts as possible so 39 is a way higher number than I expected. It feels so satisfying to read backlist books and catch up with the hype personally and this challenge always keeps me on track.

I believe I did some 5-star predictions at the beginning of 2022. I say I believe cause I literally forgot about them the moment after I hit publish on that post cause I didn’t read any of them. Not a single one.

I know right? I think I keep pushing away these books because putting five-star predictions on them is just too much expectation for the books as well as myself. Hence I’ve decided to not make five-star predictions anymore. Just saying that brings so much relief to me!

And lastly, I had the 12 friends 12 books challenge.

I knew wouldn’t get through all these books but I’m quite happy with my progress. All of these received high ratings from me so my friends clearly have good taste 🙂

As for blog statistics, I don’t actively track anything but here’s what WordPress had to say about my blog this year.

Yes, the stats are down compared to the past couple of years, but like I expected that since I’ve been investing less time here and taking breaks when needed. I’m treating this blog more and more as a hobby and not stressing about schedules and I’m going to make my peace with whatever engagement I get out of this arrangement. I’ll keep blogging till I feel like it, I’m not in it for the numbers. And even then, sometimes I forget what a huge deal it is to have more than 6000 people who visited my blog and it often takes end year reviewing for me to appreciate everyone’s love and support 🙂

I guess that’s it on my end! I hope you all had a good 2022 when it came to reading and writing. If not, I hope 2023 is better.

How was your 2022 in terms of reading and blogging?

Do you track your reading?

What are your plans or goals for 2023?

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