Year in Review: 2020

While this was the second year of my blog, it certainly wasn’t a consistent year for me. While I started the year feeling quite productive, things took a drastic decline partway through the year. Anyone who reads this is going to realize that 2020 has been a difficult year. The year started out with insane wildfires in Australia, which at the time most people assumed would be the low point of the year. But then COVID hit. And things didn’t really improve from there. 

I never expected to live through a global pandemic, which I can admit now was a quite naïve way of thinking with the way viruses change and evolve even with modern medicine. I count myself as blessed to have been born – and continue to live my life – in Canada, a highly developed country with a lot of first rate medical, social, political, etc. advancements. But that does not negate the fact that viruses are unpredictable.

Thanks to COVID, 2020 was a strange time to be alive. I remained lucky enough to not lose my full time job at all during the pandemic and was able to safely work from home most of the time. Myself and my loved ones remain safe during these trying times, though I know many thousands of people have not been as lucky.

My point of making this post – both last year and this one – is to look back at how the year was in regards to my reading goals for myself. However, I first think that it’s important to acknowledge how trying this tear has been for many. To everyone who has suffered because of this pandemic: I am so sorry for everything you’ve had to go through. I hope that 2021 is a much better year for you. 

Of course, the pandemic was not the only awful thing to happen this year. This is also the year where Black Lives Matter came to a heated peak. The BLM protests in the State were some horrifically brutal and blatantly racist moments in recent history. In general, politics in the States were horrific. On a more global look, China asserted itself in ways that negatively impacted its relations with other countries around the world – including but by no means not limited to Australia and India. Britain officially withdrew from the EU, and having family living there I can say without a doubt that it had a negative impact on at least some parts of their economy. These are just a handful of the events that happened concurrently to the pandemic, but each played a role on 2020 as a whole. 

For those of you who made it through all that and are still reading this, the main things I want to look at in regards to my reading stats for 2020 are: How many books did I read this year? Each month? Did I reach the reading goal that I set for myself? How do some months compare to others? How did the pandemic effect my reading? Did it effect it at all?

If you’re interested in how my 2019’s stats went, you can check my stats out here.

Now, for a touch of brightness, here are some pictures of Yzma from throughout 2020:

Continue reading for my 2020 stats:

Looking Back at 2019

This being my first year writing a blog, I got to learn what I wanted my voice to sound like and find my own groove. Sure, there were times where I got a little ahead of myself – like trying to post something every day – or times where I faltered – like when I didn’t post anything basically all of June and July. But I think I finally managed to figure out how often I could post things based on my own hectic life and the speed at which I read… more or less. I also discovered that I didn’t have to force myself to read anything if I wasn’t in the mood for it – the blog could wait for me and didn’t demand a post every 2 seconds. Sometimes readings slumps got in the way and I just wasn’t motivated to pick anything up. It took me a while to realize this, but eventually I stopped stressing myself out and decided to think of reading like I always had – for myself and my love of a good story.

My point of making this post was mostly to look back at the year and see how well I kept true to my plans. Heck, I put myself on a book buying ban and then never said anything about it. How did that go? It’s quite obvious that I wasn’t very good at staying true to my monthly TBRs, but how well did I actually do? How many books did I read in 2019? Did I find any new favourites? Did I reread any books and change my mind on them for better or worse? Let’s find out: