2021 Reading Goals and Challenges (Bookending Winter 2020)

*hums high hopes by panic! at the disco*

I don’t think I’m alone in REALLY wanting 2021 to be better than 2020. The world in general is not something that I have much control over (sadly), but I do control myself, and that includes my reading and blogging goals. I have uh… several goals that I think will help me with both of these things this year, plus a few reading and blogging challenges that I’m excited to participate in, starting with…

• The biggest change this year is that I’m going to work really hard at keeping track of what and how much I’m reading every day. I’ve used Goodreads and Bookly and my Kindle app for this before, but it isn’t always super accurate. This year I’m going to use the physical reading planner from Owlcrate to keep track of it!

• Goodreads Challenge: My 2020 reading goal started at 52 books, one per week. Then I hit that before my birthday, and set it to 104 books for an average of 2 per week. As of right now (December 20), I’m at 110 books, or 106% of my goal! For 2021, I’m going to start with a goal of 104, since I know I can do it!

• Beat the Backlist Challenge: Hosted at NovelKnight, this challenge is to get people to read books published in 2020 and earlier.
• In 2020, I ended up doing pretty well with this one, even if I forgot to check in between January and December. Oops. Hopefully I’ll do better with checking in this year!

• New Releases Challenge: On the opposite end, I’m also going to participate in the New Releases Challenge, hosted by (un)Conventional Bookworms, and it is a year-long challenge in which we aim to read books released in 2021!

• NetGalley and Edelweiss Challenge: I’m also going to participate in the NetGalley and Edelweiss Challenge, hosted by Socrates’ Book Reviews. This one is all about reading (and reviewing!) your eARCs! I’m usually pretty good with reading and giving a star rating on Goodreads, but sometimes I forget to actually go back and review them on the sites. Hopefully this will help me with that!

• Audiobook Challenge: One of the best things to come out of 2020 was my love of audiobooks! I like to listen to them while I’m driving (to work, or like this spring- just anywhere). At first I spent a little too much money trying to get audiobooks from audible, but now I just use Libby and Hoopla through my library and it’s working out great! That’s why I’m really excited to join the audiobook challenge, hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer!

• Out of Your Comfort Zone Challenge: The last challenge I’m going to aim to do is the Out of Your Comfort Zone Challenge, hosted by Bookcheshirecat! This challenge is all about reading books that you consider to be outside of your comfort zone. For me, I’m going to try and read more middle grade and adult titles in 2021. Don’t worry, this will still be a mostly YA space, but I think if I aim for 25% not YA, I’ll be doing pretty good.

• My Own Posts: While it’s fun to follow along with everyone’s Top Ten Tuesday posts and things like that, I really want to work on writing my own posts in 2021. For this, I’m including book reviews (I hope to post 1-2 a month), book rec posts (I’ve got one in the works right now!), plus reflections and wrap ups and all the fun stuff that I haven’t really done this year.

• For Bookish Fun, I’m including Weekly Bookish Memes (It’s Monday What Are You Reading, Top Ten Tuesday, Can’t Wait Wednesday, Let’s Talk Bookish, First Line(s) Friday, Three Truths One Lie), as well as more Bookending Events (I’m really enjoying these!).
• Side Note: Did you know I host a weekly meme here at Kait Plus Books? It’s called Three Truths, One Lie (previously Vague Recollections), and the aim of the game is to figure out what book is being described by figuring out which statement isn’t true. The fun part is that most weeks there are multiple books it could be, depending on which statement you think is the lie!

That’s everything for me! What are your reading goals for 2021? Are you participating in any reading challenges? Let me know in the comments and have a splendiferous day!