2021 review of the books I read

In 2021 I read 9 books. This was 21 less than the goal I set in 2020 and the lowest number of books I’ve read since I started keeping track back in 2018 (you can find the list here). Some of this had to do with working remotely for the full year and losing out on 3 hours’ worth of reading time during my commute. Some of this had to do with burnout and honestly not having any energy left at the end of the day to read.

Project Hail Mary was a really fun read. I really enjoy Weir’s style of writing and the story kept me wanting to find out what was going to happen. As one reviewer put it “This book is half science experiments, half wacky buddy comedy — and it just works so so so well!”

An excellent book on inclusion in the workplace and how to foster it from a leadership position. Offered a good blend of data, anecdotes, and steps to be taken for different management styles.

Last year I read/listened to 9 books. You can find the full list here . I listened to 7 audiobooks (at 1.5x speed) for a total of 44 hours of listening time (1.8 days). On average it took me 10.8 days to get through an audiobook vs 54 days to get through a hard copy. Interestingly both of these numbers went up. In 2021 it took me twice as long to listen to an audiobook as in 2020 but only 25% longer for a physical book. Of the 2 physical books, I read a total of 636 pages.

Of the 9 books, only 1 was written by women (11%). This was, unfortunately, a significant decrease from every past year (40% in 2020, 35% in 2019 and 14% in 2018). My goal in 2022 is to bring this back up to 40%.

For the first time since I started tracking my average rating was below the average (4.11 vs 4.17). This is entirely due to me giving Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future a one-star rating.

Science Fiction continues to be my favourite genre.

Onwards I already have a couple of goals for 2022. I want to continue being mindful of the books I’m reading and who’s writing them and I want to make sure that I’m reading books from a diverse set of authors. The second goal is to read at least 12 books. This is a significant decrease from my previous goals but I feel like it’s more realistic. As with last year, I want to be more consistent with the number of books I read in a month. I often get on a roll and then burn out. Basically, from 2019 onwards you can see when I burn myself out reading (generally April) and I don’t pick it up again until November when I realize I have a goal to hit.

I still want to try to read more physical books. I love audiobooks because I can listen to them while I’m walking and driving but I’d really like to get to more physical books. There’s something about flipping through the pages and finally getting to the end that is so much more satisfying than finishing an audiobook.

Here’s to 2022 and hopefully many more books !