2017: My Worst Reading Year

Something I think most of us can agree upon is that 2017 was a roller coaster of a year, and in my personal life, I felt like I was on a constant up and down of the best and worst moments of my life.

The best: I left California for the first time and fell in love with Arizona. I saw my favorite band multiple times throughout the year. I met internet friends. I made new friends. I started a vinyl Instagram account that I’m so excited about. I vlogged a lot. I got promoted at work. I started my last year of college.

The worst: My mental health was not good. I developed and dealt with horrible anxiety during the spring because college is the worst, and (possibly because of that) once the semester ended, I got depressed and didn’t leave my house all summer.

Because my mental health was not good and actually affecting me for the first time in my life, any time I wasn’t working or dealing with school, I was probably asleep or distracting myself with YouTube. Meaning: no books for me.

I felt zero motivation to do anything and it got worse over the summer. Setting up this blog was a brief reprieve because it kept my mind busy, but it was so hard to find motivation to read after I launched it.

When the fall came around, I felt slightly better because I was back at work and school and my classes weren’t killing me slowly, but at the back of my mind, I still had no motivation to do anything that wasn’t required.

In 2017, I read the lowest amount of books I have read since I started keeping track on Goodreads in 2013.

In 2013 I read 23 books.
In 2014 I read 29 books. 
In 2015 I read 28 books. 
In 2016 I read 30 books. 
In 2017 I read 10 books. 

Five of those books were for work. Three were sent to me for review. One was a graphic novel. One was one of my most highly anticipated books of 2017.

Even before I started keeping track of how many books I read a year, I know I was steadily in the 20s for many years, so suddenly being down to 10 absolutely sucks. But. I’m not going to beat myself up about it because hey, I had a tough year. It was super busy and wonderful half the time, but the other half was really hard.

And if anything, it only makes me more motivated to read ALL THE BOOKS in 2018.

Right now, I feel incredibly motivated and excited to read and I am going to take full advantage of that. I’m bringing all the exciting releases I missed out on in 2017 (new John Green, new Sarah J. Maas, new Tahereh Mafi, and many more) into 2018 and I’m going to live my best reader life.

My small reading goal for 2018 is to read 11 books. My big reading goal is to read 35 books, maybe even more. We’ll see how this goes.