2022 Reading Resolutions & a TBR of 5* Predictions ✨

Happy 2022! I hope the year has gotten to a great start for you (and if it hasn’t, I hope it changes gears to something great right now!).

I love the New Year because it feels like it offers a fresh chance to try something new. Today I’m going through everything that I hope to achieve by reading in 2022! (and a sneaky check-in on how I did with 2021 resolutions as well!)

Similarly to 2021, I decided to set a couple reading resolutions and a yearly TBR for 2022. Let’s get into it!

Reading resolutions

Goodreads Reading Goal

2021 ❎ Last year I set out to read 80 books in a year. This was an ambitious goal as I have been only able to get through about 60-70 books in the past few years. I didn’t quite make it to 80, and instead finished the year with 76 books read. I was so close!

2022 🌌 This year I plan to make reading a bit less stressful by setting a more achievable goal! I think the coming year will be really tough because I’m slowly coming to the end of the funded period of my PhD, meaning that I have to write a massive dissertation this year. But I’m staying positive and going into the year hoping that I can get 67 books read!

Read More by Authors of Colour

2021 ☑️ Last year I set the goal of reading at least 40% by authors of colour. I’m really happy to say that I was successful as I read 32 books by authors of colour, which translates to 43.42% of my books read in 2021 🎉

2022 🌌 I can go beyond 40%, right?? In 2022 I hope to read at least 50% of books by authors of colour!

Read in my native language

2021 ☑️ Last year was the first time when I challenged myself to read more in my native language, Finnish. I moved to the UK about 8.5 years ago, and since then I have been picking up books mostly in English. Although I speak Finnish with my partner, family and some friends, I have noticed that I’m slowly losing my own native language. More and more, complex sentences are difficult to understand, I’m not familiar with new words, and I get the grammar wrong and forget words when speaking. In 2021 I attempted to address this by challenging myself to read 4 books in Finnish! I managed to finish 3 books in Finnish, and I’m in the middle of the fourth one so I’m sneakily counting this one as a success! Here’s what I read/I’m reading in Finnish:

2022 🌌 Last year’s challenge really helped me with Finnish, so I want to continue this year. I think 4 books in Finnish is a good goal for 2022 as well (but not counting the one I’m currently in the middle of), mainly because I don’t have very many Finnish books available 😅 I’m also very slow when I read in Finnish and finishing a book takes ages! Here are some books I’m excited to read and could pick up in 2022: (note that all title translations are by me and so in no way accurate haha)

Margarita by Anni Kytomaki. 📖 Hardcover 🌼 Literary fiction 🎁 Gifted to me. A book that received one of the most esteemed literary awards in Finland, the Finlandia award. This sounds like a slightly melancholic exploration of different characters’ connection to nature? Maybe?

Vayla (A Way) by Rosa Liksom. 📖 Hardcover 🕰 Historical fiction 🎁 Gifted to me. A historical fiction set in the 1940s during a war in Lapland (Finland). The story is told in a dialect, and I have no idea if I’ll be able to understand any of it but hey I’m excited to try!

Metsassa Juoksee Nainen (A Woman Runs in the Woods) by Elina Airio. 💸 Need to buy a copy. My big sister’s debut novel is coming out this year!!! She has described it as a critical look into social work that almost reads like a dystopia. I’m excited to finally read it, and just look at how gorgeous that cover is!

Yearly TBR

2021 ☑️ I set myself a list of 21 books for 2021, and I challenged myself to read at least 15 of those books. In the end I made it through 14 of them and I’m currently reading the 15th – although this is a bit short of the goal, I’ll be generous to myself and say that I was successful cause you know, I was almost there! (This is especially true as in 2020 I set myself a yearly TBR as well and then proceeded to completely ignore it for a year 😂)

Here are all the books from my 2021 yearly TBR with a tick on the ones I finished. I also added a gear for the book I’m in the middle of:

2022 🌌 When I was finishing my reads from the 2021 yearly TBR, I started noticing that I gave quite a few of the books on the list 2 or 3 stars (out of 5). I also DNFed (= did not finish) three of the books! In 2022, I want to read more books that I’ll enjoy. So, this year’s TBR consists of 10 books that I could imagine giving 5 stars to! I have tried my hardest to figure out which books I think I’ll rate as 5-star reads and I hope to read at least 7 out of these 10 in 2022.

2022 TBR: 5-star Predictions

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers (#2 in Monk & Robot). 💸 Need to buy a copy 🚀 scifi ✨ Nonbinary characters. The sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-built is coming out in July 12th 2022, and I have no doubt that it will be a 5-star read like the first book in the Monk & Robot series. I still think about the first book all the time, and it somehow left its mark on me. If A Prayer for the Crown-Shy offers similar things to the previous book, I expect there to be a elaborate discussions, nonbinary main characters and queer relationships, topped with a beautiful prose throughout.

The Kingdom of Copper by S. A. Chakraborty (#2 in The Daevabad Trilogy). 📱 Ebook 🎧 Audiobook 🐉 Fantasy ✨ Characters of colour. I have no idea why it has taken me so long to pick up The Kingdom of Copper after falling head over heels in love with The City of Brass. I think I have been saving these books for the perfect time just because I know I’ll love them. But the time is now! These books are absolutely magical fantasies set in a historical Cairo.

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (#3 in The Stormlight Archive). 📱 Ebook 🐉 Fantasy. This book is definitely a 5-star and I have no doubt about it, but it’s also fricking massive! The book clocks in at 1248 pages, which will take me approximately a century to read. I love The Stormlight Archives books, but they can be a big undertaking! 2022 could be a year to do just that!

Starsight by Brandon Sanderson (#2 in Skyward). 📱 Ebook 🚀 scifi. Another Brandon Sanderson on this list is Starsight, sequel to Skyward. This one also appeared in my 2021 yearly TBR, but I was honestly just saving it for a perfect time (once again). Now I can rest assured that there will be books from the Skyward series for later too because while I was procrastinating, the third book and two novellas came out!

A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark. 📱 Ebook 🐉 Fantasy ✨ Author of colour, characters of colour (& possible lgbt+ rep?). This year I randomly picked up a novella from P. Djeli Clark, called A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and I have honestly never been the same since. The 43-pages story just snatched 5-stars as a rating, and it was quickly followed by another 5-star short story, The Angel of Khan el-Khalili. If these short, steampunk historical fictions set in Cairo where djinn live among humans had my heart, what would a full length novel by P. Djeli Clark do? I can only expect that it will be amazing.

Blade of Secrets by Tricia Levenseller. 💸 Need to buy a copy 🐉 Fantasy. Some YA fantasies get me so excited that I just want to scream my love for them. Tricia Levenseller’s The Shadows Between Us did that to me, and I then proceeded to stuff it in the hands of my usually-epic-scifi-loving-partner, and he loved it too! I now believe that Tricia Levenseller is just simply magic and this one sounds so good I’m tempted to run to the bookshop right now: anxious blacksmith who creates a sword so powerful that it should never get in anyone’s hands.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo (#2 in The Singing Hills Cycle). 📱 Ebook 🐉 Fantasy ✨ Author of colour, nonbinary characters, lgbt+ relationships. When I read the first book in this series, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, I was sold on Nghi Vo’s style of weaving magical stories. I can’t wait to pick up this continuation of the novella series and just fall deeply in love with it. It’s also the perfect time to read it as 2022 is the Year of the Tiger!

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. ☁️ Paperback 🌼 Literary fiction ✨ Author of colour. I came across Ocean Vuong’s poetry last year when I saw headlines of his hilarious reactions to Australian high school students who messaged him in Instagram after spending hours trying to analyse his poetry in an Australian national exam. I stopped to read his poetry, and suddenly everything around me just fell away. I was captivated by his style, and knew that I must pick up his novel. I’m already convinced that this one will hit me hard!

Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North. 🎧 Audiobook 🚀 scifi. Claire North has been one of my favourite authors for some time, and her gorgeous and thought-provoking books are made even better because my favourite audiobook narrator, Peter Kenny, nearly always narrates them. I’m so excited for this one, how could it not be five stars?

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. 💸 Need to buy a copy 🐉 Fantasy ✨ Author of colour, characters of colour. This one is the riskiest pick on the list simply because I have never read anything by the author before, but I can’t help but think that this book will be just simply magical. It is a story inspired by Chang’e, Chinese moon goddess, and it tells the tale of a young woman who needs to free her mother.

Those are all of my resolutions for 2022 (and a brief glimpse into how I did in 2021!). I’m really excited for the year to come! Simply writing down my thoughts on these upcoming reads made me really pumped up to read them.

How did 2021 go for you? What are your plans for 2022? I would love to know!

I hope you have the greatest reading year ahead of you. One that is full of heart-wrenching stories, magical universes, and relatable characters. I also hope that 2022 will be a year a great things, and calm days, perfect for snuggling a book under a blanket!

Thank you so much for reading!