my 2021 bookshelf || the best books of the year || life & literature ep. 10

2021 can be marked as the year I fell in love with reading again – the year I realised how much impact books can have on your life. From setting myself a goal of reading 70 books earlier this year to actually finishing all those books well I’m still reading the last one, but there’s time I’ve enjoyed the entire process of reading them.

It actually started with my Cassandra Clare obsession in late 2020 – where I binge-read the entire Mortal Instruments series. I remember being in my grandmother’s house and just reading all. day. long. By early January, I’d finished the series and started on the other three trilogies and was done by the end of February.

It sort of marked the beginning of new reading ‘era’ for me – after my middle-grade fantasy phase and I have read so many good books this year. Obviously, credits to all the book bloggers out there who put out amazing recommendations, and thank you to Goodreads and StoryGraph for all the stats.

I won’t be able to mention all 70 books I read this year, but I will be mentioning the biggest surprises, some books that literally changed the way I look at things, and books I absolutely adore. Let’s get to it!

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finishing my first draft || nanowrimo ’21 recap || life & literature ep. 9

On November 22nd 2021, at 3.32 p.m., I finished the first draft of my novel.

It still feels surreal to finally finish it; I wanted to scream from the rooftops, but I had to settle for yelling into a pillow, running around the house while my sister stared at me oddly. This is the book I’ve been working on since early April this year, and I got to about 134k in November. (I have created a monster.)

But, regardless of its many, many flaws and imperfections, I love it with all my heart, and I’m SO pumped to have finished it!

As the year comes to a close, I’m planning to put it aside for a week or two and focus on other projects before I get back to editing and writing a little more. I wrote a whole chunk of the book this NaNoWriMo – let’s get into all the details!

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