by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books)
As we approach the end of 2021, I decided it would be interesting once again to look back on the year. Ashley, Sara, and I went through this reflective process, and it's amazing—when you consider all that has happened this year—just what we've been able to accomplish. Just to remind you, in addition to working full-time jobs, having families, and going through all of the pandemic-related stuff . . . Ashley has been abroad since summer! It's been a unique year for our podcast, so we are so thrilled with what we've accomplished.
The Episodes
70 Total Episodes
52 Regular Episodes
1 Bonus Episode
17 Teaching Tidbits
This year, we released more episodes than ever! We navigated so much but somehow still managed to get together to record and release more than an episode a week.
Reading Challenge
We hosted our first-ever Reading Challenge this year, and we thoroughly enjoyed working through our recommendations for those challenge categories and seeing what everyone else was reading. We invite you to join us for our 2022 Reading Challenge, which is going to be even better!
Book Club
12 Book Club Episodes
10 Fiction
2 Nonfiction
5 Young Adult
3 Romance
1 Memoir in Verse
1 Graphic Memoir
1 Classic
2 Fantasy
5 LGBTQ+
10 Authors of Color
Looking back, we're pleased with the variety of books we covered in our Book Club episodes, which sometimes challenged us with a focus on difficult but important social issues and sometimes allowed us to escape for just a while. Several of these also served as Buddy Read picks, but for the ones that didn't, we hosted separate Book Club chats on IG.
Teaching
17 Teaching Tidbits
These Teaching Tidbits episodes allow each of us to hone in on a specific topic for a brief discussion. These range from ideas for lesson plans to ways that you can practice self-care (for real!).
Buddy Reads
12 Buddy Reads
1 Buddy Watch
Our Buddy Read (and Watch!) chats are a highlight for me every month. I absolutely love discussing great literature with our fabulous Unabridged community. These are all YA books, and they run the gamut from realistic fiction to fantasy, from romance to social issues (and sometimes two or three of those things combined).
So Much More!
Events
Curated Book Recommendations
Ambassadors
Newsletters
Here are some other highlights from this year:
We launched Unabridged Events with our Spooky Happy Hour in October and continued with a Holiday Happy Hour in December. We had SO much fun celebrating. We've got even more events—and more types of events—planned for 2022, so watch our social media feeds and newsletter for more announcements!
In December, we also launched Curated Book Recommendations, which will give interested book lovers a chance to get some hand-picked book recs.
We celebrated a year of Unabridged Ambassadors! We're so grateful for all of their support and input. (You can learn more about the Ambassadors program here.)
Our monthly newsletters continued, with a look at the month ahead, and we added mid-month newsletters that give you a peek into what we're doing outside of books. (You can sign up here for our newsletter.)
(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)
Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.
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