Wrapping up the 2020 blogging year + finally setting some goals for 2021

Hey y’all, welcome back! I hope you’ve all been doing well. Today, I’m finally wrapping up the 2020 blogging year and sharing my goals for this year.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t achieve all my goals even if I did come close for some. However, it’s still interesting to see what I did achieve and I’m pretty proud with the overall quality of my posts from last year.

There’s honestly not much else for me to say for this intro, so, without further ado, let’s get started!

2020 bookish wrap-up | my favorites, least favorites, reading challenge updates, and general review of the past reading year

Good afternoon friends, and welcome back! Today, we’re finally finally getting the wrap-up of my 2020 reading year. I’ve been putting off doing this post for absolutely no reason. Actually, I’m kind of exhausted thinking about how long this is going to be, so maybe that’s why. However, it’s not going to magically put itself together, so here we are.

Let’s see what I read in the miserably weird year that was 2020.

2020 Mid Year Goals & Reading Challenge Update

basically, a post where I really surprise myself

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Good morning, amigos!!! I hope you’ve all been having a great start to your week! Today I’ll be doing an update on all my bookish and not so bookish goals that I made at the start of the year. I’ll also be sharing what I’ve read for the 4 reading challenges that I’m doing.

To be honest, I’m pretty surprised with how well I did in some aspects, and of course, not so surprised that I failed in others. Lol, let’s get started!

Reading Challenge Sign-Up: Cloak and Dagger & Historical Fiction 2020 Challenges

Good morning y’all. Welcome back. It’s a super rainy and dreary day today, and I woke up weirdly happy that it was raining. Now that there’s mud everywhere and mini rivers going through my backyard, I miss the sun. *sigh*

Today, I’m doing my signup posts for the 2020 Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge hosted by Carol @ Carol’s Notebook, and the 2020 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Amy @ Passages to the Past. Check out both links to learn more and to sign up.

So, I don’t plan on making a TBR for either of these. At least not for now, so that’s why I’m combining both these posts together.

#CloakDaggerChal

The aim of the Cloak and Dagger challenge is to read as many mystery, thriller, suspense, and crime related books as possible. And you know me, I love a good mystery and thriller, so this is a perfect challenge.

Last year, I realized that ever since I’ve been introduced to YA, I haven’t been reading many adult thrillers anymore, and I miss those kind of books, so I want to change that and doing this challenge will hopefully help me out.

The rules are simple:

• You can read any book that is from the mystery/suspense/thriller/crime genres. Any sub-genres are welcome as long as they incorporate one of these genres.
• You don’t need a blog to participate but you do need a place to post your reviews to link up. (blog, Goodreads, Instagram, etc.)
• Make a goal post and link it back here with your goal for this challenge.
• Books need to at least 100 pages long. Please no short stories.
• Crossovers with other challenges are fine.
• The Challenge will run from Jan. 1st to Dec. 31st. (Sign up ends March 15th)

My goal is to at least get to Inspector, which is 26-35 books.

My real secret goal is to reach Special Agent which is 36-55 books. But I don’t want to push it, so I’ll focus on getting Inspector for now.

#2020HistFicReadingChallenge

The goal of the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge is to read more historical fiction books, from any sub-genre. gasp! really??

I used to really enjoy historical fiction, but as I said above, YA has kind of taken over my reading life, so I want to do this challenge to get myself to read more HF. Of course, it’s probably going to be YA HF, but at least it won’t be contemporary or fantasy. But I’ll try to vary it and get some adult ones in there too.

The rules:

• Everyone can participate! If you don’t have a blog you can post a link to your review if it’s posted on Goodreads, Facebook, or Amazon, or you can add your book title and thoughts in the comment section if you wish.
• Add the link(s) of your review(s) including your name and book title to the Mister Linky we’ll be adding to our monthly post (please use the direct URL that will guide us directly to your review)
• Any sub-genre of historical fiction is accepted (Historical Romance, Historical Mystery, Historical Fantasy, Young Adult, History/Non-Fiction, etc.)

Since I don’t have a history of reading too many HF books (I read like 5 last year), I’m going to aim for the Renaissance Reader, which is 10 books.

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*YA = young adult 🙂

So that’s it! I’m making progress with #YARC2020 and I’ve already read 2 books for that, and I’m currently reading a third, so I’m really excited! I can do this!! You can check out my sign up post and the TBR I made for YARC here.

I’m going to post updates on my reading progress for these three challenges in my Monthly Wrap-Up posts. I think I’m probably going to make a TBR for the HistFic challenge eventually, just so that I have an idea of what books are out there, and which ones I’d like to read. For the Cloak & Dagger challenge, I’m not going to make a TBR, because my library has about a million books that work for that, so I’ll just read whatever I find.

That’s it for today! What reading challenges are you guys doing? Do you have any book recommendations? What are you reading? Chat with me in the comments below!!

2019 Blogging Wrap-Up + 2020 Goals

Hey all!! Welcome back! I have finally finally done this post, 20 days later than I anticipated. But I’m really excited to see all the things I accomplished last year blogging wise, and share with you my goals for this year.

This is probably going to be a long post, so let’s get started!!

Blogging Stats:

• Posts and Comments: I wrote a total of 179 posts last year, with 105,632 words. 105,632 words guys. That number just seems so big and absurd. That’s around 590 words per post which isn’t too long, but it’s still a lot of words. I also had a total of 1,996 comments, which I’m guessing includes my replies and pingbacks.

• Followers: I gained 224 followers last year. 224!! Two hundred and twenty four. I can’t really believe it, that so many people actually liked my blog enough to follow. It means so much to me, and really, I never expected so many follows. I mean, my goal (that I set at the end of 2018) was to gain 40 more followers. 40. And I gained 224. Thank you so much to every single one of you for reading and following my tiny corner of the internet!! It means so much to know that you enjoy reading what I have to say!

• Views and Visitors: In 2019, I had a total of 8,746 views and 3,260 visitors. It was kind of a shock, because most of those views tbh, came towards the end of the year. In Aug 2019, I went from around 700 views to 1,000 in September. And it’s been increasing since then. October and November were around 1,100 views, and then December was around 1,400.

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and this January (the one in blue), I’m already almost at 1,000 views, with only 9 posts, and I’ve been on hiatus for a week…👀

• May was my lowest month by far, because I took a month long hiatus. It was Ramadan, and I didn’t really feel like blogging and reading while fasting. But after I started Let’s Talk Bookish in August, my views went up by a lot, and Friday has become my most popular day for views. So, yeah. I’m super proud of this as well.

• Now for a breakdown of the types of posts that I wrote:
  • 46 Reviews
  • 37 WWW Wednesday Reading Updates
  • 23 Discussions
  • 16 Book Tags
  • 5 Awards

• Those amount to 127 posts. So that means I had 52 other posts which were random, announcements, or Monthly wrap-ups. Overall, I think I still did pretty well.

2019 Goals Review:

• Write 200 posts ❌
  • 100 should be book reviews ❌
• Read 100 books ❌
• Get 40 more followers ✔
• Focus more on quality, not quantity (lol) ❔
• Read more diverse books with either diverse characters, topics, or places ✔
• Be more creative with my posts ❌

Lol. Four definite nos, and only two definite checks. I was close for some of them though.

• Posts: I wrote 179 posts which is 21 short of 200. I didn’t even get close with the reviews.
• Books: I was 2 books short of 100, so I’m still happy about that.
• Followers: I got 224 more followers and I’m seriously very very proud of that.
• Quality vs Quantity: I really don’t know how to figure out if I did? I think, for the most part, it was more about quantity and keeping up with my posting schedule. But I did have a few quality posts that I loved writing.
• Diversity: Yes. For sure, my reading has become a lot more diverse. I read about so many diverse characters last year, and that has led to me learning about so many things that I didn’t even know existed. So yes. This is a very big yes.
• Creativity: Haha no. I don’t think I was really creative? Unless we’re talking about graphics/header images, then no, I don’t think I was very creative with my posts.

Most Popular Posts:

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Let’s Talk Bookish – Bookish and Blogging Myths

Diversity and Representation in YA feat. a rant about ‘Americanism’

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee – Review

Sunshine Blogger Award #2

Behind the Blog: 200 Follower Q&A Answers

Favorite Posts:

Honestly, I can think of only three posts that I’m super proud of or that I loved to write: my second ever discussion post, my review of Six of Crows, and my discussion about authors inspired by the uproar with Kathleen Hale.

Diversity and Representation in YA feat. a rant about ‘Americanism’

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo – Spoiler Review

Let’s Talk Bookish – When An Author Has Gone Too Far

2020 Goals: Bookish, Blogging, & Personal

• Read 110 books
• Take part in two reading challenges (and stick to it!!)
• Read at least 40 books with diverse main characters or topics
• Try to read more Adult thrillers and mysteries

• Get to 400 followers
• Get through my 27 backlogged reviews, and review at least 50% of the books I read this year
• Monthly views should be more than a thousand
• Catch up on my blog hopping and stay on track

• Get through my first year of dual enrollment (college + high school classes) successfully
• Continue making healthier versions of my favorite desserts
• Continue exercising at least 5 times a week

And that’s it!! I had a lot of great stats for 2019, even though I didn’t meet most of my goals. I also stopped the two reading challenges that I started last January, but this year, I will do my best to continue. Overall, I’m really proud of everything that I accomplished last year, and I’m looking forward to making 2020 even better.

What was 2019 like for you? Did you meet your goals for the year? What was your favorite post from last year? What are your goals for 2020? Chat with me in the comments below!

P.S. If you wrote a post on any of this, be sure to link it in the comments below so I can check it out!!