Yearly Wrap Up 2019 + My Two Year Blogiversary! // Reading 130 Books, Improving & Designing My Blog, Starting College, & Other Defining Moments

2019 is over and I am SHOOK.

It’s been a wild year. A crazy year for me on the blog and off.

And even more–TODAY IS MY TWO YEAR BLOGIVERSARY!!!!

I’m just as surprised. Who wouldn’t known that that impulse to create a blog two years ago could have grown into this?

I was gonna do two separate posts for my Yearly Wrap Up and my Blogiversary, but p r o c r a s t i n a t i o n and life got in the way so here we are. I hope you’ll still enjoy this monstrous beast giant of a post.

Reading

In 2019, I surpassed my Reading Challenge of 100 books by reading 130 books!

My average page count of 380 is unsurprising and about the same as last year. My shortest book read was Waiting for Godot, which I actually read for English class in the spring, and my least popular book was A House of Rage and Sorrow, and why is this the least popular it’s an amazing book and you people need to get on it and read it!

My longest and most popular books were Harry Potter (different versions because I actually own books 1-3 in the British version and 4-7 in the American version so take that all you purists who insist books must match in a series lmao). These stats were exactly the same last year which annoys me a little but tbh I reread HP every year and it’ll probably be the same next year so I’m just going to have to live with it.

Like last year, I read a mostly even mix of mostly YA fantasy and contemporary, with a few other books thrown in there. However, it was the fantasy books that really blew me away, as mostly fantasy made my top favorite books of this year, and contemporaries mostly tided me over.

I hauled a huge number of books this year–at least, for me. I basically doubled my book collection. Mostly these were ARCs from Yallwest, but there were also some ARCs sent to me by publishers. I also bought 3 books this year, which is a lot for me, but I was treating myself with some books to bring to college! And I bought two of them used from a library sale for 50 cents each, so my total amount spent on books this year was around $10, which isn’t too much for me.

My average book rating was 3.6, which is down from 3.8 last year but actually I think I read more enjoyable books this year since last year I just started blogging and tended to give everything a high rating. I had some horrible books which I ranted about here, and some amazing books which I gushed about here, and lots of books that were just good.

Here’s all the amazing books I read last year!

This year I also participated in the Year Of The Asian reading challenge! I read 20 books by Asian authors, meaning I achieved the Indian Cobra level, which was my goal! Here are the books I read, and you can see I shelved them all on Goodreads!

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before // Always and Forever, Lara Jean // Girls of Paper and Fire // Empress of All Seasons // Descendant of the Crane // The Gilded Wolves // I Love You So Mochi // A Spark Of White Fire // Summer Bird Blue // The Way You Make Me Feel // Starfish // China Rich Girlfriend // Permanent Record // Ignite The Stars // The Star Touched Queen // A House of Rage and Sorrow // Flame In The Mist // The Girl King // I Believe In A Thing Called Love // Girls of Storm and Shadow

Blogging

One of the things I was really focusing on with my blogging this year was focusing more on quality rather than quantity. I definitely achieved this goal. One thing a bit superficial but that I really like, is that I made myself all my graphics this year! This time last year, as you can see in my 2018 wrap up post, I had no graphics (such as these flower/swirl dividers, my header and button and profile pic) and no header images. I use them all now and I really like my aesthetic! I also changed my blog theme from the old Sela theme with the pink bar to this Penscratch theme.

What’s a bit less superficial is that I think I really improved the quality of my posts. Last year and the beginning of this year, I was trying to churn out a post every single day. Now I can’t imagine how I used to do that! Some of them were just generic Top Ten Tuesdays and Weekly Wrap Ups and things that I didn’t really put much effort into. Now, every post I write and publish I put much more effort into, and I’m especially proud of some of the discussion posts I’ve written.

This year, I published more than 100 fewer posts than I did last year. And with that… my stats decreased. This year, my second year of blogging, I got fewer views/likes/etc than I did last year, my first year. This is a bit hard for me to reconcile with because of course I always want to be improving. But, when I look at the fact that I published 100 fewer posts, a close to 50% decrease, but my stats definitely didn’t decrease by 50%, and I realize that although I may have fewer views total, I have more views per post, I can be happy with that.

And with that, I’ve hit a few milestones! I crossed 1000 followers this year, which is huge and crazy! And I’m so thankful every time I see the follower count. I also created a Twitter account this year, which has around 400 followers, which isn’t very many, but I hope to use it more next year to drive more engagement to my blog.

I published a full post talking about all of my favorite blogging moments of 2019, so you can check it out here if you’re interested, but for now, here are a few of my favorites:

• Small Town Hearts ARC Review || A Sugary Sweet Summer Contemorary (My first ever ARC review!!)
• Consumerism And Materialism In The Bookish Community // Bookworms Need Not Buy Books
• Why I Dislike Required Reading And That’s Okay (A High Schooler’s Perspective)
• Reading Is My Hobby But Not My Profession // Feeling Fake, Being Torn Between Two Communities, And Other Insecurities
• I Went To Yallwest 2019 // Seeing Authors, Being (Semi)Social, And A Book Haul!
• I Went To The WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER Part One // General Info, Arrival, And Rides and I Went To The WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER Part Two // Shopping, Dining, House Pride, And Departing
• Why I Dislike The Casting Of Ben Barnes In Shadow And Bone // Please Stop Aging YA Characters
• Supernova Spoiler & Non Spoiler Reviews // An Insane, Epic, Yet Not Perfect Super Conclusion (ft. my longest ever review & a discussion on my old theories and how i wish it had ended)

Writing

I wrote a lot during this summer. This summer, I wrote a 80,000 word historical fantasy novel with sort of cruel badass characters that was really fun to write! It’s kind of terrible, full of inconsistencies and plot holes and mush as my brain was jumping around and I know I’m never going to try to do anything with it, but it was fun to write and I know that I improved as a writer writing it.

I also wrote a second draft for the 60,000 word summer contemporary that I wrote last summer. This is a big deal because although I’ve written five full length novels in my life, they were all first drafts and this was my first ever second draft. Unlike all the other novels I’ve written, this is one that I think I may try to go about reworking and maybe even trying to publish in the future!

In total, I wrote about 140,000 words. This was basically all in the summer as I’ve really not had much time to write recently, but I hope to find a way to work writing back into my schedule.

Life

So this has been both the best and worst year of my life. There have been some very high highs and very low lows and I wanted to briefly talk about them!

• I’ve been feeling devastatingly lonely. Since starting college, I’ve made a few acquaintances, but no real friends. Nobody I hang out with outside of class, and nobody I can talk about how I really feel and really be my weird crazy self with. I eat every meal in the dining hall alone, and spend my weekends in my room and the library, some days not speaking beyond a “hey” at my roommates. I like being alone, since I’m an introvert and am not interested in partying or anything like that anyways, but I want… just a couple good friends. I don’t want a crowd, a party, but I want just one person I can talk to. Anyways, I’ve spent my fair share of time crying alone in my dorm because I’m just so lonely.
• Furthermore, I was really close with a small group of friends in high school. We all went to different colleges, and when we met up again during winter break… everything was different. Some are interested in things we were never interested in in high school, and from the way they talk, I know I wouldn’t like some of their new friends. And I’m left feeling like… we don’t have much in common anymore. Hanging out was still fun, but it’s different, and I’m nostalgic realizing we’ll likely never be that close again.

Anyways, there were a lot of other things rough this year, but I don’t feel comfortable sharing them online (or in general). But since I’ve already talked about college here… here’s some more about it.

That’s enough of the bad though. Let’s talk about the amazing parts of the year!

• I graduated high school! My second semester senior year, the first half to this year, was so much fun! Classes became so laid back and fun since we were able to learn without the stress of needing to get A’s, and I had so much fun messing around in class with friends!
• My friends and I hung out and had so much fun together! We went to senior formal and prom together, and graduation and our all night grad party were absolutely amazing! We also hung out a ton outside of school, including on senior ditch day, and going to the beach and pool and mall a ton together this summer.
• I got really into hand lettering and calligraphy this year, and started bullet journaling this year!! I’m basically addicted now.
• I’ve gotten much better at baking too! I made a two layer succulent basketweave cake for a birthday, as well as a pink rose cake for my birthday, and a Christmas Yule log! And of course tons of pies and cookies and other confectionary delights!
• I started college! I literally just talked about how it’s making me feel extremely lonely and it’s not been without its bad moments, but there have been some nice moments too. It’s been kind of cool moving out and being on my own, my classes are interesting, and I much prefer being able to set my own schedule rather than showing up for 6 hours of classes a day. And it’s so nice not having a ridiculous amount of busywork haha. 

The Blog Community

Of course, the most rewarding part of blogging for me is always the community. Since this is also my Two Year Blogiversary celebration post in addition to my Yearly Wrap Up, I wanted to take a moment to share some of the bloggers who made my year amazing, whether that was because I loved chatting with them, loved reading and admiring their posts, or anything else and in between ❤ If you somehow haven’t seen these bloggers, be sure to check out their amazing blogs!

• Kelly @ Another Book In The Wall
• Tiffany @ Read By Tiffany
• Kaya @ A Fictional Bookworm
• Ellyn @ Allonsythornraxx
• Olivia @ Purely Olivia
• The Orangutan Librarian
• Marie @ Drizzle & Hurricane Books
• Margaret @ Weird Zeal
• Mel @ Cotton Candy Book Witch
• Xandra @ Starry Sky Books
• Alexandra @ Reading By Starlight
• Keri @ Are You My Book

Let’s Chat

How was your 2019? How many books did you read? What were some of your favorite things that happened in the year? I’d love to chat in the comments below ❤