December 2021 Wrap Up

~reading

How many books that I planned did I read?

For December I had planned 7, all Fast Forward Friday titles from the year. And I read all seven!! It was so luxurious to give time to these anticipated titles and for the most part, they did not disappoint. 🙂

The Plan:

The Result:

So I read a lot in December with the holiday time off, but several of those were also graphic novels that read a bit quicker than text-only novels. Side note, I’ve never differentiated something as a “text-only novel” and it was an odd moment as I figured out what to call it.

Like I said, I really wanted to finish some of the Fast Forward Friday titles that I’d had throughout the year. Besides that, I had a few ARCs to read which were wonderful little treats.

The most surprising title I read was The King of Battle and Blood because it was extremely sexual, which I did not know when I went into it. xD You can see more of what caught me off guard with it in the full review, but in the end this book was really really good!

I also just realized how few reviews I posted last month. They were mostly for ARCs (lots coming out this month or recently published!), but I do have reviews for some of those other titles that I’m sure I’ll post some day I’m too tired to write something else. 😅

~life

Well there was some time off this month for holidays, though just a few days. It was really quiet at work since so many other people had taken time off, so it was a great time to work on projects of my own that I usually don’t have time to give to. It was very satisfying and productive and undemanding!

We also got the confirmation that our PUPPY HAS BEEN BORN!!!! We got her!!! ^.^ She’s a few weeks old now and we’ll go get her in a month or two when she’s old enough. We get videos every week of their progress and I watch them multiple times each while waiting for the next videos. Really really excited about this!! As you can tell from How to Raise a Puppy You Can Live With being in my TBR for December. 😁

I was also able to take my mom to a show she’d never seen before and get really good seats for it. I love that I’m able to treat her to things like that now, but it’s been stunted with Covid the past few years. Getting back to it a little bit was lovely and really fun for both of us. ❤

~blog

OoooOOOOooOOOOh was this an exciting month for me, y’all. In December, I hit 10k views on my blog for the year! Considering there were several months where I posted really sporadically, I am so excited and proud of that! Comparing me to me, it’s a huge jump from the year before — and that’s when I had a TON of free time to give to it! I feel like I’ve had a lot of progress in other ways as well, but sometimes numbers and data just give me the warm fuzzies, you know? ^.^

Here are some of my favorite posts I worked on this month, in case you missed them!

• ARC Review: Must Love Books by Shauna Robinson (1/18/22)
• My favorite things about StoryGraph Plus (+Plus Subscription Giveaway until 12/31/21!)
• 3 Books I’ll Gift to Myself (if I have to!)

And here are some of my favorite posts by other bloggers!

• On not reaching goals – and why that’s fine by Jess @ Jessticulates (with a mental health check!)
• My 2022 Book Buying Ban Reading Challenge TBR by Allora @ Rain Check & Read (with a really awesome template to use for yourself too!)
• 2022 “Support Book Bloggers” Challenge by Pages Unbound (easy and impactful and full of connection with other wonderful people ^.^)
• The Benefits of Unhauling Books by Malka @ Paper Procrastinators (from whom I then bought several books)
• Book review ~ A light in the sky, Shina Reynolds by Jade @ The Elder Books (who gave me insight into a book I’ve been debating for a while)
• Discussion Post | Types of followers we all have. by Riddhi @ Whispering Stories (which kicked off a fun series of similar posts!)