Month: January 2025

Wrapping Up 2024, Looking Forward 2025

Posted 3 January 2025 in thoughts /6 Comments

Wrapping up, looking forward

Welcome to my 15th annual ‘Wrapping Up, Looking Forward’ post. In this post, I take a general look back at how I did with my goals in 2024, and set some new goals for 2025. I’m adding a new section to the post this year. First, I tally up the posts I wrote in 2024 and my goal progress. Then I move into my usual posting and reading overview, followed by new goals for 2025.

2024 Posts

10th Blogiversary Celebrations

Family Reads

Reviews

Middle Grade

Adult

“I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read That Yet”

Sundry

Monthly Recaps

Goals Progress

  • 24/30 = 80% middle grade fiction novels (excluding rereads)
  • 9/9 = 100% Family Reads
    • Success!! 🥳 Many thanks to my parents and sister for helping me reach this goal.
  • 4/6 = 67% “I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read that Yet”
  • 74/84 = 88% books read
    • Not too shabby! I started the year with a goal of 80. For my own personal goal, I bump the target up by one for roughly every two novellas/super short middle grade that I read.
  • Reviewed 51% (38/74) of what I read (goal = 40%)
    • Can’t believe I surpassed this goal in the end!! Unemployment has it perks 🤪 I must have written at least ten reviews in the past few weeks.
    • I did have to review what I was ‘counting’ for the finally tally of this goal. I’ve decided that, for my own personal goal, a review needs to be at least 125 words for me to count it. Therefore, I’m counting four reviews from my two 2024 Review Round Up posts and four reviews from my “I Can’t Believe” posts.
    • I have also counted 7 reviews of 2024 reads scheduled into January and February 2025.
  • Reread The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings
  • 8/8 posts in December
    • Met goal of 8 posts in January and December = 2/12 months = 17%
  • 2,665/2,200 views in December
    • Met goal of 2,200 views/months in every month except Feb = 9/10 months (July and Aug excluded) = 90%

Posting and Reading Overview

I posted 51 times in 2024, a solid increase over 2023’s 36 posts. Nearly one post a week isn’t bad for me. I had a better spread of posts than in 2023 (when 58% of my posts occurred in January and December), though January and December 2024 again were the only months where I met my original goal of 8 posts/month. So I’ll be adapting my posting goal once again for 2025, to see if I can make it something actually achievable.

I read 74 books in 2024 (another decent increase over 2023), including 24 middle grade novels (incidentally, the same as 2023). Once again I reviewed 51% of what I read! I included percentages in the goal review above because I was thinking back to my school days, where I was pleased if I scored 80% or higher on anything. I think this is a better mindset to have. Rather than thinking “I didn’t meet my goal”, I think “I made good progress on that goal”.

I have been comparing my stats to 2023 because 2023 was a year I felt was a step ‘back’ in terms of reading and blogging progress. So I’m pleased to see 2024 was a step ‘forward’. I can’t say at this time if 2024 will be any better than 2023, but I’m hopeful it won’t be a step back.

Personal Goals

  • 80 books read
    • I’ll stick with this goal until I surpass it.
  • 30 middle grade fiction novels
  • 10 owned books
    • I have the following titles in mind to start with. This can include books purchased in 2025 as well.
    • Karluk: The Great Untold Story of Arctic Exploration by William Laird McKinlay
    • A History of Children’s Books in 100 Books by Roderick Cave and Sara Ayad
    • The Lost Ryuu by Watanabe Cohen
    • Obaasan’s Boots by Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro
    • The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien by John Garth
  • 66 posts/year
    • Whoa, it’s not a weekly or monthly goal 😲 Haha, I think I’ve finally learnt that my sporadic lifestyle doesn’t allow for an ongoing target like that.
    • I do sort of intend this to be a monthly target but I’m making it annual to give myself greater flexibility. I’m estimating the following breakdown:
      • 6-8 posts/month for Jan and Dec
      • 6 posts/month for Mar, Apr, May, Sept, Oct, and Nov
      • 4 posts/month for Jun, July, and Aug
    • The lower count for summer months is to factor in weekends spent at the lake or on solo camping trips. That means no computer and internet, and therefore no time spent blogging.
    • This works out to min. 66 posts for 2025. I posted a total of 51 times in 2024… so this may be a stretch, but I’m ever optimistic.
  • 9 Family Reads
    • The 2024 game plan of three books per family member with a rest month between ‘cycles’ was a winner, so I’m sticking with it for 2025.
  • 4 “I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read that Yet”
    • Bimonthly for 2024 proved to be still too high, so I’ll try quarterly this year.
  • Review 50% of what I read in 2025
    • Since I ended up hitting 40% without pushing myself too much in 2024, I’m uping the target to 50% for 2025. I’ve been experimenting with a few strats in the past months. I’m feeling pretty good about maybe finally actually reviewing books shortly after finishing reading them, and writing more fulsome reviews.
  • Hit 2,600 views/month
    • Excluding July and August – there’s always a significant drop off in those months.
    • I’m not sure how useful a metric this is nowadays (I’m suspicious a lot of these hits are from bots) but oh well.

Apparently in last year’s wrap up post, I wrote “my work situation has stabilized”. Ahahaha. At this moment, I have no idea what my work situation will be for 2024. So for now, my reading and blogging habits should flourish. But who knows what the future holds. Still keeping fingers crossed that I’ll have a job again by the end of the month.

While I can’t predict how 2024 will ultimately pan out, I can say that right now I’m more excited than I have been in a couple years about reading and blogging. The blossoming of book communities on Bluesky has been energizing. I have a ton of new-to-me blogs to check out, and of course lots of long-time blogging buddies to keep up with. With plenty of great reads on my immediate horizon, I look forward to connecting with other bloggers and readers throughout 2024.

How was your 2024 reading year? What goals or challenges are you undertaking in 2025?

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December 2024 Month In Review + Cybils 2024 Finalists

1 January 2025 / month in review / 4 Comments
December 2024 Month In Review + Cybils 2024 Finalists

Sooo, I ended up working only two days in December. My term ended Dec 13, but I was in Vancouver to Dec 4 (Wed), and then I had so much vacation time banked that I took off Dec 9 to […]

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