A few weeks ago, I was able to celebrate my third blog anniversary, and honestly it is so incredible that I have made it this far over three years. In order to celebrate, I decided to do a Q and A and answer all the amazing questions that you guys can come up with! I didn’t get a ton of questions, but the ones I did get were all super unique and I cannot wait to answer them. Since this is a shorter post, you’re welcome to ask more questions about me in the comments and I’ll answer them there – if I get enough, I may even do a second Q and A post! But let’s get right into what we have here.
1) Which three places are currently at the top of your travel bucket list?
Wow, I don’t really have a travel bucket list, now that I think about it! I love cities, and I love mountains, but I don’t actively seek out places to visit to find those things. I think for my top choice, I would say San Francisco, because I’ve technically been there twice, but the first time I was too young to remember, and the second time we were there for a total of 6 hours (during the nighttime) so I didn’t get to see any of the city. But it sounds like a super cool city, plus I really want to visit the ballpark they have!!
For my second choice, I would say somewhere in Europe, but I don’t actually know a ton about Europe so I’m not sure where. The only time I’ve ever been out of the United States was when I went to Toronto, which is incredibly close to the US, but I would love to visit some of the mountains in Europe, especially after Naemi @A Book Owl’s Corner’s post about them (and thank you to Naemi for this question!).
For choice three, I might go with Japan, because that is obviously a very advanced and amazing country, as well as a place with lots of beautiful sights! Not only that, but Japan has a really good baseball league, so I’d love to go see some baseball and experience what baseball culture is like in a different country.
2) If you could choose any author to write the book of your dreams, who would you pick and what would the book be about?
Oof, this one is tough. First of all, I think the book of my dreams would probably involve baseball, and an aroace female main character (sounds like self-insert, but whatever). Queer rep in sports is incredibly difficult to come by, and aroace rep regardless of the situation is needed, so it would be amazing to see aroace rep in a baseball book! As for who I want to write it, I think I would probably choose Racquel Marie, because I loved both of her first two books, especially the friend groups within them, and her second book is about sports so she can clearly write sports books too. Not sure how well she could write an aroace baseball book, but this is all hypothetical. The other choice I would love to go with would be Taylor Jenkins Reid, but I think she’d make my novel way too dramatic, and a lot of her stories are also centered on romance drama which obviously would not occur in an aroace book (or…could it???). But TJR’s writing is fantastic, so it would be an honor for her to write my book.
3) What kinds of content would you love to see more of around the blogosphere?
I’m gonna be honest – I love the content that’s in the blogosphere right now! I guess one thing it might be fun to see a little more of are book lists, because I love the number of recommendations that I can get from just one book list post, but there are already a lot of those.
4) How did you start blogging and become active in the online book community?
I turned to the online world at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, as many people did, and found a great little community of book lovers on goodreads. From there, I met some people who had started blogs and it inspired me to do the same! Books With Wings is also actually my second blog – I started a small one during the very first few days of the pandemic with two of my friends, and although that one died out pretty fast, I’m happy with the experience it gave me to start this one!
5) Which author would you choose to narrate your life story?
This one’s pretty similar to #3, but I think specifically for my life story instead of the story of my dreams, I would go with Taylor Jenkins Reid because all of her books seem so realistic, as if we are actually reading someone’s biography. I think my life is going to have to become a bit more dramatic for that to actually happen, though…
6) If you could only eat one fruit for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?
What a question!!! Definitely not something that I have revealed on here before, but I LOVE fruit. There are so many types of fruits that are so delicious. Some of my favorites are mango, nectarine, kiwi, and the classic apple, but if I had to eat only one, I would probably go with mango. You can eat mango in a ton of different ways (just today I ate a bowl of frozen mango pieces AND a mango popsicle) and I love basically all of them. Frozen mango is one of my favorite snacks, and I also love snagging a few strips of dried mango. Having fresh mango is a delicious treat, though I don’t actually get to eat it very often.
7) A genre that you’re convinced you couldn’t ever like no matter how hard you tried?
My first thought upon reading this was ‘romance’ because I have a general dislike towards romance books. But there are, surprisingly, romances that I do enjoy reading, and I realized there are genres I dislike more. Unfortunately, for this one I think I’m going to have to say science fiction. Sci fi is one of the main genres these days, so it feels weird to say this, but I’ve actually never really enjoyed these books, especially if they’re extra science-y. I don’t understand most of the science in the books, and they just get confusing and convoluted when some of the concepts don’t make sense to me.
That’s it from me for this post! I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about me, and I’m super thankful for everyone who asked questions! They were very creative and I had a lot of fun answering them.
Where would you like to travel? Is there an author you’d like to write your dream story? What are your thoughts on mangos? Let me know in the comments!
When I first began my blog, back during the height of the pandemic in 2020, I don’t think I could have imagined what it would end up like today. Me and my blog have gone through a lot during these three years, and I’m incredibly proud of what it and I have begun today. I wanted to take a moment to think back on everything that this blog has taught me, before I give you the chance to do something on this blog that I’ve never tried before – a Q and A!
I first started my blog as a place to share thoughts about books and connect with a community who loved the same things that I do, during a pandemic that locked me out from most of my social life. I was already pretty active in the goodreads community, and I had a few friends on there who began their own blogs, so I decided to follow suit in the hopes to expand my reading and find a few new friends.
I literally cannot believe what that has expanded into. I’ve found people from around the world who enjoy books as much as I do – people who I can rave or rant about books in comment sections, people who give me book recommendations, and who take recommendations from me. I’ve found a community of people who actually read what I have to say, and my love for books has grown so much because of this.
Fittingly, this post is also the 100th that I have written, so that is also a huge milestone for me! After a very long break where I wondered if I would ever return to blogging, I’m so excited that I’ve actually made it to 100 posts!!!
And so, to thank all of you for bearing with me through the terrible beginning posts, to the long hiatus, to whatever this in-between period is (I can’t promise I’ll keep posting consistently), I’ve decided to do something that I have never done before – a Q and A! Throughout blogging, I’ve kept my actual life fairly hidden, so it’s a little scary to open up and do a Q and A like this. I request that you don’t ask anything that gives away personal information, such as age, location, name, etc. but other than that, feel free to let me know of your questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer them in a later post!
Thanks again to everyone who has stuck with me and my blog through all this. I can’t wait to see what you have to ask me!
It was completely unplanned that I dropped off the face of the blogging world in April of 2022, with no goodbye or anything, but I wanted to come back quickly to talk about my reading over the rest of 2022 and maybe provide a little bit of explanation for vanishing. (By the way, I have kind of forgotten a lot of things about using WordPress and aesthetics and stuff, so if this post is horribly boring and/or messed up, you will have to forgive me).
I remember the end of last year, and reading everyone’s awesome yearly wrap ups and seeing the super cool graphs (the graphs are literally the coolest)! I had never kept track of my reading so closely, but I decided to try it out in 2022 and although some things didn’t come out quite as planned, there were a few things I was pretty happy about. Let’s look at my year!
Honestly, I’m not super happy with how my reading turned out this year. At the same time that I went on an accidental blog hiatus, in April, I also went into a book slump that not only involved me reading very few books, but also meant that I wasn’t logging my books on goodreads much, because I was just staying away from the book world in general. At around September or October, I began to mark books as read again, and attempted to put down any books I’d read over the summer as well, but I’m probably missing some. Regardless, my reading was down tremendously this year. When I started logging books on goodreads in 2020, I read 183 books. In 2021, I read only slightly less, with 157. So 67 books is a huge dip for me, which I’m kind of upset about. Of course, I have to take into account the fact that my 2020 year was almost entirely virtual, and I had quite a bit of online school in 2021 as well, which gave me more time to read, but I’m still sad about my reading this year.
Onto the statistics! (aka the part I have been waiting a year to write about)
(My graphs are kind of messy, as I put all the text on them manually, and I’ve never been a technology/design person, so please forgive me)
Rating:
As usual, I rated most of my books 4 or 3.5 stars (almost all books that I rated 3.5 stars here were rated 4 stars on goodreads). I did rate 5 books 5 stars, which is nice, and I didn’t rate any book below 2.5 stars because I really hate rating books badly, so I usually need to have very strong feelings on a book to give it that rating.
Genre:
This graph made me laugh when I saw it, because there’s just so many different genres! There was a point in my life when I read almost exclusively fantasy, and although fantasy is still excellent, I branched out a lot this year, and I’m really happy with the results! I found a love for realistic fiction/contemporary books, and I also read quite a few historical fiction books as well! I read less sci fi and dystopian this year, which is also something I’m kind of happy about, because I’ve never loved those genres and I’m glad that I’m learning my lessons and reading less genres I dislike! (note: the ‘thriller’ section encompasses thrillers, mystery books, and horror books, and the ‘memoir’ section encompasses both memoirs and nonfiction books).
Age Range:
As expected, I read more YA books than anything else, but I was surprised at the lack of middle grade books I read. Usually I read a fair amount of middle grade, but not this year! And I’m happy about the number of books in the adult category I read, as well – I’ve always found adult books to be slow and more difficult to get through, but I enjoyed several that I read this year!
Type of Book:
This one is not at all a surprise, but I find it funny nonetheless. I…basically only read novels. Part of this is also that I rarely count graphic novels as books that I read because I can read them so fast that I almost feel like I’m ‘cheating’ my reading challenge – but I do really enjoy graphic novels and I’m certain that I have read more than three of them this year. Short story collections and plays, as well as other types of content, are just not things that I am very interested in (the one play that I did read this year was for school, too).
Publication year:
Over half the books I read were from either 2022 or 2021, which is completely unsurprising. If there’s a book I’m interested in that was published two years ago, I’ve probably already read it (that sentence doesn’t make a ton of sense, but whatever). I am interested that my second highest category after 2022 and 2021 was books from before 2016. Now granted, there are a ton of years before 2016, and a ton of books published in those years, but it’s still pretty surprising to be (I think about 4 or 5 of those books, however, were ones I had to read for school).
Format:
Over the height of the COVID-19 quarantine, I read a lot of books on my kindle. So I was pretty surprised when I looked at this graph and the very vast majority of books that I read were physical instead of ebooks. Over this year, I’ve regained my love for reading physical books, either from the library or books I owned, which is pretty interesting to see. I also listened to a few audiobooks during the beginning of the year, but that died out pretty quickly because I’ve just never been a huge fan of audiobooks.
Diversity/Representation
I am not a huge fan of the way that I set up this part of my reading graphs, and I plan to do a little changing things up for next year, but I still think this is pretty cool to see! Out of all the books I read, 77.2% of them had some kind of representation, and more than half the books I read had LGBTQ+ rep! Obviously I hope to keep improving the amount of representation that I read, but I also think it’s especially important to read ownvoices authors, so next year I definitely want to make sure that I make it easier to mark that..
(Special thanks to May@Forever and Everly and her 2021 wrap up who I took a lot of inspiration from for what graphs to include).
Favorite books this year:
Of course I can’t go one post without talking about my favorite books. Loveless and Ophelia After All are established favorites which I read earlier in the year, but I also gained a new favorite which I got at Christmas: One for All by Lillie Lainoff. One for All is a retelling of The Three Musketeers (and I didn’t know anything about The Three Musketeers aside from the fact that it’s a candy bar) following a girl in France at around the 1650s. The girl, Tania de Batz, gets sent to what she believes is a finishing school once her father dies, only to learn that it is actually a training school for female muskateers. Tania has POTS, a chronic illness categorized by near-constant dizziness, and I think that the author (who also has POTS) wrapped it into the story really well – it was always present and never forgotten about, but it also did not define Tania and she had tons of other character traits. I loved the found family in this book (one of my favorite tropes!!) and overall it was just a fantastic story with plenty of action but also some really heartfelt moments. As for Loveless and Ophelia After All, I think I’ve spent enough time talking about them, but you can check out my review of Loveless on my blog here, and you can read my (very short) goodreads review of Ophelia After All here.
Looking Back on my 2022 Reading Goals
At the beginning of 2022, I published a post titled: “Welcome 2022: Reading Plans for the Year,” something that I completely forgot about until I stumbled upon it today. So, how did I do in my 2022 goals and plans?
Read 100 books: Well, that certainly did not occur. My reading this year was significantly worse than it has been in several years, so I only managed to read 67 books, and I think I’m going to be setting my goodreads goal a little lower next year.
I mentioned five books that I wanted to read this year and I’m happy to say that I read four of them! The last one, What We Devour by Linsey Miller, I unfortunately DNFed, but I did enjoy the others!
My anticipated releases section also lived up to my expectations. I loved three of my anticipated releases, but the other two are ones that I haven’t gotten around to yet, and hope to soon.
Where I’ve Been and Where We’re Going From Here
Time to address the elephant in the room: I haven’t posted since April of this year, more than six months ago. As I stated previously, it was completely unplanned that I vanished from the blogging world. I had kept up a consistent schedule of posting once a week until April, but around that time I was running out of posting ideas that I was excited to write, and school and my softball season was taking a lot of my time. Not only that, but I began to realize that I wasn’t enjoying blogging as much anymore. When I would sit down to write a blog post, it felt like more of a chore, something that I needed to get out for my readers and not actually an activity that I thought was fun. When I took a week, and then two, off from blogging, it didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything, and it just lifted one more thing I had to do every weekend off my chest.
Another thing that I realized was that I hated all the formatting and aesthetics of blogging. I was spending so much time making each of my posts look nice, and look uniform, when all I actually wanted to do was write about books. You might be able to tell from this post that I spent less time on the formatting – my section headers aren’t the same color as they used to be, and I’ve added less pictures and linked less things, because I never enjoyed doing that.
So, what’s next? Where am I going from here? I love the book blogging community, I love all the people, and I love reading everyone’s bookish posts. But I don’t know if I love writing those posts myself. So, I can’t tell you if I’m going to come back and post anything else. I think I want to play it by feel, and if one day I open up my computer and decide I want to write another post, then I’ll put one out. Is this likely to happen? Probably not. There were times over the past several months when I would wander onto WordPress to see how everyone is doing, and I would pop into my drafts folder, but I never had the motivation or the yearning to write a new post. Do I want to say that this is the definite end of Books With Wings? Absolutely not. Things change. Maybe I’ll find enjoyment in this once again after a few months. Maybe I’ll never really get back what I once had by posting here, but decide that every once in a while, I’ll come back. If I do come back, my posts will probably look a little different – less aesthetics and formatting, more words. Probably more discussions or random rambles instead of tags and book reviews.
All of this doesn’t mean I want to stop talking to everyone on here, though! I’ve met so many wonderful people through book blogging and I love talking to all of you. But, given that I’ll be on wordpress less, I’ll also probably be responding to comments slower, or not at all (there are five comments sitting in my comments section, waiting to be responded to…if that’s you, I apologize). If you do want to continue talking to me (and I would love to hear from you!) you can use the ‘contact me‘ section of my blog, or message me on goodreads.
Life Update:
So what’ve I been up to in the months that I’ve been gone?
A lot of softball. As I mentioned earlier, softball played a pretty significant part in why I vanished from the blogging world. In the spring, I was playing on both my school team and a town league team, so I was pretty much playing softball every day of the week.
School ended, summer happened, and then school started again. I feel like time has been going by SO fast and I cannot believe I’m already in the next grade and it’s already the end of December.
Over the summer I (kinda) got a job, and I also went on a roadtrip. I worked for exactly 1 week over the summer (whoops). But I’d never gone on a roadtrip before and it was actually very fun! I didn’t expect to enjoy it so much because it was a lot of time in the car (10.5 hours of driving in one day, anyone?) but it was just a cool thing to do!
I would love to hear what everyone’s been up to in the months that I’ve been gone! Please drop a comment so I can hear how you’ve been and what you’ve been up to! (PS: if anyone can tell me how to change the font color in ‘list’ blocks, I would appreciate that greatly. It appears wordpress has undergone some changes in the time I’ve been gone).
We’re just about at the New Year, and I thought that I’d do a post about a few things I want to do–related to books–beginning in 2022. They’re things that I’ve seen on other people’s blogs and wanted to try out, or just things that I think would make my own reading experience much more enjoyable. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
1. Keep better track of my reads.
With the end of the year comes many many year in review book posts, full of beautiful little graphs and charts and other awesome looking graphics. If you read my last post, my five favorite books of 2021, you’ll already have heard this story, but I’ll tell it again. When I first saw these last year, as my first December in blogging approached, I thought they looked so cool and organized and really wanted to do it myself. I made a spread sheet, I put the different categories in, I was all ready to go.
I got exactly four books into that spreadsheet before I gave up.
I’m just not good at keeping up with these things, and that’s definitely something that I’d like to improve in 2022. I’ve thought about it, and while I don’t think that a spreadsheet will be the best way for me to keep track of (given the aforementioned), I think I want to try using a google forms. I’d create a google forms for myself, and then when I finished a book, I’d enter it into the form, which would keep all my data right there and I think would be easier for me to continue with. We’ll see if this approach works, and I guess you all will know by the time the end of 2022 rolls around. Given how fast time has been going by, that really shouldn’t be too far away.
2. Only write reviews when you want to
I feel like when you have a book blog, and when you have goodreads, and basically just when you read a lot and are active in the book community, you feel semi pressured to write reviews. After I finish a book, and I jump on goodreads to mark it as read and rate it, I feel like I need to give more than just a rating, I need to tell people what I actually thought of it. But honestly, writing reviews can be exhausting at times for me. If I’ve read a book and rated it 3 or 4 stars, like I thought it was meh or I enjoyed it but didn’t think it was utterly, totally mind blowing, I don’t want to sit there and review it. Sure, I enjoyed things about it. Or maybe there were some things that I didn’t enjoy. But I just don’t have strong enough opinions about every single book to want to write two or three paragraphs about all of them.
And so one of my resolutions is just that…I shouldn’t. I don’t want to spend time doing something that isn’t enjoyable to me and, honestly, is affecting how I like books, too. When I finish a book, I don’t want to dread having to go over to goodreads just to see that book sitting on my ‘currently reading’ shelf, waiting for me to review it. I’ll review the books I want, and if I don’t want to, I’ll rate them, maybe leave a one sentence review, and other than that…what I thought about the book doesn’t have to be broadcast to the world, does it?
3. DNF more books
Seems like a bit of a weird resolution but honestly…I don’t DNF enough books. I always feel obligated to read through an entire book, I mean if I’ve started it, or if I’ve gotten halfway through, I should finish it!!! What’s the point in reading a book half read! And sometimes, I really do want to find out what happens, not because I’m interested in it but because I want to know if it might get any better. But really, why should I waste time reading books that I’m not enjoying? There’s so many other books out there that I WILL enjoy, and by taking the time to read one book (and slowly, usually, since I’m not going to be as eager to pick it up if I don’t enjoy it), I’m taking away from the time I have to read those other books that I might enjoy more.
4. Follow more blogs
This one’s less of a bookish resolution and more of a blog resolution, but since my blog is a book blog, I guess it fits. I’ve been wanting to do this basically forever, in fact so much that last month I wrote a post and introduced a page all about a way that I’m trying to follow more blogs. But it is in fact still something that I am working towards so I really hope that I’m able to hop out of my shell a little more and find some amazing new people in the bookish blog community in 2022!
What are some of your bookish resolutions for 2022? What did you think of mine? Do we have any in common?
I said that I’d write a post like this when I did my blogiversary post, but then the terror that one calls school started and I got nothing done blogging-wise. By now, I’ve been blogging for an entire year (and a little more) and I honestly can’t believe it. It feels like yesterday that I published my first post but it also feels like I’ve been doing this forever because blogging is such a big part of my life now.
This is a list of reasons that I am so grateful for this platform that I have figured out through my year of blogging
1. I’ve been able to read better books!
I was on Goodreads before I started blogging, and yeah, there’s a lot of books there (surprising everyone, I know). But while I did and still do love goodreads, starting a blog has helped me discover so many more and so many amazing books. I’m able to follow blogs of people who read the same kinds of books as I do, so find more books that are the kind of things that I read, and all in all, it’s easier to discover books through blogs than it is through goodreads!
2. I’ve met so many amazing people!
How could I possibly write this list without mentioning the people? You all, anyone who reads my blog, anyone who has a book blog, are amazing. Just being able to talk books with someone in the comments, freaking out about the same book (there are people who have read the same books as I have, here!!!). To see people leaving comments on my blog after I write posts, just to chat about what I’ve written, it’s nice. I’m gonna be honest, I do love blogging and writing these posts, but I probably wouldn’t have continued this long without all of you. So thank you. So much.
3. I’ve begun paying attention to upcoming releases.
One day, maybe April or May of 2020, I heard of a book via goodreads. And it sounded like a very good book! I wanted to get it immediately. It wasn’t until a month or so later that I realized that book wouldn’t come out until September of that year. I honestly just had no idea about books that were going to be released but weren’t yet, it was very surprising to me that this book was already on goodreads! I didn’t pay attention to these kinds of releases until I made a blog and suddenly people were talking about books that they were looking forwards to, making lists of books that were going to be released in the upcoming year. I was able to learn about books before they were out in the world and see which ones I was looking forward to, and it just added a whole new layer of excitement (and also impatientness) to books!
4. I know how to do so many wordpress blog-type things
I am not tech savvy. Like, at all. I still don’t know how to do several elements in blogging and have begun losing faith that I ever will (I’m pretty sure I’ve been taught how to hide text in the little spoiler thing about 4 times and have never managed to do it in an actual post?). BUT I know a WHOLE lot more about using wordpress, as well as doing things like graphic design, now. Over my year of blogging I’ve slowly been changing what the graphics look like and how many I use (seriously, go back to my first post, you’ll definitely see. Actually, wait, don’t) and I think that they are much better than they were. Also, they actually exist. Much better than they were. WordPress itself is still much of a mystery, but eh. Some things are meant to remain mysterious (I’d really rather this one not being one of them, though).
5. I’ve learned so much! And I have a platform, myself.
Blogging, while amazing for learning about books and making friends, has also taught me a lot about so many important issues that aren’t taught other places and are so necessary to talk about! Plus, I myself have been able to talk about the things that I want more people to know about (other than books. And baseball. Pretty sure you guys don’t want to hear me talk about baseball all the time). In June I posted about why aro/ace spec characters are so important in books and it was just really nice to have a place to talk about things that I care about! I think that a platform for these kinds of things, helping to educate others on things that we don’t usually hear about in every day life, is really important and I’m so glad to be able to use it myself and to read about the things others are saying!
I am so, so thankful and happy for blogging and I can’t wait to see what’s more to come. Thank you all for your unending support and for giving me a place to talk about the things that I love. I honestly couldn’t have done this without you. I can’t wait to see what else the blogging community has to offer and what else I can give you all as well! As always, stay safe, and keep on reading!!!
Hey, everyone! Sorry you haven’t heard from me lately, I’ve been a little bit busy but you should be hearing from me a bit more in the coming days! (key word ‘should) I swear, wrap ups are like the only thing I do anymore. In reality, they’re 2/5 of the things I post, but that’s still a lot. Nearly half. But I am but a small child* with only so much time to blog and I also really like my wrap ups. Clearly. Anyways, let’s get into part one of my wrap up, which, just like last month, will be about posts and updates! (part two coming Sunday) *Relative, but for this case we’ll say I am
~Posts I Enjoyed~
Ritz wrote an amazing review of Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu that just made me love this book all over again (you can find my review here) (while we’re on the topic, is the movie any good? Compared to the book, I mean.)
I posted a few times this month, I feel like I didn’t post as much as I usually did but here we go!
~Monthly Goals~
April Goals:
In free time, do what I want to do (aka, blog if I want or write what I want, don’t do what I feel like I have to do)✅
Drink more water (a constant problem for me)✅❌
Write some more✅
Try to get outside more✅
Be more efficient in homework (granted, this is something that I’ve been doing towards the end of March as well)
I do think that I did better in managing my free time with what I want to do. However, I’m a little worried that this will make my blogging quality go down as I spend more time writing but I really hope that it doesn’t come to this! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep blogging as well. I mean….I drank a little bit more water??? Sorta? I was able to write a lot of my realistic fiction book! I wasn’t too focused on the fantasy WIP I have this month but for now I’m just putting that aside because I haven’t really been excited to write fantasy at the moment whereas I’ve been really pushing through this realistic fiction, which I don’t usually write at ALL!!! (this is probably my first realistic fiction that is more than 25 pages long so far) Going on vacation to the woods really does help you get outside a bit more. Honestly, I have no idea what I meant by ‘be more efficient in homework’ means so I’m just leaving that one blank…if anyone has any ideas whatsoever, you can definitely tell me in the comments.
May goals: (holdup it’s already May next month?)
When you have school stuff, do it first!!! Writing/blogging comes afterwards (not saying I don’t do this already but my schedule is about to get a lot busier)
Drink more water (please?)
Blog a liiiiittle more (be on top of my posts more)
Remember to study (the end of the school year is, amazingly, coming right up!)
~Blogging Updates~
Alright, we have a few updates for all of you…first of all, I’ve reached 200 followers! Thank you all so much for following me and loving my work, if you have anything that you think I could do better for my blog, please tell me in the comments! …okay fine I think that was the only blogging update whoops
~Life Updates~
Well, I think we can all guess one thing I’ve been doing…of course Shadow and Bone came out this month so I’m watching that! I haven’t finished it yet, unfortunately, but it’s amazing so far and if you’ve watched some/all of it, I’d love to have a discussion in the comments!
Term 3 (out of four) ended at my school so now we’re in the last term already whaaat.
It’s April and April means baseball! MLB’s season started on April 1st and since then we’ve had a WHOLE lot of crazy things. I won’t bore you all with a bunch of baseball facts (even though they’re definitely not boring) but it’s been really exciting to see the Dodgers-Padres rival heat up, the A’s crazy win streak and Shohei Ohtani being an amazing two-way player, among other things. If you like baseball, talk to me in the comments I’d love to chat some more games with you!
I wrote some more. I know I already said this earlier, but I’m just super happy I was able to write more realistic fiction. It really is my first time trying out realistic fiction for more than a few pages and I’m super excited to keep writing this (but a little scared I’ll run out of things to say…how does someone make a person’s normal life interesting?)
It’s softball season! aka Phoenix suddenly plays softball every day of the week because she’s crazy enough to try out for her school team (plus is on another team already)
That’s it for today’s wrap up! How was your April? Have you written anything interesting, and what do you think about baseball? Please chat with me in the comments! As always, thank you so much for stopping by! Please, stay safe and keep on reading!
Welcome back to the second part of my monthly wrap up! In case you missed it, I’ve decided to break up my wrap ups into two parts–I published the first part of my wrap up last Sunday and you can find it here. While the first part covered my reading month, here I’m covering everything else–that is, posts I enjoyed, goals for next month and more. I hope you enjoy!
~Posts I enjoyed~
Both April @Booked Till Midnight and Saniya @Sunnyside Reviews made lists of Valentines Day book recommendations (April’s post)(Saniya’s post)
I posted 4 times in February, including my February wrap up!
~Monthly Goals~
February goals:
Spend more time writing ✅
Go on more walks ❌
Study more for test (I’m so bad at studying…) ❌
Follow at least 2 more blogs (I’m always looking for awesome new blogs!) ✅
Reach 130 followers ✅
March goals:
Study more for tests
Go for more walks
Read the books that I own (instead of ignoring them and just reading books I get from the library)
STOP LOOKING AT STATS SO MUCH
Reach at least chapter 10 in writing my book
~Blogging updates~
Well, I don’t have many blogging updates for you this month but this is my six-month blogoversary. I know that that’s not as big a deal as one year but I can’t believe that it’s already been six months! I’ve met so many amazing people and learned so much in this time that I just cannot believe it! So thank you all for sticking with my blog and just sending so much love my way.
I also wanted to thank everyone who voted in the polls that I set up in last month’s wrap up in which I asked your opinion on…a number of things! I definitely took your opinions into consideration and while I haven’t been able to post exactly what you guys wanted, I’m definitely trying.
Last but not least, I did my first joint post with April @Booked Till Midnight, in which we discussed retellings! It was a super fun experience and I’m really happy with the way our posts turned out! We posted half the content we discussed on my blog and the other half on hers and you can find my post here and hers here. If you haven’t already seen them, please go check them out!
~Life Updates~
I watched Julie and the Phantoms again because apparently I do this every month now. Who knows if I’ll get my rewatching in for March. It’s just so good though!!! (If you’ve watched it, ask me in the comments about my Ghost Queen theory. It’s ridiculous and really just a joke I made up but actually could make sense).
I started watching The Flash with my friends. It’s actually pretty good so far, I’m about 15 or so episodes in.
I managed to write some more! I’ve now written 2 1/2 chapters of the story that I shared the first few sentences of in my January Wrap-up (find it here). I won’t be sharing any more story with you guys but I think that the book is going pretty well so far!
Other than that, well, school is school and books are books and life’s been pretty much meh this month.
What posts did you enjoy from me or someone else? What are some of your goals for the next month? Have you watched Julie and the Phantoms or the Flash? Drop a comment below, I’d love to hear from you! As always, thank you so much for stopping by. Stay safe and keep on reading!
Books with Wings 