2020 Year in Review

While 2020 was mostly bad, my blogging life was pretty exciting. Not only was I able to connect with more mutuals, I collabed with some of my favorite content creators, and get this, I was able to interact with some of my favorite authors (squeal). In this regard, 2020 wasn't all bad, maybe I should give the year a 1.5 star instead. 😒 So let's take a look back at my 2020 because 2021 I have questions.  

Social Media 

Do you see what I see? Yes, that's right across platforms I've had a huge bump in followers. I am so thankful that the book community gave me a space to gush about books. And since there's more people to listen to me, you can expect that I will not shut up! Yep more book talk from me! 

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Collaborations 

When book people find each other it's always a good time. I love just shooting the sh*t with my people. I love hearing what they are reading and loving (or maybe not loving). 

• Bashment Book Club - A Caribbean book club check out the playlist for all of our live discussions. 
• Wind Down Wednesday with Life is a Page Turn -  India hosts a guest every Wednesday to talk about bookish things here's the video when I visited her channel. 
• Left on Read - I discussed Part 1 of Caste with Jourdan here's the video.
• The Swoon Awards -  A romance specific reader awards. For more information about the The Swoon Awards check out the website. 
• Shelf Love Podcast - I spent some time talking with Andrea about the Swoon Awards and shared my favorite 2020 reads. Here's the link to the episode. 

**It should go without saying that you should subscribe and follow these content creators, if you aren't currently.

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Author Interviews

Who knew I would have the courage to reach out to authors and say hey I would love to work with you. And in return I not only get a response back but agree to the interview. Can we say WOWWWWW! I'm so thankful for the interviews this year and I hope to continue to work with authors in the future. Yes, fangirled the opportunity because why not. Here are the links to the interviews-

• Interview with Kat Jackson - Check out the blog post here.
• AMA with Alyssa Cole - Here's the link to watch the full interview.
• *Blog Tour with Denise Williams - Check out the blog post here.

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Reading stats 

Let's talk about this year reading status. Here's the breakdown:

• 151 books read- 
• This translates to 32,011 pages read 
• An average book lengths is approximately 212- the longest book at 539 pages and the shortest at 53 pages)
• 80% of the books I read were written by authors of color and 92% by women 🤷🏾
• Most read genre ROMANCE (see further breakdown below)
• Average rating 3.95

So no one and I mean no one will be surprised by my reading by genre breakdown. Overall, I think I'm happy with how I spent my reading time. Check out my 2021 Goals blog post for changes I plan to make in reading priorities. 

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Other goals

Not too shabby right? It finally feels like I have a good footing on how/what my blog should be. With that being said, I made minor changes to the look of the blog so it reflects my aesthetic- clean and simple. I made the change earlier in December because I felt I didn't need to wait for the new year. So there you go, an updated refreshed look to close out 2020. Here are a few more things as I looked back at my notes- 

• I wanted to track my spending and let's be honest that went out the window and I treated myself like everyday was my birthday. I will take a look at my spending for 2021 and maybe consider putting myself on a budget. That's a big maybe. 💭
• I brought back G.R.U. (Gift, Read, or Unhaul) but couldn't focus on it so I didn't do much with the challenge. I'm learning that any structured reading is a NO for me. So we are going to quietly sunset this self-imposed challenge.
• Reading series, girl I don't even know what I was thinking. I had eight series on the list (I kept changing my mind) and I only finished 2. Seriously what was I thinking? I don't love series because I want to read at my own leisure but I gave it a good college try. I will take the next few weeks to consider if I want to try adding reading a series again. Again maybe, because I want to have the freedom in 2021. What I'm trying to say is we will see if I pick up any series! 
• As you can see from above I really enjoyed collaborations so I'm going to keep trying to forge relationships in order to do more collabs moving forward. 

I think that's it for now. I'm really thankful to have at least one area of my life not implode and I look forward to continued growth and friendships next year.

Happy New Year!