Recap 2012

It’s here: 2012′s final post! In which I evaluate how I did on my bookish resolutions and touch upon some of the highlights of my blogging year. I’d kept my resolutions somewhat easy, as I wanted to take into account that I wasn’t sure what life would be like with to small kids. So what exactly were my bookish resolutions this year?

1. Get caught up on my backlog
2. Read 100 books
3. Dent the TBR-pile
4. Read more historical fiction, YA and SF
5. Comment more on the blogs I follow

So taking them one at the time, how did I do?

1. Well, I did very well on this one, especially since Cat decided to come late and I had lots of time to get all the posts written, so this is a check mark!
2. Another check mark! I actually read 114 books, so I had a bit of a margin even.
3. Yeah, this was a total and utter fail! When I wrote this year’s resolution post I has 121 books on my TBR-pile. Currently I have 176 books on my TBR-pile and one I just started. And that is despite the fact that I read 114 books this year. I think the books must be procreating in the back of the bookcase or something. But I shouldn’t complain as I wouldn’t want to miss any of them.
4. This is a two-thirds complete check mark. In hard numbers I read more historical fiction, SF and YA – 7, 9, and 18 versus 20, 13, and 19 – but if you crunch the numbers into percentages – 7.5%, 10.6%, and 19.3% versus 17.5%, 13.1 %, and 16.6% – while I did read more historical fiction and SF, but I actually read less YA. So not quite complete but I’m still calling it a win.
5. This was mostly a fail. I started out well and I tried to keep up with it, but I’ve noticed in the past year that the first thing to go when I’m in a time crunch is keeping up with reading all the blogs I follow and commenting is pretty much a no go. So I didn’t do at all well on this one and I’m keeping this around for next year, to try and make commenting a habit.

Overall, I’d say I did pretty well. So those were my resolutions, on to some bloggy highlights:

1. Getting my own domain and moving to WordPress
A Fantastical Librarian grew up and got its own place! In October I said goodbye to Blogger and moved the blog to WordPress. I’d never thought I’d ever get my own domain, but then I’d never thought I’d keep on with this blog for going on two and a half years. My blog baby is all grown up!

2. My Blogger Query feature doing so well
During my pregnancy I’d figured that when Cat got here I wouldn’t be able to keep up with my three posts a week schedule as easily as before if I didn’t have a fixed feature for one of them. I started breaking my head and was inspired by a series of interviews on Mark Lawrence’s blog to start up my Blogger Query feature. I love how many great responses this has had. People were so gracious in agreeing to be interviewed and came up with some amazing answers to my questions. And readers seemed to enjoy it as well, so I was really proud of this one.

3. Taking over the Jo Fletcher blog for a week
I was really excited to be able to take over the Jo Fletcher blog for a week. It was great fun to do and I was surprised that I managed to pull the posts together in such a short time. Plus one of the posts got my dad misty-eyed, which I hadn’t expected!

4. Guest blogging at various places.
Apart from the Jo Fletcher blog I also guest blogged over at Civilian Reader, The Speculative Scotsman, Bookworm Blues and SF Signal. I loved being able to contribute to these blogs and perhaps introducing myself to new readers and have them take a look over here on the blog. Not to mention the fact that I felt very honoured to be asked for a guest post!

That was my blogging 2012. I hope your year has been wonderful. Did you manage to keep all of your resolutions? Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for my resolutions for 2013!