2019 Year in Review

My wife, Brooke, decided to write a 2019 recap after seeing her Year in Books on Goodreads. I liked how hers turned out (read it here) as a review of our first year blogging. So, I decided to write one of my own!

At the beginning of the year, I started to get serious about the idea of starting a blog. As a way to get back into reading, I decided on a book blog and convinced Brooke to do it with me as something fun to do together. While it has certainly been fun, it’s also been a lot more work than I anticipated. We spent most of February through May just getting the site set up and formatted with the first few articles. Since going live in May, we’ve expanded to over 55 articles!

Goals

I think setting goals is important and writing them down is a good idea to help hold yourself accountable. Making them public, such as on a blog or social media, takes this idea even further. I didn’t set many “official” goals for this year but want to going forward.

Reading Goals

In 2019, I read 16 books! My goal was only 12 books, but I’m somewhat surprised I met it with all the time spent developing the blog alongside working full-time. Unfortunately, I’ve only posted reviews for 6 of these so far. However, I do have notes and articles started for most of them that I’ll hopefully complete soon.

For 2020, I hope to read 26 books, one every two weeks! I also want to do a better job of completing my reviews and posting right after reading.

Blogging Goals

We started the blog in 2019 but didn’t set many firm goals. In general, I wanted to:

• Get the blog running ✅
• Read more ✅
• Share my favorite books and quotes with the world ▶️
• Make money blogging to pay for our reading hobby and possibly become a side-income ❌

For 2020, I’d like to:

• Continue posting 1-2 quality articles each week, bringing my total to over 100 by the end of the year!
  • My 2019 article total: 41
• Grow blog traffic to >1,000 monthly active users!
  • 2019 peak monthly active users: 167
• Make >$500 blogging!
  • 2019 blog earnings: $0.35
    • We only joined the Amazon Affiliate program a few months ago so I plan to learn a lot in this area as we grow the blog in 2020! Any tips or ideas are appreciated!
• Continue learning about blogging to keep improving Quill Quotes!

2019 Recap

Here, I’ll highlight some of my most and least favorite things from 2019. I read a lot of good books and experienced many firsts with blogging!

Favorite Book

Most of my 5-star books this year were re-reads, but my favorite new read was The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. I’ve yet to complete my review for this one, but I loved the sci-fi adventure of Alvin in the distant-future city of Diaspar. Often considered one of Clarke’s best novels, if you’re a sci-fi fan and haven’t read this one, you should!

Favorited Re-Read

My favorite re-read of 2019 is definitely Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, seeing as it’s my all-time favorite book. Ender’s military training begins at a young age in Battle School as Earth’s last hope to command humanity’s starship fleet against the alien buggers. I’ve read it at least 3 or 4 times and loved it every time! This was also my first book review for the blog!

Favorite Audiobook

I prefer reading and don’t listen to many audiobooks. However, I did listen to and enjoy Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury this year. The dystopian future where books are illegal and fireman find and burn them rather than preventing fires is quite thought-provoking.

Least Favorite Book

My least favorite book of 2019 was The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Although I found the concept of a world where the Allies lost World War II very interesting, I don’t think the book delivered on the potential. Read my full review here. While I didn’t like the book, I will say the show on Amazon Prime is very good so far (I just finished watching season 3)!

Favorite Quote

It’s hard to pick a single favorite from all the quotes I read and enjoyed this year. But, if I had to choose one, it’d probably be the Wisdom quote from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. This book was probably also my second-favorite re-read of the year! Read my full Siddhartha review for more on this quote!

Favorite Part of Blogging

Along with reading, my favorite part of blogging has been learning about how the internet works and formatting our site. I still have a lot to learn, but getting our blog and email newsletter set up has been a fun challenge. Starting to see our posts show up in search engine results is also pretty cool!

Least Favorite Part of Blogging

In general, I’ve enjoyed blogging but it does take a lot of time. My least favorite part of blogging is that there’s always something to work on. You can always be writing another article, researching quotes or blog improvements, reading, etc. This was one of my biggest complaints in college as well, whereas, for the most part, work can be forgotten when you go home.

Part of this, I think, is related to my struggle to balance reading and book articles with the time required for the Week in Quotes series. While learning more about history has been fun, the articles take a lot more time and research than I expected. I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether you enjoy the weekly quotes or would prefer to see more book reviews and guides instead?

Favorite 2019 Blog Post

My favorite post from this year is Why Read Fiction? – To Learn About Yourself. I really like this one because I truly believe you learn a lot about yourself by reading and love the quote that inspired the article.

2019 Year in Review: Final Thoughts

I probably read the most this year since middle school and the blog has been a big part of that! Although I do write some for work, the blog has also given me a lot more chances to write. I think I’ve always been a decent writer, but writing for myself and the blog has given me a chance to expand on this.

I’ve also noticed that reviewing the books I read helps me to consider them more deeply. I never liked this in school, maybe because you had to see the same themes the “experts” did, but enjoy it now. Do you review the books you read? What was your favorite this year?

If you’ve enjoyed Quill Quotes this year, we’d love to hear feedback from you to continue improving and bring you more great content! Do you have a favorite post or category you enjoy?

If you’re not already, please follow us to see what 2020 holds!