December was…Decembering. It started out rough for me, but got better as the month went on. I sort of stepped back a little from blogging, but mainly just because I felt busy, so it fell to the wayside a bit. While my reading took a bit of a hit, I still managed to post four reviews. As you’ll see in my December 2025 Book Blog Wrap-Up, I also did some fun non-bookish things. 🙂
Book Reviews
I posted four book reviews in December. From earliest to latest they are:
- The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch
- The Roommate Risk by Talia Hibbert
- Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
- The Thorns Remain by JJA Harwood
Blog Statistics
Every month I share some statistics from Google Analytics because I think it helps put expectations into perspective for other micro-bloggers like me who are out there. These statistics are from Google Analytics 4.
My top five posts for total page views are (as of December 30):
- Arthurian Retellings Reading List: 530 views
- STEMinist Romance Books: 359 views
- Dungeons and Dragons Romance Books: 267 views
- December 2025 Book Releases: 156 views
- Book Review: Gild by Raven Kennedy: 137 views
My December 2025 views were not great relative to past months. I had ~5,000 views, down ~3,000 views from last month. I’m assuming some of this is because of the holiday busy-ness, though I didn’t see that steep of a drop last December. I think the bulk of this drop in views can be attributed to Google’s latest Core update, which was earlier this month. I’ve complained about it before and I’ll complain about it again: those updates always hurt my SEO and it takes months to recover from it.
Anyway, in positive news, I gained three more followers and now sit at 268. Welcome, all!
#BeattheBacklog
I finished three books I had on my TBR prior to 2025. Those books are SO THIS IS EVER AFTER by F.T. Lukens, IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD by Genki Kawamura, and THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL-SIRAFI by Shannon Chakraborty. The first book is one I have a physical copy of and which I will be offloading. So that’s good news for my overburdened bookshelves!
Other Bookish Items
I finished 8 books in December:
- SO THIS IS EVER AFTER by F.T. Lukens
- GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN by Talia Hibbert (audiobook)
- THE BAKERY DRAGON by Devin Elle Kurtz
- THE BAKERY DRAGON AND THE FAIRY CAKE by Devin Elle Kurtz
- SECRETS OF THE PURPLE PEARL by Kate McKinnon (audiobook)
- THE EVERLASTING by Alix E. Harrow
- IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD by Genki Kawamura (audiobook)
- THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL-SIRAFI by Shannon Chakraborty
We did a small business crawl last Saturday and discovered a used book cellar in a historic building. I walked away with two embroidery and one crochet book. I was pretty happy with that since I’d like to learn at least one of those skills in 2026.
Other Media Wrap-Up
ELF: A Christmas classic…always love watching this.
THAT CHRISTMAS: This is a newer Christmas movie that we found on Netflix. It’s aimed toward kids, but I enjoyed watching it as an adult. I’m feeling too lazy to try and summarize it, so here’s a link to IMDB. Bill Nighy, Fiona Shaw, and Jodie Whittaker are some of the voice actors.
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING: I feel this needs no words. Epic, as always. We like to do a rewatch of the trilogy during the winter time.
Non-Bookish Items
I challenged myself around mid-December to do some form of (exercise) movement every single day. It’s a good thing I did because I didn’t realize my dance studio closes for two weeks at the end of the year. I’ve held myself pretty well to this challenge with the exception of three days: travel day to Boston, a day where I didn’t feel well, and Christmas Day.
We went to Boston to visit family the weekend before Christmas. It was really nice. We saw the Boston Ballet’s The Nutcracker and it was amazing. The building is stunning. I didn’t know there’s an “old world” gold and red theatre house on the east coast, much less the U.S. So I was thrilled when I walked into the theatre. We also tried to go to the Snowport Christmas market, but that was a fail. We arrived 40 minutes after they opened and it was already at capacity. But that didn’t stop some people from going under the roping and sneaking in…security didn’t even care, which was surprising given the murder of an MIT professor in nearby Brookline.
As I mentioned earlier, we did a small business crawl last Saturday. It was a lot of fun and we stopped into a few places that were new to us. One of those places was a zero waste store, which made me happy because I try to minimize plastic use where I can. I found some beautiful Christmas linen napkins at a home goods store at half price, which was great because linen is expensive. We got Cornish pasties for lunch and got a box of chocolates afterward at our local chocolate shop. And even though I’m on a book buying ban, we stopped in to the bookstore there. While I didn’t get any books, I found some cute felted ornaments on sale, a LOTR-inspired candle, store-branded coffee blended by the coffeeshop next door, and a Gingiber tea towel I’d actually been eyeing online. So it was a super successful small business crawl!
Christmas markets in the US suddenly seem to be all the rage. I swear I didnt even know about them until this year.
Ok, pushed the button too fast. Anyway, I’m sorry you didn’t get into the market. I’m going to try next year to find one in my area.
It’s ok, we found other things to do instead of the Christmas market. Yea, they do seem to be popping up more and more, which I think is great because I love the idea (though so far I haven’t been to one here in the US that’s as good as the ones in Europe).
Well done for sticking to your exercise goal. It is hard to motivate yourself in the winter I think. I love your small business crawl and it sounds like you found some lovely things.
Happy New Year XX
Thank you! You’re right–it is hard to motivate myself in the winter to workout…honestly, it is any time, but it’s harder in the winter.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Starling House, but I still want to read The Everlasting! Stumbling across a used book cellar sounds like fun. New follower here! I hope you have a Happy New Year!
Lindsi @ Do You Dog-ear?
Hi Lindsi, welcome and thanks for following along! I still haven’t read STARLING HOUSE, largely because I think it’s a more gothic-toned book and I usually don’t get along with those. But I own it so I should give it a whirl.
I look forward to your thoughts if you do decide to read it. 🙂
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you as well! 🙂
Fantastic month!! I hope you have a great New Year and fabulous January!! <3
Thank you, you too!
Happy New Year! My family watched THAT CHRISTMAS last year – agree that it was fun even with no kids in my family, haha. We have a newer tradition of watching KLAUS every year, which we’ve done since it was released.
Yay for watching “kids” movies! There really are a lot of good kids movies. We watched KLAUS a while ago…I don’t remember much of it except that I liked it.