Sparkling Letters Monthly Recap: December 2016 + Highlights of the Year

Hello everyone! ♥

I know I said this every month but this time I seriously CAN’T BELIEVE December is almost over! 2016 is almost over! It’s true that as we get older time started to fly more quickly 🙈😂 at first I couldn’t decide what to do with this month recap, like should I do a usual monthly recap? Or a yearly recap? I was afraid of being repetitive if I do yearly recap, considering that I already do recaps for every month. So here we are, on my usual recap, but with some additional highlights of the year! ♥

Let’s get started with this month!

• I turned 22 like Taylor Swift’s song! ♥ my birthday started off a bit rocky because this is my first birthday back home. The last four years I was away on campus and usually celebrated with my friends. But this year… well, most of my close friends don’t live around and my parents were busy working, but it actually ended up being a great one! 😀 some of my friends came over, we had cake, I got a lot of books 😛
• P.S. my birthday giveaway is over and I will announce the winner tonight (Western Indonesia Time) ♥
• Just like I said above, most of my friends from uni lived away from me so I don’t get out much lately. This month I hung out with a lot of them and it was great to be back with friends!
• We lost one of our kitten and it’s Kimba, my favorite of all of them 💔 it really broke my heart because I really love her! She’s so cute and adorable and she loves to play with her litter mates. Like even when the others are asleep she always tried to wake them up to get them to play with her. She also eats so much and often fights the others when they try to eat her share 😂 my family has searched the neighborhood to no luck and it made me really sad because I don’t know what happened to her. Did she wander around and got lost? Did someone kidnap her? Did she get run over by car? I do hope someone took her, even if it’s such a shitty & mean thing to do, but at least she’ll be taken care of. If she’s lost I don’t know how (or if) she’ll be able to find foods because I always fed her and the mother cat still breastfed her. I’m worried she’s not gonna survive on her own 😭
• My family and I went on a holiday road trip to my dad’s hometown and the cities around it. We visited a lot of places and met up with a lot of our relatives. It was fun but super exhausting! P.S. my aunt there owns a bakery so we were always eating baked goods over there! 😛

Jpeg

I didn’t realize this before I’m writing this post but it turned out I only read 7 books this month! It’s so few compared to the 18 books I read back in November 😭 buuut I’m not sad or disappointed or even in a slump because I used my time for something equally exciting! I will reveal what this is at the beginning of 2017 ♥ for now let’s take a look at the books I did read!

• The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon (2.5/5). I know a lot of you loved it but to me this book definitely didn’t live up to its hype. There were so many things that didn’t work for me. Full review here.
• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart (4/5). This is suuuch a unique book with unique characters and unpredictable plot twist! Full review here.
• Heartless by Marissa Meyer (3.5/5). I still enjoyed it, but I definitely expected more from Marissa Meyer. Heartless has some great qualities, but fell short because of its unconvincing romance. Full review here.
• The Lost & Found by Katrina Leno (4/5). This book was cute and heartwarming and awkward and simply likable! It’s also so underrated so go read it people! 😛
• I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios (5/5). I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH! It’s so good it has amazing characters, FEELS, military story, slow burn romance, and incredible friendship!! You might have seen me raving about this book on twitter and instagram but are you wondering why I still haven’t posted my review??! Well… it’s actually silly. I read it on ebook but loved it so much and decided to order the paperback. It hasn’t arrived yet. You know I always put pictures of the books on my review right? So… yeah, that’s why I’m putting my review on hold until the book arrives 😂😂
• Simon VS the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (4/5). This book was wayyy more adorable than I expected! It’s the perfect book for when you’re in the mood for something light, fluffy, and downright adorable ♥
• Under Rose-Tainted Skies by Louis Gornall (3/5). I got lucky enough to get the ARC and despite my 3-stars rating, I actually really enjoyed it! This book gave an insight to our MC’s (who has OCD & agoraphobia) complicated thought process.

December Haul

I have to admit that I went overboard with this month haul and bought… 14 books 🙈 it’s A LOT MORE than I usually buy each month! But in my defense, 1) it is my birthday month which means I got present money from my family that I spent on books and put the rest on my savings and 2) December 12 was a national online shopping day in Indonesia and I got 7 local books for ONLY Rp 139k. It’s like $10 for 7 books 

But still, I’m starting to feel guilty and I promised myself not to order any new book until I read at least half of these! 😂 obviously we’re not counting the books that are currently on their way!

The first half of December was a great blogging month for me! I had the time and the mood to write lots of posts and visit other blogs. Buuuut the second half was not so great. I drafted my posts in advance so I didn’t really have problems with my posts, but I was distracted and busy doing other things I ended up falling so behind on replying comments! I also didn’t blog hop enough this month because I was overwhelmed by the amount of blogs I follow and the amount of posts I wanted to read. I promise to do better next month! 😀

My favorite posts this month :

• Book Recommendations for the Notorious Shipper Out There!
• 3 Things I Learned from Reading Books about Mental Illness
• The Secrets of Writing a Negative and Unpopular Review

My most popular posts this month :

• Is Bookstagram Community Becoming More and More Competitive Each Day?
• The Secrets of Writing a Negative and Unpopular Review
• Can’t 2017 Come Faster? Because I NEED to Read These Most Anticipated Books!

All around the blogosphere ♥ 

• Reg @ She Latitude talked about how to find new blogs to follow 
• Emily @ Rose Read asked us book bloggers this question : are we too nice? She also said that post was a bit inspired by my own post about the negative review 😛
• Melissa @ Book Nerd Momo told us what she does when in a reading slump
• Cait @ Paper Fury shared 10 reasons she chooses a book and 8 types of book reviewers. There’s also a quiz to see which kind of reviewer you are and it is surprisingly accurate! 😛
• Fadwa @ Word Wonders talked about reading books at the wrong time of our lives and it was such a great food for thought
• Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight shared her book hoarder survival guide complete with amazing charts and talked about the effects of becoming a book person

This month I also experienced a MAJOR setback on bookstagram. I’m not talking about stats here, it’s about me losing my momentum. I am so long overdue for bookstagram photo session. I also didn’t join any challenge this month and turned out I didn’t do well without challenge! I quickly ran out of ideas on what to post hahaha that’s why I’m planning to join the #BookishRainbow17 next month! ♥

2016 seemed to be disappointing for most people, but not to me. I mean, yes, globally speaking, horrible things happened this year. But I personally experienced A LOT of amazing things this year! I’m going to list down 5 of the best things that happened to me this year ♥ P.S. if you want a detailed recap of what I’ve been up to this year you could read all my monthly recaps 😛

1. I got a two-months internship as a Human Resource Generalist at one of the biggest news portal in Indonesia. It was a wonderful experience!
2. I started this blog on March! It was during my internship period. I lived away (again) from home and campus and there was no tv or books on my place. One night I was bored and decided to sign up on wordpress and the rest is history. I’m so glad and thankful for that spur of the moment decision 😛
3. I graduated from university and got my degree as a Bachelor of Psychology ♥ after 3.5 years of studying and a year of working on my thesis, it was a very satisfying achievement.
4. I’m getting back on the writing game. It was also during my internship period! I just wrote when I was bored and that’s that. I finished a lot of short stories and one of them was published 😀 apparently boredom turned me into a productive individual 😂
5. I met A LOT of amazing people! Both in real life and in the blogging world and that’s just one of the best thing ever ♥

Since it’s already the last day of the year, let me just say this : HAPPY NEW YEAR  I’m not the type of person who usually makes new year’s resolution but I do hope that 2017 will be an even better year for all of us, both reading and non-reading wise! 😀

Alrighttt so that’s my December & 2016 recap friends! How about yours? Anything interesting? Are you happy with 2016 and are you ready to leave it? Link me to your own recaps or just tell me! Would love to hear your thoughts! ♥♥

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