November marks our one year anniversary of the official launch of Umbra Ex Libris! This year has been a great learning experience for all of us. We still have a lot to learn and much more to write about. We have enjoyed every second of it. Thank you to our dedicated readers and to those who randomly stumbled upon our page. We greatly appreciate all of your support. This post will take a look at our year in review and the years to come, for all who are interested.
While our goal is two blog posts a week, sometimes life gets in the way. However, this year alone we managed to write 74 posts. This next year we are going to try and do even better. Consistency is hard sometimes, but we promise to do our best to deliver posts you’ll love. With what we know now, I can guarantee this year will be a great year!
Top Posts
Speaking of posts, you might wonder which ones are our most popular. We have two posts that more people read than any other. The first post is one I wrote. My blog post on the Similarities of Percy Jackson and The Odyssey is our number one post. I can’t be certain why, but I like to think I helped some middle schoolers write an essay, or maybe other people noticed some similarities and wanted to compare. Either way, I am thrilled you all enjoyed it.
Roxy’s top post is actually a book review. People seemed to enjoy her book review on In the Miso Soup. This one I have no idea why it is so popular. Maybe people like horror stories set in Japan? Let us know why you enjoyed this post.
Our Favorites
Now on to our favorite posts we’ve written. First, we have my favorite post that I wrote is 10 Video Games Guaranteed to Inspire Creativity. This one came out almost a year ago. I enjoy video games as a hobby, so when I get to write about something I love, it makes it that much better. I remember how much fun I had taking the perfect photos for that post. I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of finding the perfect filter and the perfect spot in each game to take a photo.
Roxy’s favorite is tied between two. Recently, we wrote short stories to post. She gave us the prompt to try and write a spooky story for Halloween. In the typical way our brains jumped in two different directions. I wanted to write about a wizard, while she chose to write a story about a boy and his grandfather. She said she had a blast making up her own story to share with the world. Go check out The Bend: A Short Story! Her other favorite post she wrote was a Plant Guide to Classic Literature. For the same reason I enjoy writing about video games. Roxy enjoys writing about plants. It’s one of her favorite hobbies. This year we even had a semi successful garden. Her succulents are still thriving.
Marissa wrote two blogs of her own recently, and we are thrilled to have her not just as our social media coordinator but as an author as well! Marissa’s favorite post is her very first one. She wrote a book review on Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. It holds a special place in her heart because it was her very first blog post for us which is a huge deal. Her writing style is very unique and all her own. The other reason she enjoyed that post is she absolutely loved the book she read. It even inspired her to write a review on it for Umbra Ex Libris.
Our Reads
Now some updates on us. In the past year, Roxy has read over 30 books. Her goal this year was 50, but sometimes life gets in the way. Who knows though, maybe she’ll pull it off. What do you think? I, on the other hand, have read around 25 books. My goal was slightly over Roxy’s with one book a week. However, that didn’t happen. How many books do you think I’ll read by the end of 2023?
For our favorite and least favorite reads, first we have Roxy. Her favorite read of this blogging year was The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. Her least favorite was Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. However, she stills willing to read her other books for second try. My favorite read was Three Assassins by Kotaro Isaka. Least favorite was The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, but I’m still eager to read the next in the series. Lastly, Marissa’s favorite read this year was The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean. Her least favorite was Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. If you’d like to check out some of the reviews, come check out our Book Review tab!
Our Updates
This month (November 2023) we are going to update a couple things on our homepage so make sure to keep an eye out for those changes. We are going to add more post categories to the front page to make finding your favorite posts easier. We also plan on updating our about us page as it is now a little outdated. Lastly, we plan on editing some older posts with new information and making sure our social media is listed so you can easily follow us to see what we are reading and keep current about us.
Also, look out for some of our Instagram reels and possibly TikToks. We have some fun ideas we want to try and share. Hopefully we can get some more followers and our blog across to more people! We are super looking forward to doing that with the help of our wonderful social media manager, Marissa.
Later this year, we also plan to add an emailing list so you can subscribe to Umbra to make sure you never miss our latest news or post. Along with that, we are going to start adding our book reviews to Goodreads. This means going back and adding the ones we have already reviewed, which is a good amount of work. Make sure to follow us there as well to keep track of the books we’ve read along with the books we want to read. Lots of fun things are coming, along with more work for us to enjoy. We hope you enjoy all the new stuff coming. Thank you to all our readers, family and friends for supporting us. We hope you continue coming back to us this wonderful new year!
As always, happy reading!