Two Years of Blogging

April 6th marks The Critiquing Critica's birthday, and today, this blog is two years old. I'm quite happy with where this blog is today, and I feel as though it can only grow from here. I love what I have built here and am so happy to have fifteen followers! Seriously - thank you all so much for taking the time out of your day to read my blog!

First of all, this blog has gotten quite a few make-overs, especially within this year. Thanks to my best friend Nickster, I think I've found the perfect look for my blog. With this new look, The Critiquing Critica is available to be viewed from mobile phones without looking too enlarged. Plus, I've added some different pages to my blog, including 'Critica's Picks,' which gives a list of my favorite books, music, film scores, and movies. To the right of my blog, underneath the About Me blurb, archive, and the Currently Reading blurb, lies a list of my newest favorite songs.

In the past year, I have started to find myself as a reviewer and a blogger. Although I care so much about my readers, this blog must be done in my own way for me to be happy as well. I plan posts all the time, I constantly write down blog ideas, and even strategically plan when they'll be posted so they're spread out nicely. Personally, I think consistence is somewhat important. I know I'd rather read a blog that posts once every couple of weeks rather that see fifty posts in one week without anymore posts within the month. Of course, everyone's different. I know that a lot of people would rather see more posts per month, even per week. But, I will not make a commitment to post every day or every week. Once a month or so makes me happy, primarily because I don't see this blog as a job. It seems that other people see blogging as a job, but I beg to differ. I see it as a hobby. However, there are a lot of job-blogs that are probably much better than mine, but that's not really a priority. As long as someone out there reads something I write here, I'm happy, and I hope that my dear readers can be happy with that, too. I honestly care so much about my readers, but like I said, I need to do this my way. That's what makes it my blog.

From the beginning, I saw myself as a book blogger since I reviewed more books than anything. But let's face it: I'm not a book blogger. The only thing book blogger-ish about this blog is the fact that it's in the YA Book Blog Directory because books happen to be reviewed here. Other than that, The Critiquing Critica doesn't seem to fit in with that blog genre, if you will. From this day forward, it is to be simply called a review blog, because that's what it really is. My reviews extended to music and movies as well, and according to my stats, more people look at my music reviews than anything else. This is somewhat evident in my top ten popular post list, as six of the ten are music related:

1. Favorite Voices
2. House of Night, Books 1-6 by: P.C. Cast + Kristin Cast
3. 'Salem's Lot | by: Stephen King
4. Look what I made!
5. End of 2010 Book Survey
6. Fallen | Evanescence
7. Best Books I Read: 2011
8. Artist Evolution
9. The Unforgiving | Within Temptation
10. The Fame Monster | Lady Gaga

(Even so, the best way to see exactly how much more popular my music reviews are, one would have to look at my entire post list, and I really don't think it's necessary for me to post that.)

According to my Flag Counter, this site has been visited 8,595 times by 118 different countries.

Thank you so much for visiting, and I hope that you all continue to stop by in the future!