Welcome to Bookwyrming Thoughts, where dragons have roamed since 2012. Although the internet archives would disagree, because there was definitely no dragon logo until around February 2018. 😂 (The thought was there, though.)
What is Bookwyrming Thoughts?
Bookwyrming Thoughts launched in November 2012 by Sophia, a 15-year-old high schooler who looked up to a few bloggers in the Wizard101 community and wanted her own personal space (because she thought it was the coolest thing ever). She was merely 14 and in the last year of middle school then, so she made a blog dedicated to said game in February 2012 with the most unoriginal name ever — she’s never going to talk about it.
Needless to say, blogging about gaming wasn’t exactly her forte. But books was! (Though she didn’t expect to last this long at the time.) And thus, this blog was born, named after a librarian NPC in the last world of the first storyline arc of Wizard101 and was a creative outlet to share thoughts about books with a dash of shenanigans. She was trying her best, and still is.
Today, Bookwyrming Thoughts remains a creative outlet to share musings about books, but over the years it’s evolved into a lifestyle blog with an emphasis on books and other forms of media, specifically those with Asian representation (although admittedly mostly East Asian, which I can definitely do better).
Ultimately, it’s a place where musings are shared, whether it’s about books, blogging, movies/TV shows, or sometimes life. It’s a place where I sometimes take things seriously and put my best foot forward (or try, because life happens and sometimes it’s a little Depresso Espresso), but sometimes I want to run wild and free with a bit of the spirit and soul that started this blog many years ago and wasn’t afraid to experiment learn through trial and error in her little corner of the internet.
Who’s Behind the Musings?
I’m Sophia, a 20-something Asian American blogger from St. Louis Missouri. While I may have learned about the elevator pitch during college and gets asked, “Tell me about yourself” in interviews a lot, I hate talking about myself (she’s truly an introvert).
I also overthink a lot of things, am attached to my journal, and usually have K-Pop running in the background. But that wasn’t always the case for the last one, because when you’re an Asian girl surrounded by non-Asians, most of them think K-Pop is weird while I saw myself as someone who dreamed of working creatively in them. And so that little girl, in order to try and assimilate, tucked that love away and didn’t touch it again until BTS started shattering records years later. It’s been a journey.
Sometimes I have the bravery to tinker with new projects that sometimes get abandoned for various reasons (thankfully, some of them do last long, like this blog!). Other times I think about enjoying a good nap or searching for boba or delicious dim sum.
But at the end of the day, I’m just a girl trying her very best.
Some Favorites!
I listen to a lot of music, so this list could go on for days. Unfortunately, we don’t have days, so I had to cut the list down to 9 at most.
Of the K-Pop Variety:
- ATEEZ: HALA HALA, Wonderland, Inception
- EXO: Growl, The Eve, Been Through
- SNSD: Into the New World, Catch Me If You Can, Genie
- Dreamcatcher: Maison, Piri, Eclipse
- Kiss of Life: Midas Touch, Bad News, Nobody Knows
- AleXa: sick, Wonderland, Bomb
Of the Non-K-Pop Variety:
- Utada Hikaru: Flavor of Life, Come Back to Me, Final Distance
- Against the Current: wildfire, Legends Never Die, Paralyzed
- Lexie Liu: Manta, Mulan, Shadow
My non-bookish media choices have similar tastes to my book tastes: fantasy and sci-fi, especially funny ones. Dramas, I gravitate toward rom-coms a lot.
- Boys Over Flowers/Meteor Garden: hard to say which version I like, but I have a particular soft spot for the Japanese and Korean ones
- Mashle
- Spy X Family
- Love Between Fairy and Devil
- Percy Jackson & the Olympians
Genres I Gravitate Toward: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance
Some Books:
- The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee
- The Guild Codex universe by Annette Marie
- Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa
I gravitate toward cozy games (almost always involving cats), idle games, and simulations.
- Cookie Clicker
- Melvor Idle
- Littlewood
- For the King
- Boba Simulator
- Wizard101
4 is unlucky in Chinese culture, so please enjoy this random fifth tab vibing and skirting away from bad luck. But here’s an army of excited Pikachus to bring you joy.
Quick Fun Facts
- I once wrote out a ten-page paper and created an infographic for a class in 6 hours. 11/10 do not recommend it.
- I love puns. So much so that some of my friendships started by cracking a pun or responding to one.
- The artist that got me into K-Pop: Utada Hikaru, a J-Pop artist, but YouTube’s algorithm led me to SNSD and that started a little domino effect.
- My close friends say I’ll never shut up once someone gets to know me.
- I graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, but haven’t worked in a field using my degree.
- Plushies bring me joy and comfort — it all started with trying to find a way to locate my school backpack among other similar looking backpacks in college, so I clipped on a little taco plush with a smiley face. It gave the backpack a little personality, and I still have it.
- Unlike a lot of book bloggers, I actually didn’t get into reading easily. According to my mom, I hated it, and she pretty much had to sit down and make reading a game to get me to read (parenting a chaos gremlin is hard). My love for reading didn’t really begin until years later.
- I sometimes talk about books and K-Pop on The Arts STL, a St. Louis based media website.
Find Me on the Interwebs
Email: sophia(at)bookwyrmingthoughts(dot)com
