Currently I'm reading: Jenseits vom Tatort by Horst Brandt
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5 April 2014
My first post went out on 01 January 2014 - a review of the book Marley and Me. I didn't even put a 'Hello, it's me, I'm now going to talk about my love of books' post out - no, I went straight in.
Why did I decide to do a book blog? I've been blogging previously, a sort of mixed blog about my life with the family, recipes, day trips, needle crafts pets and yes, books. At that stage, I wasn't so much interested to share my opinion of books, but wanted to have a record of all the books a read. I did 'burn out' with it over time. Also, I mainly posted about needle crafts, and most of my followers were fellow knitters / cross stitchers, but now I hardly do needle crafts any more. Nothing wrong with it, it's just that my taste has changed over the years. I still knit though ever now and again. So, as I absolutely love books, reading and talking about books, I had this idea over the Christmas holidays 2013 to set up a blog dedicated to my love of books.
I've been a book blogger now for 3 months :) And it really is a case of doesn't time fly when you are enjoying yourself. I really can't imagine now life without it.
I've learned quite a few surprising things:
- When I first started to 'dig around and googled 'book blog' I found that the book blogging world is indeed huge. Not just the number of bloggers etc, but I never even knew about stuff like ARC's, Netgalley, how to follow a blog, blog tours, guest posts etc. But, I loved it straight away and try to learn.
- Fellow book bloggers - aren't they just the friendliest and most helpful folks around? I've only met nice ones so far :)
- I am getting to read genres / authors which I would not have normally considered or been exposed to.
- All the new authors I've read so far are really good! again, maybe I've just been really lucky. And some of them have become friends now and we write regularly which is fab.
Anything I'm struggling with?
- I didn't expect it to be such a huge time investment to be honest. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love spending time on my blog, on other people's blogs browsing, commenting etc. But I also have a full time job…. arrgh!
- I still struggle a bit with the technical side of blogging. I get easily frustrated when the widget etc doesn't work and for me, it's often not obvious what's wrong. Luckily, there are lots of online tutorials and I heavily rely on them. But there are things I would like to change on my blog (for example the top tabs), but haven't got a clue how - and it's probably even quite simple.
- Now, this might surprise you… I'm a reader and not a writer, and therefore I sometimes struggle with writing a review - how to express my feelings for the book, what I think of the characters etc(the summarising of the story is usually the easier part). Maybe I still worry a bit because English is not my mother tongue. I mean, I have been living in English-speaking countries for over 20 years and I have to write a lot in my work place (though that is all factual). But I thought - hey, I just write like a speak, and I should be fine. I'm not writing for publication after all.
Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Parajunkee
Nose Graze
The one thing not to be missed if you are a new blogger (or even if not :) in my opinion is the Sunday Post hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. All participants (and it is open for everyone) look back on their week as a book blogger, their reviews, memes they may have taken part in, tell us about their book haul (important!) and any good stuff they found on the bloggosphere. I usually spend a long time going through all the blogs on the linky - there is so much to see and read, so I can only highly recommend it.
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Here is my recollection of some of my favourite posts from the past 3 months:
Of course, my very first post, a review of Marley and Me by John Grogan
my thoughts on dystopian novels and how this book surprised me
This one was a bit special to me as well, as it showed me one of the great things about being a book blogger - it was the first time I read outside my usual genres - it is a vampire story which is something I would have never considered before, and I loved it.
Writers and alcohol. Not my own assessment I hasten to add :)
This one was very special to me, because my 15 year old daughter Ruby has written this - her first review. Well done Ruby.
So, what will the future hold for me?
As long as there are books, I will be reading. And, I hope, as long as I have a laptop and an Internet connection, I will be a member of the wonderful book blogging community.
One of the good things about reading as a hobby - it's cheap. Ok, I know some of us spend a good proportion of our annual salary on books, but realistically, you could borrow books from the library, get them from thrift/charity shops etc. And with so many free books or 99p / 99cent ebooks available, we can't go wrong.
I'm surprised already how much I've learned in the past few weeks and how many friends I've made. I'm quite excited because next week I'm taking part in my first book tour / book blitz hosted by Lola at Lolas Blog Tours… so yeah, many good things to come :)
