Blogger Recognition Award

Destiny over at Howling Libraries nominated me for  this back in… May? I think? It’s a really cool tag though, with lots of tips and advice if you look through them so I had to get around to it eventually.

the rules:

1. thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog
2. write a post to show your award
3. give a brief story of how your blog started
4. give two pieces of advice to new bloggers
5. select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to

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IT ALL STARTED WHEN…

I’ve been using Goodreads to keep track of my own reading for years (oh my god… i just checked – 2011… why am I so oooold). I really only used it to track and rate books I’d actually read though, and I never wrote any kind of review.

I basically stopped reading novels entirely while I was at university. I couldn’t be bothered between all my assigned reading. I did read a lot of fanfic though, and of course, a bunch of these were novel length… (I don’t know why that seemed different to me…)

Anyway, after I graduated I decided I wanted to get back into reading more. I’d seen The Raven Boys and Cinder pop up a few times on Tumblr and I somehow fell into book Twitter and then WordPress/ Instagram. My blog is two years old now and I adore the book community. I still haven’t read The Raven Cycle (…shame… shame…).

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MY ADVICE FOR NEW BLOGGERS…

1. Don’t get caught up in the popularity hype.  It can sometimes seem — especially in the beginning — that everything in the book community revolves around buying the newest possible releases, and getting most exclusive ARCs. Don’t be off put by this. You don’t have to review the most up-to-date books to be a book blogger. You can read older releases, library books and books you already own. Read your parents books, borrow your friends books.

In fact, I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t like to read the reviews for a book until they’ve read it themselves. This means that if you view slightly older books, you might even get a bit more of back-and-forth in the comments. In turn, this is a great way to get to know and connect with other bloggers. You don’t have to spend a fortune, or have thousands of followers to be part of the book blogging community.

 

2. Get organised. A great way to get to know other bloggers, is to take part in weekly memes such as Top 10 Tuesdays and Waiting On Wednesdays. There are all sorts you can do that promote blog hopping and commenting. A lot of these have weekly themes, something that can be hard to remember — Top 10 Mermaid Books, Top 5 Circus Fantasies, etc.

I have a whole bunch of shelves on Goodreads. When I’m finished a book, I added to not just the Read shelf, but a couple of genres and subjects. For instance I might shelve something on Read, Mermaids-Pirates, Fantasy and Retellings. This means that when a prompt comes up it’s relatively easy to shift through and jog my memory.

If you don’t want to use Goodreads for this you could also keep a bullet journal, or some other kind of note on your phone.

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I TAG…

1. Lucille @ a dragon in space

2. Nicole @ Book-Wyrm-Knits

3. Asha @ A Cat, A Book, and A Cup of Tea

4. Hadeer @ Cairene Librarian

5. Lauren @ Northern Plunder

6. Aurora @ Aurora Librialis

7. Neslin @ Nomadic Brain

8. Jeanine @ Literary Sea

9. Samantha @ Bookish Villainy

10. Karen Jo @ Sincerely Karenjo

11. Crystal @ Goddess in the Stacks

12. Isabella @ The Bleu Library

13. Celine @ celinelingg

14. Chardon @ Project: Hardcover

15. Leslie @ Books Are The New Black