15 Days of Being A Book Blogger featuring Day #11: Your 5 Best Posts

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This isn't an easy one for me, because I don't know if I have written any "best posts" yet or not, but I don't know that I have a few favorite ones that I've written over the last three years and I think I'll share a little insight on those. Most popular posts wouldn't really work out that well for me either, because I don't think I have any. 

So, my five favorite "best" posts are...

If We Were Having Coffee. I was inspired by the lovely Molli @ Book Whimsy and Jaime @ The Perpetual Page Turner (who originally had written a post of this nature), to just take a big risk and put everything out there in probably one of the most personal posts that I've ever put up on my blog. I don't regret one moment of writing it or posting it for everyone to see, because it's a goal of mine to post throughout the year two or three personal posts such as this so that you guys can get to know who I am a little bit better. Plus, I found some solace and clarity in writing it, it helped me to deal with a lot of things that I had needed to take a closer look at and just put it out there, then let go of it. 

Author Interview with Molli Moran. If you didn't already know, I talk a lot about my bestie Molli Moran, a lot on my blog because she's such an amazing friend and she's also one of the most talented NA author's that I know. She's definitely at the top of my list as one of the best NA author's ever, along with a couple of mutual friends too. Earlier this year, I got the chance to ask her a few questions and basically interview her for my blog. We talked about all the "bookish things" and she told me a little bit about what inspired her to become an author and what some of her favorite things were while writing her debut NA southern contemporary romance, As You Turn Away (The Walker Brothers #1). 

I loved being able to do this interview, because I got to share with you guys one of my favorite new debut NA novels, and I also got to promote one of my best friend's books and support her in her dreams of becoming a writer. Right now, she's hard at work writing a new NA southern romance novel, One Song Away and she's also busy posting these swoon-worthy teasers every Saturday where you get to read little snippets from the book itself. If you haven't read As You Turn Away yet, then you really should definitely check it out. It's one of the most amazingly written and emotionally compelling NA contemporary romance novels that I've read in a while. 

Book Blogger Love-A-Thon Challenge: Letter to my Future Self. Again, this was one of the more personal posts that I was talking about and I loved being able to participate in the Book Blogger Love-A-Thon, as much as I could. Writing this future letter to myself, proved to be a little bit of a challenge in how I wanted to go about it, but once I sat down to write it all out the words just somehow sort of came tumbling out of me and it happened in the most genuinely organic way. It took me a years to get to the place where I am in my life and to learn how to be happy with the "me" I am becoming, versus constantly nit-picking at her all the time. It's been tough learning how to let go and let be, but it's been one of the best things that I could have possibly done for myself. So, I was extremely proud of myself, and happy that I was able to share such an open and honest post with you guys.

Book Review for As You Turn Away by Molli Moran. As you can already tell by now, I really LOVED this book for everything it was and everything that it stood for. I am extremely proud of Molli, for pouring everything that she had into writing such a gorgeous and captivating novel that ended up giving me ALL THE FEELS. It's hard to find words to tell you guys how much I really love this book, so I'll just go ahead and quote part of my review and hopefully that will sum up everything nicely for you guys. 

"Beautifully written and full of emotion, As You Turn Away, will leave you breathless. Charmingly sweet and romantic, you'll find yourself getting wrapped up in such a gorgeous love story brimming with self-discovery, courage, and bravery."

Book Blogger Love-A-Thon Interview with Katie @ Worn Down Glories. It's actually kind of funny how this happened really, because neither Kay or I knew that we were going to be paired up, it just sort of happened that way and I couldn't have been more happier because she's definitely one of my favorite people in the book blogging community and she's definitely one of my closest friends. I just love this girl to pieces because she's all kinds of brave and unafraid to be who she is, she's fun to get to know, truly one of the most sweetest and genuine person that I've had the pleasure of getting to know. 

Now that I've shared some of my favorite posts with you guys, what are some of yours? Let me know in the comments below! :)

15 Days of Being A Book Blogger featuring Day #10: Choosing Your Next Book

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How do you guys choose your next book to read?

It usually depends on what I'm in the mood for, because chances are if I'm not in the mood for fantasy then I know that I'm probably not going to finish it if I pick it up next. Most of the time, it goes kind of like this for me...

• Blog Tours (the review books from the tours that I need to think about first.)
• 
  
• Review Books & ARC's (top priority because I've made prior commitments to read and review them on the blog.)
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• Netgalley & Edelweiss (these are the eGalley's that I've gotten for review and they are definitely on the top of that list of tbr next for that reason.)
• 
  
• Library Books (this is pretty self-explanatory.)
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• The "ME" Books (these are the books that are usually the ones I've bought or already have on my shelf or on my Kindle that I really need to read and just want to read. I try to read at least a couple of these a month.)

For me, the chances are, if I'm not at all in the mood for the next book that I'm reading or choosing to read, whether it be a specific genre, type, whatever - then I'm just not going to be attracted to it or want to really read it. I don't like to force myself to read books, because then I know that it's definitely going to affect the way that I feel about them afterwards, and I want to be as fair as I can in my judgement and give the book a fighting chance. 

What about you guys? Let me know in the comments below. :)

15 Days of Being A Book Blogger featuring Day #08: Appealing Blog Things

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Things that make blogs appealing for me, personally are...

Nice Clean Design. I like the blogs that I follow to have nice neat designs, because it makes it easier for me to navigate through it, and easily reviews and various posts without having to take forever. 

De-Cluttered Sidebars. I like it when the sidebars are de-cluttered and don't have a lot of widgets and other things taking up a lot of space and causing the loading time to take forever. That's kind of a turn off for me.

Discussion Posts. I love a really good discussion post, with a lot of comments that are hitting on points and bringing the topic home. It's a lot of fun to participate in these and sometimes you meet and get to know other bloggers as well, through them.

NO CAPTCHA. Please turn this off, because it's a pain in the tookus. 

Minimal Use of GIF's. I don't mind it when blogger's use GIF's in some of their posts, but it can get out of hand when there's more GIF's than the review, for instance. So, I would rather see a more minimal use of them, than over-excessive. 

Originality. I love it when the blogger has originality in the way they blog, the type of posts they put up, and just in general. It helps to spice up the blog and it makes it more interesting to read, instead of just reading blog after blog with the same thing, but variations on it. 

Regular Features. I love it when blogs have regular features that are unique to the blogger behind the post/feature. Kind of like how Rachel has her Book Watch post that highlights all of the upcoming books for the week and her Reading Pile posts, because these kinds of awesome posts can update you on things that are coming out and books that you might not have known about, but could potentially be interested in.

Personality. I really enjoy it, when I find a blog that tells me a lot more about the person behind it, other than what kinds of books that they love to read. I love seeing the more personal posts showing through and getting to discover their little quirks and whatnot.

Detailed Reviews. I love a good review that is detailed enough to tell me all about the book, the characters, and whether or not the synopsis worked or didn't without giving away any spoilers. This is definitely important to me, because these are usually the things that help me decide on whether or not I want to take a chance on the book. 

Honesty. I love it when bloggers are honest in their reviews of books, discussion posts, and whatnot, because it shows that they aren't afraid to really say what they think. I also enjoy how it's well thought out and now just slapped together all dodgey and whatnot.

Social Media. I like when blogs are super organized and have easy accessible ways to follow them, via Facebook, Twitter, GFC, email, or however else, without you having to hunt through their blog for them for ages.

Regular Updates. It's nice to come across a blog, where the person who is maintaining it takes enough to care to update on a regular basis, even if it's only two or three times a week - you can always count on them to always post at least that much. It makes me a little crazy, when it tends to be super sporadic side of things.

Less Meme's/Cover Reveals and More Other Posts. I like blogs that don't just rely on meme's, cover reveals, and filler posts to keep their bog updated. I would love to see more other types of posts, like book watches, discussion posts, guest posts (author or other blogger's), etc. I mean, I don't mind the occasional meme/cover reveal/blitz posts, but not all of the time to sustain the blog itself.

Review Archives. These are good things to have, even though I'm absolute rubbish at keeping mine up-to-date, because these tell me the kinds of books that you like to read and it also tells me what you think about them. Who knows, it might also help me decide if I want to read the book or not. 

Variety. This is a good thing to have, especially with a book blog.

So, what are some of the things that appeal to you on blogs? Tell me in the comments below, because I'm curious to know. :)

15 Days of Being A Book Blogger featuring Day #07: Blogging Quirks

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What are some of your blogging quirks?!

We all have them, even if we don't think we do. I know I have a few little crazy ones that stick with me and have this tendency to niggle away at my thoughts and somehow sort of affect the way that I blog in general. Some are silly little things and some really have this way of giving me thoughts. 

So, yeah...my blogging quirks for you!

Post Formats. I like for all of my posts to have a specific format, like my review posts are done all the same way, my WoW posts, my Top Ten Tuesday, etc. They're all formatted pretty much the same way, because I like for there to be a little bit of structure to my blog and for the posts I make to look half-way good.

Pre-Scheduling  Posts. In the past I've been incredibly rubbish about it, but here lately I've been getting a lot better. I've been really working on trying to get at two weeks worth of posts scheduled ahead of time, that way I don't get behind and feel like I have to massively play catch up like crazy or that I've forgotten that I was supposed to post this review or participate in that blog tour. 

Reviews. Reviews. Reviews. I don't always write my book reviews immediately after I finish reading a book, because I'm the kind of person who likes to sit for a few days and mull over what I've just read. I don't know, it's just part of the way that I process things. I need to be able to put all of my feels into coherent thoughts instead of jumbled up messy gibberish and OMG's. I also don't always write reviews for every single book that I read, but I do try and at least rate them on Goodreads and write a couple of sentences about whether or not I liked the book.

Reading Challenges. I am absolutely horrid at keeping up with reading challenges in pretty much any capacity. The only one that I've actually been able to stick to is the Goodreads challenge and that's because the site itself takes notes and marks down the books that I've gotten through and tells me how many more I need to read to meet my goal. I know, I should really try to get better at this.

Comments. Sometimes I worry about whether or not my posts are being read, because I don't get that many comments and I don't know if people are passing them by or if they're reading them and just not leaving a comment. I know this totally goes both ways and in order to get comments you have to be good at leaving comments. Obviously, this is something that I definitely need to work on. At the beginning of this year, I was doing pretty good with it, but now I've been sort of slacking off and I need to motivate myself to get back into the swing of it.

Netgalley and Edelweiss. I am so behind on my reviews for these, that it's not even funny. I really need to get on the ball with this and make sure to take a particular month and dedicate it to both these sites, the e-galley's I have for review, and the time to write and post the reviews for them. 

Archiving Reviews. I am awful about updating my review archive and making sure that my coordinating Pinterest board is updated as well. I don't know, but I just am. 

Booktube + Blogging. I love to film vlogs featuring the books that I've received for review, the books that I've bought, and/or checked out from the library. But, sometimes, it gets hard to always find the time to do this. Plus, between doing that and also trying to keep up with blogging in general, it's just hard. I feel like I'm sacrificing one for the other and I don't really like that, so I usually just end up choosing the blog over booktubing for the moment.

Social Media + Blogging. I am not the worlds greatest at remembering to schedule my tweets, facebook, and Google + posts for the posts that I've already scheduled ahead of time. This is definitely something that I really need to work on, loads. When it comes to blogging, page views, and getting the comments - social media is definitely the way to go.

So, those are just a few of my blogging quirks, what are some of your's? I'm curious to know what they are, so share in the comments below. :)

15 Days of Being A Book Blogger featuring Day #06: How You Buy Your Books

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How do you purchase your books?

Do you usually purchase them in a local bookstore, an Indie bookstore, or online at various places like Amazon, Barnes&Noble, or Half Price Books?

I have so many books that it's absolute craziness, trying to find the space to put them all up. Sometimes I have to double and triple stack them on my shelves, just to get them all to fit only because it's hard for me to part with any of them. I mean, I will if I have to, don't get me wrong. I just don't like having to do it though. 

Making room for new books to go up on my shelf, now that's actually good motivation for me to finally decide that's what I'm going to do. Especially, when I'm lucky enough to pop off into my local bookstore, which is Books-A-Million and check out the goodies on their shelves, to see if they're having another one of their awesome buy 2 and get 1 free sales or to see if they have something I've been wanting for a while on their bargain shelf. That's pretty much how I shop for books these days or I like to rummage through the thrift shops and a few garage sales here and there, to see if I'm lucky enough to run onto anything that I might need or want in general.

Last month I was lucky enough to pick up a brand spanking new hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at a local thrift shop. I was literally jumping up and down excitedly, I think I might have scared the poor sales lady a bit. But, we're talking about a brand new, never been cracked open before, hardcopy of a book that usually retails for no less than $35. I love it when I find good deals like that and it's one of the three that I actually needed to complete my hardcover collection of those books too.

Generally if it's a book that I KNOW that I'm going to want to have on my shelf and/or it's part of a series that I'm already collecting or just a brilliant stand alone in general, then I'll probably end up ordering them online through Amazon, because it's a little bit cheaper that way and I can usually get two books for the price of what one would be in an actual store. Other than that, I'll most likely wait and request them from friends and family for either my birthday or Christmas. I used to get lucky and was able to buy a few of them through my local library, but I don't think they're selling books much anymore these days.

Lately, I find myself buying books for my Kindle, because it's a lot easier that way than it is to find the actual space in my room to put up new books. Not that I don't love new books, because I do and I'm totally addicted to their smell, but like I said it's more of a space saving thing in the end. 

So, yeah...tell me how you purchase your books in the comments below. I'm totally curious to know. :)

15 Days of Being A Book Blogger featuring Day #02: Your Bedtime Reading Ritual(s)

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I am having a fantastic time with this book blogger challenge, I totally love the fact that I get to share more of myself as a book reader and blogger with you guys! I hope you're enjoying these posts too. 

Okay, so Day #02 is pretty much all about your bedtime reading ritual(s) and habits. I have these, you have these, so I thought I'd share a few of mine with you.

It's nothing too fancy really, it's just some simple things I like to do in preparation for getting ready for bed and for some night time reading. I like to get all of my girly things done, like changing into the comfy cozy pj's, brushing my teeth and taking care of my skin routine. Then I usually crawl into bed with my sweet little Suggie dog (the best little reading buddy anyone can ever have!), a mound of pillows and either a physical review book that I'm reading or usually most of the time it's my Kindle Fire, so that way I can just switch off all of the lights and snuggle in for the night. 

Usually I like to read light-hearted, carefree reads before I go to bed, because I don't really want a whole lot of heaviness weighing down my mind. Plus, I get super spooked really easily so I try not to read anything too suspenseful or spine tingling scary. I used to keep a stack of books beside my bed on a stand, which I referred to as my "night time tbr" pile. I quit doing that a good while back, because I just found that I wasn't really getting through them and it was a lot easier for me to take my Kindle with me instead. 

So, that's my bedtime reading ritual, what's your's? Share in the comments below and let me know, because I'm loads curious! :)