Where do you get the books that you review on your blog?
I get my books from a fairly wide range of sources. I’ve been lucky enough to receive books from authors and publishers and I try to balance those alongside books off my own TBR which is generally a mix of purchased books, library books and/or borrowed from a friend.
Obviously it's easy to get caught up in requesting ARCs and this can mean you're more often reviewing books specifically received for review, but I think a balance is important.
I get my books primarily from my local library or from publishers and authors. I feel so grateful for all the books I’ve received for review, and I’m still in shock that they’re now the ones that dominate my owned collection.
My library has an awfully stingy selection of teen books, but I have found some great ones there as well.
I very rarely buy books because they’re so expensive, but if I find some in good condition second-hand that I really want, then I’ll buy those
Aside from your blog, do you discuss books in person or online?
I use Goodreads which is where I where I first began chatting about books online and where I still go often although not as much now that I have a blog. There’s some really great groups there and many online book clubs that you can join - from classics to YA Fantasy to Contemporary, Historical Fiction - it’s all there!
I also visit a lot of other book blogs and I love opening discussions on books that I've recently read and need to talk about or debate. Other bloggers are (obviously) just fantastic at talking about books.
I'm also lucky enough to have a couple of real life friends that enjoy similar books to me so I definitely engage them in bookish discussions often and force my opinion and books that THEY MUST READ on them. Ha ha. If you're reading this, you know who you are and I love you!
Mainly online, with book bloggers on their blogs or on Twitter, etc. I used to use Goodreads all the time for bookish discussions, but now I lack the time to visit all the groups regularly - or at all :(
WHICH IS TRAGIC AND I MISS IT *sobs*
I don’t talk about books a lot in “real” life. Sometimes with my Mum, or some friends, but I rarely see my friends because since I’m homeschooled, they’re often caught up in school stuff and it’s hard to find the time to meet.
BUT. I do have two friends that I LOVE talking about books with and manage to do so fairly regularly. One I see about once a week, and the other is overseas but we talk a lot on Facebook. And if you’re reading this, Kyra, I love talking books with you <3
Have you done buddy reads before? How did they work?
I was lucky enough to recently do a buddy read of the Six of Crows series with Amy, my fellow collab blogger, and I thoroughly enjoyed our time doing this.
We didn't have a super structured buddy reading process - we just agreed to which position we would read up to each day and then made a point to chat about it as soon as both of us had finished and then set the next goal, which, depending on the day and our obligations ranged from 3 chapters to about 10.
Thankfully Amy was completely able to work around the fact that I was in Australia and the time difference was hectic (eight hours) and we managed to complete both books quickly. For our reviews we posted simultaneously on our own blogs just mentioning the buddy reads and linking to each other.
I've also done buddy reads in real life and what worked best for my particular buddy and I at the time was to set a goal per week and then we would meet up for coffee and bookish chats on the weekends. In this way it takes a bit longer to read the book, but there's an added dimension of actually seeing the other person and both of us talking animatedly about what we had read that week.
For those reviews we actually wrote/are writing them together and have a bit of a back and forth discussion featured at the end of the review.
Like Di said, we buddy-read Six of Crows about a month ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Time zones were an annoying problem, but we still had fun and managed to discuss all the little details that we then proceeded to fangirl about through gifs ;) It was awesome.
I also buddy-read Heartless with Aneesa @ A Crave for Books, and we followed a similar plan: read the same number of chapters per day (if possible), wait for the other one to catch up, discuss, then post our reviews on the same day and link up. The only issue Aneesa and I had was her busy schedule, which meant it took us a whole month to get through the book.
I also buddy-read Caraval with Caitlin @ Quills and Coffee, and we had a slightly different approach. We’d read the same number of chapters per day, but because of conflicting time-zones, we’d simply list all our points for the day and leave them in the Twitter chat for the other person to look at once they’d read their chapters. That method wasn’t ideal because we didn’t get to discuss, exactly, but it worked better for time-zones.
I think the first process works the best, though. Read the same amount of chapters or pages as your buddy, discuss when possible, then write separate reviews and simply share each other’s review links. I think it’s the most do-able.
On another note, I love buddy-reads. I think it’s so awesome to chat with someone else as you read the same chapters, and you can learn so much from another person’s perspective too.
Luckily, the buddy reads that I’ve done have all ended with both readers having similar sentiments about the book. But I can imagine the discussions being more heated and interesting if we had disagreed.
Hope to see you over at their collab posts too!:
❤ Book Reviews by Di
❤ A Magical World of Words
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