It’s Top Ten Tuesday again, and today’s topic is “Favorite Book Blogs/Bookish Web Sites”. For today, I’d like to take a journey back in time… back to some of my favorite bookish web sites to the present, with a few blogs. While I can’t really say that I’ve developed a list of absolute favorite bookish blogs yet, I’ll randomly include some that I’ve seen and tend to visit regularly. As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.
If I didn’t include Amazon.com, then I’d be leaving out one of my favorite bookish web sites. They have some amazing Kindle deals… like the other day, I got One Thousand Perfect Notes for just $.99! I still haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but I cannot pass up sales like that. I love to pre-order books from my favorite authors and see them sitting in my mailbox on release day.
Archive of Our Own (AO3): Several years ago, I had just finished the Divergent Series. I read most of the three books in three days, and I went to bed devastated… but even that night, I refused to believe the ending. The next morning, I started looking for alternative endings to Allegiant, and I stumbled upon AO3… and fanfiction in general. Never mind that I had actually written two fanfic novellas in high school without realizing it. But AO3 started me on a journey that has taken me on the path to where I am today. At the moment, I keep two AO3 tabs open on my browser almost all of the time.
My local library: While I’m sure that the Pikes Peak Library district is not of much interest to people outside of the Colorado Springs area, I would be dishonest if I made a list of my favorite bookish web sites without including it. I’m here almost every day. I currently have about a dozen books on hold, and check to see the progress of these holds regularly. Plus, there’s so much that goes on at the library.
While theoretically, I could place Goodreads right after Amazon.com on my bookish journey back into time (I’ve been a member since April of 2013), I’m placing it here because I didn’t take advantage of its amazing goodness as much as I should have until earlier this year. I had just finished reading The Fates Divide and was looking for another fun book to read, and I ran across their Listopia list of YA Novels of 2018. You mean there’s 960 YA novels coming out in this year alone? And they already know that Marie Lu is coming out with another book next year? I was blown away. So… I started clicking around, finding some of the popular books to read… but some of them are the third or sixth in a series, so I have to start with the first one (of course)… and I’m finding all of these new books to read… and I still haven’t recovered yet. Like Amazon and AO3, I almost always have a Goodreads tab open now.
Now we’re almost to the present day, where I can talk about a few really nice blogs that I’ve found. I found NetGalley shortly after I was blown away by how awesome Goodreads actually is. You mean that I can actually read some books before they’re released to the public? I don’t even have to pay for them? It was around that time that I decided to once again start posting regularly to this blog and focus on book reviews. After all, if my book blog is doing well enough, I’ll be able to read some of these really cool books early!
In the process, I’ve discovered that this book blog might also be able to help me as an author. I’ve been a writer for nearly my entire life. I went to the Young Author’s conference in my local area in both 3rd and 5th grade. I won NaNoWriMo in 2014 with my fanfic, Dauntless. But all of this reading and being around book bloggers and authors has inspired me. Yes, my planned NaNoWriMo novel for this fall is technically a fanfic of a fanfic, but it’s really exciting me, and unlike Dauntless, which is basically an alternate history of Insurgent where Tris chose Abnegation instead of Dauntless, this is morphing into a brand new story.
All of the above web sites are leading me into dreams that I haven’t thought much about since high school (or perhaps before that, even).
Which leads me to the last five bookish web sites for Top Ten Tuesday. These are some awesome blogs I’ve been reading. There are so many more, but I can only pick a few… so please realize that I might love your web site as well, and not have room for it here. These aren’t even a top five, they’re just some that I’m thinking about at the moment.
We Live and Breathe Books (WLABB) always has some great posts. Plus, Sam (who I think tends to write most of the posts over there) has some pretty good taste in books. I tend to see her Top Ten Tuesday posts almost every week, and I sometimes will run into some of her other posts at other times throughout the week.
I think I see AJ from Read All the Things all over the place. She has excellent taste in books and is constantly updating her site with new content. If you haven’t taken a look at her blog, you should.
It Starts at Midnight is another blog that I see all over the place. Maybe it’s because I read a lot of the Top Ten Tuesday posts and she usually writes them, maybe it’s because I don’t get home from work until around midnight, so her blog opens up right about the time I get home (okay, probably not the last one). At any rate, this is another blog that gets updated regularly that you might want to take a look at.
I’m always over at That Artsy Reader Girl‘s site. She hosts Top Ten Tuesday, and it’s a great way to find other people’s blogs. I usually keep this tab open all week long, because I’m always taking a look at what other people are posting and her TTT linkup is a great way to find other people’s blogs.
I visit The Candid Cover‘s web site regularly as well. This summer, she’s been sponsoring a Summer TBR Wipe-Out; it’s pretty fun to link up with all of these other amazing readers to talk about the books that we’ve been reading over the past few weeks. She also sponsors contests, various reviews, and keeps her web site regularly updated.
So, that’s a stroll through a little of my bookish history through the use of web sites! Stay tuned for the next episode of Top Ten Tuesday, where I talk about books to get out of your reading slump (even though I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a reading slump… but I have some ideas anyway).