Hi all!
This post was partially inspired by Lili's from Lili's Reflections: The Intern Diaries and also partially by discussion between my co-blogger and I. We were discussing our crazy hectic schedules (I'm a assistant publicist and she's a science teacher) and our strategy for keeping up with the blog. This led to a discussion about our reading schedules--made up mostly of my reminiscing about my too recent college days when I had days just to read. It made me want to introduce myself on the blog as a way to welcome new perspectives in the blogging community and maybe give advice to any budding bloggers--not that I'm anything more than a budding blogger myself.
So below, please find Brianna,Amy, and Nicole's blogging stories from the beginning. Please also comment with your own! We're very curious!
A Few Facts about Brianna's Blogging Beginning:
1. I kept track of my books and pages for a few years in middle school. I had a reading teacher who bet me and a friend that we couldn't read over 1000 pages a semester. If we could, and we had to carefully document it, she would give us a prize. Said prize ended up being a bookmark, I think, but the habit stuck. I kept a notebook listing of all my books. My classmates saw that I was reading so fast and used to ask me about them. I started giving word of mouth reviews in fifth grade.
2. I wrote awful reviews in high school about books that had come out months ago. I wrote a particularly bad Hunger Games review that I'm sure no one but the Features editor and my mom read.
3. I tried to start my own blog (One Pound Dreamer because of my odd birth weight) in college. I had no idea what I was doing and it had no focus.
4. I worked at literary magazine--First Inkling--for the first few years of college. We had a lofty and important goal, to publish the best student writing from around the world at a undergraduate and graduate level and I spent most of this time trying to keep up with the literary editors around me. I too a huge step back from reading not only YA but anything I enjoyed and tried to become "well read."
5. I transferred to Sarah Lawrence and spent most of this time reading only for class. I almost wrote for the paper but after I failed miserably at my first school with book reviews, I figured there was no point to try again.
6. The summer between Junior and Senior year, my second cousin asked me if I would be interested in book blogging. She had a family friend who needed a "co-blogger." That family friend was Nicole. I thank my second cousin every day for accidentally introducing me to one of the best communities and by association the best people.
A Few Facts About Amy's Blogging Beginning
1) I really hated reading when I was in elementary school. I mean really hated it. You would never find me near a book I didn't absolutely have to read for school, and even then it was a struggle. After 4th grade, and with the help of some truly amazing reading teachers, I found a series I could read and really enjoy. That series... Harry Potter :) By 6th grade, you wouldn't see me without a book in my hands.
2) My book list (and book shelf) started growing and growing and soon I found that I couldn't remember if I liked certain books or not. My friends would go through my book shelf to borrow books and I wasn't able to tell them what I thought of some of the books(ask any of my friends, I have a very poor memory). So I started to keep a journal of just a basic star rating for each book I read from that point on.
3) Soon, that grew into writing comments along with the stars describing why they got that rating and such. By college, I found GoodReads :) I loved the idea of electronically keeping track of the books I read and it made it so much easier to find books I have previously read, as well as connecting with other book fans :)
4) After college, my very good friend, Nicole, talked to me about being a co-blogger with her on her blog. I was a little apprehensive about it, but Nicole is very persuasive :) I've been blogging to this day and I'm so happy that she got me to do this!!
A Few Facts About Nicole's Blogging Beginning
1. I actually had a special reading teacher in grade school because I wasn't good at reading, Once I was able to get past that, I took off with it, constantly taking books out of the library or having my parents buy me books. Since my sister and mother worked at Barnes and Noble I had easy access to books.
2. During college I mostly stopped reading because there was never any time between clubs and school work, so when I spent a summer at Dartmouth with my boyfriend before my last semester in college, I brought 50 books up to Hanover and read all of them in the span of 3 months, posting about it on Facebook. Friends started to ask me for recommendations and Mike suggested that I start a blog.
3. Then Paperback Princess was born in December of 2011. It started as somewhere for me to direct friends and family to what I was reading, and it grew from there.
So tell us... how did you get into blogging? Not a blogger? How do you keep track of books you have read?
This post was partially inspired by Lili's from Lili's Reflections: The Intern Diaries and also partially by discussion between my co-blogger and I. We were discussing our crazy hectic schedules (I'm a assistant publicist and she's a science teacher) and our strategy for keeping up with the blog. This led to a discussion about our reading schedules--made up mostly of my reminiscing about my too recent college days when I had days just to read. It made me want to introduce myself on the blog as a way to welcome new perspectives in the blogging community and maybe give advice to any budding bloggers--not that I'm anything more than a budding blogger myself.
So below, please find Brianna,Amy, and Nicole's blogging stories from the beginning. Please also comment with your own! We're very curious!
A Few Facts about Brianna's Blogging Beginning:
1. I kept track of my books and pages for a few years in middle school. I had a reading teacher who bet me and a friend that we couldn't read over 1000 pages a semester. If we could, and we had to carefully document it, she would give us a prize. Said prize ended up being a bookmark, I think, but the habit stuck. I kept a notebook listing of all my books. My classmates saw that I was reading so fast and used to ask me about them. I started giving word of mouth reviews in fifth grade.
2. I wrote awful reviews in high school about books that had come out months ago. I wrote a particularly bad Hunger Games review that I'm sure no one but the Features editor and my mom read.
3. I tried to start my own blog (One Pound Dreamer because of my odd birth weight) in college. I had no idea what I was doing and it had no focus.
4. I worked at literary magazine--First Inkling--for the first few years of college. We had a lofty and important goal, to publish the best student writing from around the world at a undergraduate and graduate level and I spent most of this time trying to keep up with the literary editors around me. I too a huge step back from reading not only YA but anything I enjoyed and tried to become "well read."
5. I transferred to Sarah Lawrence and spent most of this time reading only for class. I almost wrote for the paper but after I failed miserably at my first school with book reviews, I figured there was no point to try again.
6. The summer between Junior and Senior year, my second cousin asked me if I would be interested in book blogging. She had a family friend who needed a "co-blogger." That family friend was Nicole. I thank my second cousin every day for accidentally introducing me to one of the best communities and by association the best people.
A Few Facts About Amy's Blogging Beginning
1) I really hated reading when I was in elementary school. I mean really hated it. You would never find me near a book I didn't absolutely have to read for school, and even then it was a struggle. After 4th grade, and with the help of some truly amazing reading teachers, I found a series I could read and really enjoy. That series... Harry Potter :) By 6th grade, you wouldn't see me without a book in my hands.
2) My book list (and book shelf) started growing and growing and soon I found that I couldn't remember if I liked certain books or not. My friends would go through my book shelf to borrow books and I wasn't able to tell them what I thought of some of the books(ask any of my friends, I have a very poor memory). So I started to keep a journal of just a basic star rating for each book I read from that point on.
3) Soon, that grew into writing comments along with the stars describing why they got that rating and such. By college, I found GoodReads :) I loved the idea of electronically keeping track of the books I read and it made it so much easier to find books I have previously read, as well as connecting with other book fans :)
4) After college, my very good friend, Nicole, talked to me about being a co-blogger with her on her blog. I was a little apprehensive about it, but Nicole is very persuasive :) I've been blogging to this day and I'm so happy that she got me to do this!!
A Few Facts About Nicole's Blogging Beginning
1. I actually had a special reading teacher in grade school because I wasn't good at reading, Once I was able to get past that, I took off with it, constantly taking books out of the library or having my parents buy me books. Since my sister and mother worked at Barnes and Noble I had easy access to books.
2. During college I mostly stopped reading because there was never any time between clubs and school work, so when I spent a summer at Dartmouth with my boyfriend before my last semester in college, I brought 50 books up to Hanover and read all of them in the span of 3 months, posting about it on Facebook. Friends started to ask me for recommendations and Mike suggested that I start a blog.
3. Then Paperback Princess was born in December of 2011. It started as somewhere for me to direct friends and family to what I was reading, and it grew from there.
So tell us... how did you get into blogging? Not a blogger? How do you keep track of books you have read?
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