The Blog Squad: A Blogger Collaboration Part XII

We are a group of three book bloggers situated on different continents but brought together by our love for books and a penchant for talking about them. We’ve joined our forces to create a collaborative series of posts about book blogging and we hope you’ll enjoy the discussions.

A MAGICAL WORLD OF WORDS - AmyNikita 

BOOKS.BAGS.BURGERS - Uma K 

BOOK REVIEWS BY DI - Di Hewlett

Where do you get the books that you review on your blog?

 So I went and made a quick analysis of the books I’ve reviewed so far and I see that most of them are ones I obtained from publishers and authors (either physical books or eBooks). This also includes e-Galleys I get through NetGalley. I’m really thankful to the authors and publishers who send me books for review!

While I buy a whole lot of books, most of my ‘bought’ collection was read by me before I started blogging. I hope to review such books too in the near future.

I rarely get books from my local library as they aren’t exactly organized and never update their collection.

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 on your blog, do you discuss books in person or online?

I’d have to say I mostly discuss books online. Two other places other than my blog where have bookish conversations are Goodreads and Instagram. (My Goodreads and Bookstagram. I’d love to interact with you booklovers there too!) I love Goodreads for it’s wonderful reviews and awesome groups. As for bookstagram, you know what they say? - Pictures speak a thousand words! That is true! Many of my best online friends are my bookstagram friends with whom I have the most wonderful bookish conversations!
And of course, I also visit so many other blogs and enjoy meeting and talking to more booklovers on there!

I relatively discuss less about books in person but I do have a couple of wonderful friends who love books with whom I can chatter about books a LOT! I’m really thankful for these guys, as without them, I’d probably have gone crazy a long time ago :P

 

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?

OH YES! I’ve done buddy reads with my online friends! I buddy read ToG series and Cinder with Jan @ Book reviews by Jan and The Dream Thieves with Prabhleen @ Booksarelife987. But the time when Jan and I decided to buddy read the rest of The Lunar Chronicles, it didn’t quite work out due to my erratic schedule of late and when me and Prabhleen decided to buddy read Blue Lily, Lily Blue, we had to discontinue as she had exams and other schoolwork. But I had so much fun with the buddy reads and time zones weren’t a problems as we all live in India! We would fix up a particular number of chapters for the day and discuss them in the evening!

I’ve never done buddy reads with anyone I meet in person but I think it could be rather awesome. As Di says, having animated discussions about books face to face would be absolutely awesome!

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.

To see my answers make sure to visit the other collab posts!

A MAGICAL WORLD OF WORDS

BOOKS.BAGS.BURGERS

We hope you’ve enjoyed our discussion post! Please talk to us and let us know YOUR answers below. What do you think of our responses? If you have any specific questions you’d like us to address in the future, please let us know in the comments section below. Stay tuned for next week’s questions!