The Blog Squad: A Blogger Collaboration - Part XXI

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 hear all your Bookish News?

Twitter and Bookstagram are two places where I find out about literally every bookish news. New releases? Best book covers? Bookish controversies? It’s all there ladies and gentlemen! Twitter always has the latest news and I follow oh so many bookish people that it’s pretty impossible not to know the latest bookish news.
 
Also, Goodreads YA newsletters are wonderful things to see in the inbox! And also, Goodreads Lists are a great way of discovering new releases. I check the YA releases of list every month and add a couple dozen books to my TBR! I’ll probably be killed by my TBR falling on my head but oh well....
 
Also like Di, I’ve signed up to quite a few publisher email lists and I get these really awesome bookish emails which also contribute to the TBR that’s going to be the death of me.

I typically hear about new book releases from Goodreads.  I’m not on there a lot, but I do check their “new releases” page every now and again.
 
The Waiting on Wednesday meme is also an excellent place to hear about the latest books and ARCs. Every week when I participate and blog hop, I’m kept up date with the books moving around the blogosphere, and my TBR gets bigger and bigger as a result!  But I love it. It’s an easy way to see what books are new and what’s known about them so far.
 
But I think Twitter’s my biggest source of bookish news. I’m following more bloggers, publishers, and authors than is possible to keep up with, but it does mean I get to see most of the discussions, latest bookish hot topics, and controversies that are circulating.  On Goodreads I can see what books are coming soon, but on Twitter I see the reception the books are getting and what the majority of bloggers think of them. I love following the discussions and arguments.      

Do you read other reviews of the book you’re about to review yourself?

I don’t read reviews of a book I’m just about to review as I think that might subconsciously influence my own review. But I do read Spoiler free reviews of a book BEFORE I start to read it. I mean reading reviews is one of the ways in which I continue to add more books to the weapon of my death ( my TBR of course! ) It doesn’t take me more than 2 minutes to add a book to my TBR ( I’m so ignorant of my impending doom ) but it does take me YEARS at times to actually get to reading a book in my TBR ( I don’t want to anger the weapon of my death that’s why ). It’s actually reviews that convince me to get that book out to go from the TBR shelf to read shelf. So reading reviews before writing a review? NAY! Reading reviews before reading the book? YUS!

Hmmm. I do read them, but I skim-read. And not because I’m afraid of spoilers.
 
For me, it’s more about keeping an unbiased head and an un-influenced opinion than it is about catching a spoiler. If I read too many reviews there’s the chance I’ll start to think the same as what the other reviewers are saying, and it affects my review and my own thoughts.
 
I’ll skim-read reviews because I want to have an idea of what other people think of the book. But I won’t read them properly out of fear of getting too influenced.

How do you use Goodreads in correlation with your blog?

I actually post my reviews on Goodreads first. Then I click the little “Post to blog” checkbox at the right corner below the review box on Goodreads before I hit Save on Goodreads. Since my blog is connected to my Goodreads account, the review appears as a draft in my blog! I then edit it, add cool graphics and hit publish!
 
I also add a link to the Goodreads page for the book in all my reviews ‘cause I know almost all my blog readers keep a track of the book they want to read on Goodreads. It helps to give them a direct link for that!

I always post my reviews to Goodreads when I post them up on my blog. I also take part in the Goodreads challenge (where you challenge yourself to read a x amount of books per year) and I always track my reading process for the books I’m currently reading. When I finish reading a book, I’ll mark it as read on Goodreads and say “Review to come”, because I won’t necessarily review it on the day I finish it. Then later I’ll update that status when I’m ready to write the review.  
 
When I post a review on my blog, I’ll also include the book’s Goodreads page as part of its information. The summary is also taken from Goodreads.
 
Like Di does, I try to include all links to Goodreads when I’m mentioning a book in a blog post, as well.   

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!