Blogger Recognition Award

Hurray! I was nominated for the Blogger Recognition Award by the awesome Surina over at Book Reviews by the Bloggisters. Thank you so much, Surina! Her blog is gorgeous and always has awesome reviews and advice for bloggers (beware, though, your TBR will explode in the best kind of way after visiting her!). Give her a follow, because she’s fabulous!

I saw she had included me in her list of nominees on Saturday and couldn’t get to this until just now (and as it is, I had to break up writing this post into several parts because LIFE and all these people that live with me needing stuff like rides to school and work and for someone to do the grocery shopping. Seriously, don’t they understand that there are BOOKS TO READ???). Here’s the rules of this award:

Rules:

• Thank the blogger that nominated you.
• Write a post to show your award.
• Give a brief story of how your blog started.
• Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
• Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
• Comment on each blog and let them know you have nominated them and provide the link to the post you created.

*HOW IT ALL BEGAN*

Years ago, I had another book blog and loved it, but once I went back to school, taking classes, keeping up with housework and family stuff, trying to tackle my own writing, AND reading and blogging about it? Yeah, it all got to be too much, and I ended up shutting the blog down.

So, flash back to a little over two years ago. Picture me, staring at my Goodreads Want-to-Read list in utter horror, because it had 332 books on it (the vast majority nonfiction), some of which had been sitting there for…um…over ten years? I sat there, wtf’ing at myself and realizing that those books weren’t doing me any good if I wasn’t actually reading them, and thus began the journey to read that list down. I read almost 200 books off of it, then cleaned a bunch off that were out of date or that I didn’t actually want to read anymore, and somewhere along the way, towards the end of those 200 books, I thought, “I’ve read some seriously amazing stuff these past two years…Why don’t I start blogging about it again?” And after a few months of blogging over at Blogger, I switched to WordPress, and voila! Here I am.

*ADVICE TO NEW BLOGGERS*

Oh jeez. I’m still pretty new, so I might not have any business giving people advice, but first off, read what you enjoy. I have a serious love for nonfiction, so I blog a lot about that and I can’t ever see that changing. But be open to new genres and new ideas about what to read as well. I’ve already read a few books solely because other bloggers have raved about them, and I’ve added probably twenty or so novels to my TBR list (which I’ll read after I tackle these challenges I’m working on. I’ll NEVER let my TBR list get to 332 books ever again…unless all you book bloggers keep blogging about amazing books, and then it might!).

And secondly, get involved with the book blogging community here and on Twitter! There are so many fabulous book bloggers out there and they’re great people. They share advice about blogging (which has helped me SO much), opinions on books, their lives and hearts and souls…I’m so grateful to have found all of you, because it’s really added a lot of joy to my days!

*TAG OTHER BLOGGERS*

Don’t feel obligated to do this if you don’t want to or don’t have time, just know that I think you and your blog are awesome! Go check them out. 🙂

1. Susan @ Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

2. Breathe to Read

3. Stacey @ Unruly Reader

4. Heather @ Based on a True Story

5. Kristin @ Always With a Book

6. Rita @ Bookish Rita

7. Kat @ Books Kat Likes

8. Carrie @ Cat on the Bookshelf

9. Amber @ Du Livre

10. Blair @ Feed the Crime

11. Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

12. Sam @ Fictionally Sam

13. Katherine @ I Wish I Lived In a Library

14. Chasity @ Ity Reads Books

15. Christine @ Lady Gets Lit

I hope you all have a fabulously book-filled day! Thanks for stopping by, and if you got this far, enjoy this random picture of a baby goat that I took this past summer.