The Blogger Recognition Award

Thank you so much to Angelica @ The Book Cover Girls for nominating me! Everyone please go check out Angelica’s amazing blog. She is the absolute sweetest person to talk to, and posts such amazing reviews!

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Rules:

• Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Give a brief story of how your blog started.
• Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
• Select 10 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.

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How my blog started

I had wanted to start a blog for a really, really long time. As I’m sure all of us on here can relate, I love reading and talking about books, but my real life friends let me do so for only a few minutes a day, so I needed to find a new group of friends who won’t stop me talking. Hence: the internet.

I started this blog last year in June, but I actually had made my WordPress account in about March. As part of an assignment for university, I had to start a blog about a specific country and write posts from the perspective of a local. I chose Scotland (because I love Scotland). So once I decided to start a book review blog, I just continued using WordPress because it was convenient.

But the main reason I started this blog is because I want to work in the book publishing industry one day, and writing reviews/interacting with like-minded people feels like I’m halfway there already.

Advice

I feel like an older sister passing on sage, wise advice to their younger sibling, but okay, here we go.

1. Interact with people: I know this might sound a little obvious, but the best way to make new friends, not only here but on other websites like Goodreads and Twitter, is by liking and commenting on heaps of blog posts. Don’t be afraid of interacting with anyone – in my experience, everyone on this website is incredibly sweet and I’ve made some wonderful friends (I’m even a moderator on a Goodreads group with some lovely girls). Consider joining The Bloggers Commenting Back group, which means you take a pledge to actively comment on people’s blogs, and comment back to them if they comment on yours. It’s a great way to make friends!

2. Don’t be afraid of stating your opinion: Sometimes the internet can be a scary place to state your opinion. It took me a good few months before I felt comfortable enough posting my first discussion post, even though it was about something almost every YA reader agrees with. But if you have an opinion, or you want to write about something you feel very strongly about within the reading/publishing community, then go for it! I’ve had nothing but positive feedback for my ‘topical’ discussion posts, so much so, that I want to continue writing about them. Stating your opinion also means interacting with further like-minded people. I also love reading comments from people who enjoyed my discussion and thanked me for writing it – I can tell you right now, that’s such a surreal experience!

I nominate:

Beth @ Reading Every Night
Pierina @ Pierina Reads
Christina @ The Bookshelf Corner
Lauren @ Wonderless Reviews
Frankie @ A Thousand Lives of Frankie Lovely
Casey @ Adoptabookaus
Jackie @ Too Much of a Book Nerd
Nadwa @ Painfully Fictional
Mandy @ Book Princess Reviews
Anj @ Seaweed Reads

I hope you have fun completing this, but don’t feel obliged to do it if you don’t want to. 

-Laura ❤️