One Year Blogiversary: Q&A Answers Part Two

No giveaway winner this time just the second half of my Q&A session.

Once again thank you to everyone for the congratulations, the questions, and for entering my giveaway as well. This really was the best way to celebrate my one year blogiversary and now I am looking forwards to another year on WordPress with you all.

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Sammie at Bookshelves and Biros

• What’s your favourite post you’ve written this year?

Anyone of the holiday posts, and so far there are four Edinburgh, Venice, Algarve and Copenhagen. Travelling is one of my major loves after reading and I love being able to share my experiences and my pictures with all of you on WordPress.

• What do you find most fulfilling about being a blogger?

Seeing people comment on my posts. I normally don’t take much notice of my stats but seeing that someone has read my post and has enjoyed it so much as to comment on it, or who just wants to talk more about the book I reviewed or one of the questions I answered in a tag, always makes me happy and makes it feel worthwhile posting.

• What’s your most anticipated 2017 release?

At the moment A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab, which I have definitely mentioned a lot in this post. After the way A Gathering of Shadows ended I need the next book to find out what is going to happen to Lila, Kell and Rhys.

• What’s the best bit of advice you’ve received from another blogger?

I can’t really say who gave me these pieces of advice but I think they’re something I’ve heard from all bloggers once or twice. Basically it’s to interact with other bloggers – because that I think is the most important thing to do to have an enjoyable experience blogging – take time away every so often if you need to, don’t feel pressured by your stats, and above all enjoy what you do and what you post.

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Marie at Drizzle and Hurricane Books

• What is – okay, what are, I won’t be cruel here haha – some books you discovered thanks to book blogging that you wouldn’t have read “on your own”, if I can say it like that? I hope you get what I mean ahah.

There are more than a few. One I know I never would have picked up if I hadn’t been on WordPress is Bone Gap by Laura Ruby; I saw an amazing review for it and just had to read it myself. However the only place I’ve seen it since is on WordPress so I know for a fact if I hadn’t started this blog I would have never picked up that book. It’s the same with Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin; while I have seen that in bookstores every now and again I don’t think I would have picked it up on my own without seeing all the rave reviews for it beforehand.

Those are the main two but I also started The Bone Season series because of a review on WordPress, and Labyrinth Lost as well. Although it’s possible I would have picked these books up eventually on my own anyways.

• This is mostly out of curiosity, but HOW do you get organised so much and so well, at blogging? Posting so regularly with your job and life aside, and always leaving thoughtful comments on everyone’s posts, I am impressed haha.

I’m honestly not sure. I’m quite an organised person in my everyday life, to the point where I plan a lot of things down to the hour. With blogging I know what I want to post when and what posts I want to draft when as well. I try and comment and reply to comments every day and pretty much anytime I have a spare moment I’m on the WordPress Reader app seeing what the people I follow have posted, and following the tags I take part in as well. Asides from that I have a three hour commute to and from work each day which give me a lot of time to read and catch up I guess.

• A more travelling question right now (you know me…I couldn’t resist): if you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?

Right this second, somewhere warm. I’ve been wanting to go to India and Vietnam recently just because both places look like beautiful countries and I’d love to experience them first hand.

I am in the midst of planning some trips for the next two years; Krakow, Vienna and Dubai with my sister, Amsterdam and Japan with my friend, and New York. I’m not sure if all of these will happen but here’s hoping.

• And a bookish travelling question: if you could visit any bookish setting in the world, what would you choose?

I’m going to pick a different answer to before because there are so many places I want to go to that only exist in bookish worlds and I’m going to say Red London from the Shades of Magic series. London is one of my favourite places in the world, simply because it’s amazing, so seeing a London with magic and a red Thames full of power would be beyond brilliant.

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Jill at Rant and Rave About Books

• If you could change the ending or storyline of any Kasie West book, which one would it be and what would you change? (Hopefully without spoilers.)

I tried to avoid spoilers but it’s about the end of a book so I’m not sure how well I did. The ending I’d change is for The Fill-In Boyfriend. I loved where we left off with Gia and Hayden but I would have liked to see more resolution regarding everything that happened with Gia and her friends. It was left open which I thought was a nice way to end it but there’s part of me that feels it leaves the story open for a second book about Gia’s university years.

• What is your favourite read of 2016?

At the moment Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, but there are so so many books I have read and loved this year it would be impossible to list them all. Honourable mentions are; A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab, Blood for Blood by Ryan Graudin, The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi, and The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, along with hundreds more. Just check out my five star reviews. I’m 99% sure at some point I will have mentioned how all of them are new favourite books/series of mine.

• Do you have a blogging schedule and how do you plan your posts?

Most often my blogging schedule follows my reading schedule. I review books about a day or so after I’ve read them so that’s how I plan the majority of my posts. Obviously the weekly features I take part in have specific days; Top Ten Tuesday, Waiting on Wednesday, Standalone Sunday, etc. And then there are tags which I fit in whenever I either haven’t got a book to review or it’s just been a while since I wrote one. I have along queue of tags waiting for me to get around to them so they’re always next on my list.

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Niraja at Fantastic Books and Where to Find Them

• I know you’re a fan of fantasy, but you’ve also been reading more contemporary lately. Which YA contemporary books in particular helped you discover the genre?

More so than any book I completely credit Marie at Drizzle and Hurricane Books for convincing me to pick up some YA contemporary releases. Some stand out books in the genre for me though is anything by Kasie West and anything by Sarah Dessen, who are in my opinion the queens of YA contemporary writing, and both The Sky is Everywhere and I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson.

• How do you manage to get out of reading slumps?

If I’m in a slump I normally go back and re-read old favourites of mine; books I’ve read hundreds of times before but still love and books I already know the whole story to off by heart but still enjoy the journey of actually reading. Sometimes I take a step back from reading all together. Normally I just wait it out until eventually something new catches my eye again and I actually feel like picking a book up

• What are some of your favourite T.V. shows?

Supernatural, iZombie, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Shadowhunters, Doctor Who, Lucifer, The Librarians, Game of Thrones. I’ve been meaning to start Eyewitness soon, just because I’ve seen so much of it on Tumblr that I’ve sort of become brainwashed into starting it, same goes with Stranger Things.

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Reg at She Latitude

• What’s your ultimate blogging goal?

I don’t think I actually have one. I didn’t go into this blog with a goal of any kind and even now I still don’t have one. I’m happy just blogging for the fun of it and interacting with people on WordPress so I guess you could say that’s my goal; to carry on interacting with everyone I’ve met so far, and meet more people as well.

• What book have you reread the most?

Asides from Harry Potter probably the Study series by Maria V Snyder. It’s one of my favourite fantasy books and my copy of the first one is falling apart I’ve read it so many times.

• What book blogs would you recommend?

Honestly it depends what you’re looking for in a book blog. There are plenty of amazing ones out there and I know I’ve only discovered a fraction of them so far. My favourite book blogs though are by the people I speak to the most on WordPress and it’s not so much for the content, although the posts they publish are amazing, but for the conversations we’ve had about books, about blogging, and about pretty much everything else under the sun.

I mentioned some of these people in my Celebrating the Little Things Tag but I’ll mention them again, alongside a couple more, because they are all amazing bloggers who deserve a lot more love; Donna at Chocolatenwaffles’ Blog, Jill at Rant and Rave About Books, Lauren at Wonderless Reviews, another Lauren but this time at Lauren’s Page Turners, Marie at Drizzle and Hurricane Books, Melissa at Book Nerd Momo, Reg at She Latitude, Sammie at Bookshelves and Biros and Stephanie at Teacher of YA’s Book Blog.

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Megan at Bookslayer Reads

• If you wrote an autobiography, what would the title be?

I love this question; and it would be either be; ‘You Know What I Mean? A Story of my Life Going off in Tangents’ or ‘A Guide to Automatically Thinking up with the Worst Possible Outcome and Convincing Yourself it’s Going to Happen’. Both I think would work.

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Lilly at Lair of Books

• Do you have a blog hopping method? Or are you random with the blogs you visit?

I don’t have one specific method really. I always check out what the people I follow are posting but in terms of blog hopping it’s mainly checking out whoever people nominate for tags and awards. That’s how I found most of the people I follow actually.

• You mentioned having attempted to start a blog three other times…were they book related? If so, what made this time different if at all?

They were book related but not wholly book related. I didn’t just review books instead they were almost like a diary of my life, and part of me thinks that’s one of the reasons they eventually fizzled out because there was no set direction. Now my blog is all about books and I think it works a lot better for me to have a set destination in mind when it comes to my posts.

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Hannah at The Book Thief Without Words

• What’s your favourite read of 2016?

I answered this for Jill earlier but at the moment it is Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo with A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab, Blood for Blood by Ryan Graudin, The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi, and The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness as honourable mentions.

But who knows, there still a bit left of this year to go so anything could happen.

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That’s all for now, or for this year’s blogiversary at least. The questions you asked were amazing, and I had so much fun answering them so I hope you enjoyed reading my answers as well.