blogger recognition award tag – the orang-utan librarian

So this is my second time doing a Blogger Recognition Award, but I thought it was an appropriate time to do another one because I MADE IT TO MY ONE YEAR BLOGGIVERSARY!! Happy Bloggiversary to ME! GO BANANAS!!

bloggiversary

I was tagged by four wonderful bloggers:

The spectacular Cinderzena (how cool is that name!?!), the wonderful Bookish Underdog (because who doesn’t root for the underdog?), the marvellous Keira @ Signing On (because simplicity is key!) and the fabulous It’s Good To Be Crazy Sometimes (which is a sentiment I naturally agree with)

Rules:

Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to. Do some digging if you must! Find those blogs. You cannot nominate yourself or the person who has nominated you.
Write a post to show off your award! Give a brief story of how your blog got started, and give a piece or two of advice to new bloggers. Thank whoever nominated you, and provide a link to their blog. List who you’ve nominated in the post.
Make sure to also attach the award itself! (You can do this by right-clicking, saving, and uploading the image above).
Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them. Provide a link to the award post you created.
Provide a link to the original post on Edge of Night. That way, anyone can find the original guidelines and post if needed, and we can keep it from mutating and becoming confusing!

I’ve already said part of the story about how this blog came into being the last time I did this post- which you can read all about here– but the story didn’t end there. So I thought now was the perfect time to tell you a little more about the humble beginnings of this blog.

In all honesty, this date completely crept up on me because even though I had the vaguest notion that I chose this domain name around May last year, I didn’t actually start posting then. I barely posted for the first five months (literally once or twice a month for most of that time). But then something magical happened…. I fell in love with it! I fell in love with the people, the reviewing, and making all kinds of content for you guys! I don’t know what point it was when it all just spiralled, but once I caught the bug there was no going back. What started out as a random hobby became a compulsion.

So the moral of the story is…

Keep at it! Do it at your own pace and for the love of it! That is my advice to new bloggers and old hats alike!

Hope you liked that- I tag:

Sania Daydreams, Sarina @ Cookie Break, Ravenclaw Book Club, InkpenDaisy, Darkland Poetry, Jonas, Happily Ever Bookish, Maya the Book Explorer, All ‘Bout Them Books And Stuff, Drowned Stars and Books, Captain’s Quarters, The Paper Dragon, Kirsty’s Book Blog, Evelyn Grace, luvtoread

So I was nominated for this very exciting award ages ago! (which is pretty much the case with most of my tags now- I’ll get to them all eventually- I promise!) Thank you so much to La Book Dreamer for nominating me 🙂 Shall we get on with it? I think we should get on with it…

rules

Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to. Do some digging if you must! Find those blogs. You cannot nominate yourself or the person who has nominated you.
Write a post to show off your award! Give a brief story of how your blog got started, and give a piece or two of advice to new bloggers. Thank whoever nominated you, and provide a link to their blog. List who you’ve nominated in the post.
Make sure to also attach the award itself! (You can do this by right-clicking, saving, and uploading the image above).
Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them. Provide a link to the award post you created.
Provide a link to the original post on Edge of Night. That way, anyone can find the original guidelines and post if needed, and we can keep it from mutating and becoming confusing!

how my blog....png

So I wanted to do a blog on books *forever*- because (duh) it combines the two things I love most: reading and writing. But while I was at uni, I was writing about books all the time, so I didn’t really feel like doing a blog on top of that. I still really wanted to blog, so I tried a different tact. At my friend’s suggestion, I started two other blogs (both of which I closed down after a week). First, I tried one about myself- but I quickly realised how little I liked sharing stories about myself on the internet. So that was a bust. Then I started another more political blog- but I closed that down too because I found it made my blood boil too much (*and* the level of research you have to do for that is a pain! *And* you have to work super quickly to still be relevant- which is fine if you don’t have actual uni deadlines to keep up with. Trying to do that blog made it really obvious to me why being a political journalist is hard work and a full time commitment!)

After those blips, I gave up on the idea of blogging altogether for ages. But then when my brother suggested blogging about books again last year, I felt like *yes!* this is exactly what I want to do. But I was still at uni, so I just jotted down some ideas and didn’t bother with it. The tipping point that finally made me set this up was when I read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. If you haven’t read the post I did on that, then you won’t really understand my hatred for that book. I. Just. Had. To. Vent.

Then it all kind of spiralled! I just discovered I really loved it! So I kept at it, started posting more regularly (barring when I went on holiday for a month and a half) and started doing tags (which is so much fun!) I got really into reading other people’s posts too and discovering the book blogging community- which is incredible! I love reading all the recommendations and opinions out there! I also found a *really, really, really* old exercise book of mine where I used to review books. Occasionally, I have used it as my starting point for some reviews (but most drafts I’ve found are so patchy I haven’t posted them yet- I’ll probably have to reread the books to actually finish those reviews). I also came up with some more ideas of things I would like to do on here- some of which I’ve started doing. But there are still so many more things I would like to do!

So that’s the very-exciting-and-possibly-long-winded story of my blog. Hope you enjoyed it!

advice to

Ooh I don’t know if I’m qualified to give advice- I’m kind of still new to blogging myself! My advice is to just enjoy it! Because if you don’t, I’ve learnt from experience it’s nigh on impossible to motivate yourself to continue. Also, I know it’s cheesy, but do it for yourself- don’t worry about likes/follows- cos then you’ll enjoy it so much more. And never be afraid to speak your mind! Ok, just proceeded to give a lot of advice after saying I wasn’t going to give any- standard