Tagged: book blogging

The Week Ahead (#7)

Last week was pretty sparse reviews-wise in part because of that awesome guest post by Don Maker.  However, that left me plenty of time to read so this week is going to be review heavy.

Monday

Fire and Sword by Louise Turner

  • A review of Fire and Sword by Louise Turner.  I chose to review this for the blog tour and although it took me forever to finish it I enjoyed it thoroughly.  Scottish history is really not my strong point but I can confidently say that I learned something by reading this book!

 

 

Tuesday

In Defense of the Queen by Michelle Diener

  • A review of In Defense of the Queen by Michelle Diener.  I actually finished this book ages ago but I was so tightly scheduled in April that I couldn’t fit it in until now.  This is the third book in the Susanna Horenbout and John Parker series and after the cliffhanger of the second book I was very, very eager to start reading this one.

 

Wednesday

Mine to Spell by Janeal Falor

  • A review of Mine to Spell by Janeal Falor.  I loved the first book in this series, You Are Mine so when I heard Janeal Falor was sending out ARCs for the second book I snapped one up right away.  Cynthia is very different from Serena, the first book’s protagonist and at this point I really can’t say who I like more!  They’re both good.

 

Thursday

Shattered Secrets by Krystal Wade

  • A review of Shattered Secrets by Krystal Wade.  Way back when I started blogging I reviews Krystal Wade’s debut trilogy and loved it.  So how could I resist starting on her latest series?  My only worry was if it would live up to Wilde’s Fire.

 

 

Friday

The Curse by Jennifer Brassel

  • A review of The Curse by Jennifer Brassel.  This one was a guilty pleasure read that I requested on NetGalley.  I mean how could I resist ancient Egypt, romance and a little bit of mystery?

 

 

Saturday

  • Discussion: Violence in Literature.  How much is too much?

How Not to Criticize a Book Reviewer

As a book reviewer, I obviously give out a lot of criticism so of course I’m equipped to take a lot of criticism.  I keep an open mind and weigh pretty much everyone’s opinion carefully to see whether it has merit or not.  I listen to the feedback my readers give me through polls and comments as well as read articles about how to improve my blog.  Improving my blog is a constant work in progress, if I’m honest so I do like criticism.  However, there are right and wrong ways to go about criticizing a book reviewer and/or their reviews.

Middle SchoolersCriticism #1: “[A rebuttal of my review saying that my 1 star rating was not deserved.]  This was written by an entire class of very exasperated middle schoolers who just finished reading the novel.”

There are a lot of problems with criticizing something this way, but the main logical fallacy is this: [x] group of people liked [y] therefore you should.  This is utterly ridiculous and I would have expected better from the teacher (yes, a teacher said this!) who criticized my review of The Outsiders.  That’s like saying lots of middle schoolers a couple of years ago loved Justin Bieber therefore I should like Justin Bieber.  Anyone with a brain can dispute that logic, believe me.

Quite frankly, I don’t give a crap if an entire class of middle schoolers liked The Outsiders.  This is arrogant of me but I think I have slightly more reading experience than they do, considering I have averaged 200 books per year for well over a decade.  Is my opinion more valid than theirs?  No, but it’s certainly more informed.  In the end, what’s wrong with criticizing a review like this is the idea that one group likes something and therefore everyone should like it.  It’s ridiculous. Continue reading

The Best and Worst of March 2014

It’s been one heck of a month here at The Mad Reviewer.  For 30 days straight I’ve had over 200 views per day, a personal record.  Which also means that I beat my previous page views per month record of 8,228 in January 2014!  The final tally is 8,941 views in all of March, which shatters the previous record.  Far more important to me are the 58 new followers I gained during this traffic surge.  That brings the total number of followers of this blog to 788, meaning that if my traffic stays high I’ll be having a very special 1,000 follower giveaway soon!

When I looked at the 5 best posts this month I had to laugh.  Before I explain, here they are:

1.  Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal

2.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

3.  How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour

4.  The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

5.  Some Thoughts About Book Blogging & Statistics

I honestly had to laugh at the Game of Thrones rant article being number one because it was number one by such a large margin.  Of the 8,876 views I received this month 2,962 views were from that article alone.  That’s insane and hilarious!  I guess it might have something to do with the fact Game of Thrones Season 4 premieres on April 6 (yay!).  The other ones are pretty easy to guess why they’re #1.  They’re all popular books, articles kids use for school or semi-controversial ones that garnered lots of comments.

Okay, so which articles were the worst during this record-breaking month?

1.  Emperor: The Death of Kings by Conn Iggulden

2.  Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey

3.  Desired by Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs

4.  Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer

5.  Lost in Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs

As usual I’m not too concerned about these reviews being the lowest ranked in terms of hits.  They’re all either older books or books that aren’t exactly the most popular, even if they were excellent.  Next month we’ll see different books on the bottom 5 and life will go on.  It’s just interesting to see how the ‘worst’ posts rotate every month.

Changes to my Posting Schedule

I’ve been thinking long and hard about my schedule for The Mad Reviewer and I’ve decided to change things up a bit.  So now my typical week will look like this:

Monday: An interview, article or a review (I’m going to aim for more interviews and articles)

Tuesday: Review

Wednesday: Review

Thursday: Review

Friday: A book blast for a blog tour or a review

Saturday: A discussion!

Sunday: Open threads for promotion, site announcements, a bonus discussion or other random posts

My regular readers will notice a couple of changes:

1.  I’m going to be aiming for writing more articles and/or doing more interviews with authors on Mondays.  I like writing articles and doing interviews but I don’t always have time to do them for my preferred Monday deadline.  However, I’m going to make time from now on to do these things.  Failing that, on Monday it will be a review of a book I want to highlight for the author.

2.  On Fridays my traffic is usually insanely slow (people have lives on Fridays?).  Believe it or not I’m actually signed up for several book tour sites and I would actually like to participate more as a tour host.  So that’s why I’m going to be confining all posts for book tours (except tour-related reviews) to Fridays.

3.  Yep, discussions will now be a regular Saturday feature.  You guys seem to love them and I love reading your responses, so this is going to be a regular thing.

So now I have a couple of questions for you guys related to my posting schedule:

1.  Would you like me to do a post on Sunday that talks about what you can expect for the week?  (It would sort of be like The Sunday Post meme.)

2.  Are there any features you don’t like?  Are there ones you do like but don’t see here?  I’m very open to suggestions.

Reader Request Week #1: Finding Time to Read and Review

Megan S. of Life’s Unfiltered Ramblings submitted this question for my first reader request week:

Hey Carrie, my question to you is how you are able to not only read and review as many books as you do, but how you obtain all your books and ebooks. Do you have a partnership with someone? Do you get free copies from the authors? Also, how do you find the time? Do you have another job that may get in the way?

I have a full-time job and find it hard to accomplish all that I want with my blog, and seeing yours so successful has had me reevaluate my time and break down everything to reach my goals. Thanks for the inspiration and support you’ve provided me in the past.

There are a lot of pretty good questions in here so I’ll do my best to address them all in two parts.

Part #1: Finding books.

Well, the answer is dependent on when you’re talking about in the history of my blog.  Prior to starting a book reviewing blog I actually had quite a fair collection of books, which made up something around 200 of my first reviews.  But what happened when those were exhausted?  Well obviously I continued buying books but I also tapped other sources for books: authors and publishers.

Authors and publishers are a great source of free books and all you have to do in return is provide an honest review.  When I had my review requests open I got several free books this way, but after I closed my requests I joined NetGalley.  NetGalley is an online book catalog that’s perfect for bloggers like me to have a somewhat sustainable book habit because all you do for a free book is give it an honest review (if you’re approved).  I also request specific titles from authors and publishers (mainly authors) through email.  To someone not in the book blogging community you’d be surprised at how willing people are to give things away for free at the promise of an honest review.

Basically most of my books now come from either NetGalley or publishers/authors that I request books from personally.

Part #2: Finding Time.

(Just so we’re clear: I don’t work full time in the winter because our little tourist town decreases in population by at least 50%.  Working in a lumber yard/hardware store/building company does have its downsides.  But since we’re talking about blogging while holding a full time job I’ll talk about how I manage things for the other half of the year.)

The question I encounter frequently on the blogosphere is how do bloggers find time to blog?  Well, the answer is simple: The 168 Principle.

The 168 Principle was taught to me by a very wise man and it basically goes like this: there are 168 hours in a week.  Ideally you spend about 56 of those sleeping, leaving you with 112 hours.  In the peak season I work about 48 hours a week (6 days a week, 8 hours a day).  That’s a fair bit but that still leaves me with 64 hours to do whatever I want.  You can get a lot done in 64 hours a week, believe me.

Not all of those spare 64 hours are devoted to reading or blogging but the main idea behind this principle is that if you want to find time for something, you can.  If you want to blog, blog.  If you want to read, read.  It’s all a matter of scheduling.  Almost everyone can find a spare hour every day to set aside for themselves if they really try.  For example, if you’re a writer there are plenty of writers that find they have no time to themselves during normal hours so they write late at night or get up extra early to write.  The same thing goes for bloggers.  If I know my week is going to be tight scheduling-wise, then I just stay up a little later and read.

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If this post raises a new question or you have another topic you’d like to see me cover for the 2014 Reader Request Week, head on over to this post and comment!

My question for you guys is: How do you manage your time?  Are some times of the year busier for you than others?  If you’re a book blogger, where do you get the majority of your books from?