First Lines Fridays: October 14, 2022

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?  The rules are as follows:

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

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Book Blogger Hop: October 7-13

The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer @ Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer’s permission, Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the hop on February 15, 2013. Each week the hop will start on a Friday and end the following Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to your own blog. 

The Book Blogger Hop post image was created by Coffee Addicted Writer.

This Week’s Question

Are you lost if you don’t have a book to read? (Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews)

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Book Review: Spear by Nicola Griffith

Today’s book review is SPEAR by Nicola Griffith, a queer retelling of one aspect of Arthurian legend. This ethereal read is about identity and brims with beautiful, lyrical writing.

Author: Nicola Griffith
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Publisher: Tordotcom
Publish Date: April 19, 2022
Print Length: 192

Want to support local bookstores? Buy a copy of Spear on Bookshop.org!*

*These are not affiliate links and I do not make a commission from any purchase made using these links.

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First Lines Fridays: October 7, 2022

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?  The rules are as follows:

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

Continue reading “First Lines Fridays: October 7, 2022”

How to Make Book Blog Friends and Grow Your Audience

I started my blog in March 2021, more than 1.5 years ago. Every so often I find myself reflecting on my journey. And every so often something I see on social media or someone else’s blog will spur another moment of reflection. A topic I keep coming back to involves how I found or created my niche within the bookish community. Note that I am definitely not an expert on this and these are just what I found worked for me. In this post I talk about how to make book blog friends.

It wasn’t easy at first. Starting a blog and maintaining it takes a lot of time and effort. Like many others, I started mine to connect with others who enjoy reading similar things. However, ever since the advent of more instantaneous social media (i.e., Twitter, Instagram, TikTok), blogging can feel like shouting out into the void. Therefore, it’s just as important to create and maintain at least one form of social media, in my opinion. That in itself can take a while to curate and figure out. You have to decide who to follow, what hashtags to use, and how to set up WordPress such that shared links to your site automatically preview an image.

All of this is initially overwhelming and may feel futile for the first few months. But after trying different ways to interact and create content, I feel like I’ve started to crack the code. (But who knows, it could change tomorrow. :-)) So I put together a list of things that I strive to do and that I encourage others to try. While I engage in these activities to connect with others, I’ve also seen a positive impact on my blog statistics, if that is something that is equally important to you. So, consider this list a work in progress. Read on to learn how to make book blog friends and grow your audience.

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