My Reading Habits: Book Buying, Bookmarks, Annotating, and More

I’m running out of post ideas.

I’ve said this several times already but I just have to reiterate! But I’ve seen a lot of people discuss some of their bookish habits in the past few months. I thought, why not join in and make a whole post about my own reading habits!! Because I take my inspiration solely from other people now.

This is going to be a fairly short post (or at least… shorter than the usual monster posts I write), but I had fun writing it! I can’t remember the last time I’ve written a casual post like this?? Also for no reason other than how I crave structure, I’ve organized these into good, neutral, and bad!

Click for BLM resources.

• petitions
• numbers/emails
• videos to stream (ad revenue will be donated)
• George Floyd gofundme
• Gianna Floyd (his daughter) gofundme
• Breonna Taylor gofundme
• Ahmaud Arbery gofundme
• Elijah McClain gofundme
• bail funds, research local ones near you too
• organizations
• small Black businesses that were destroyed
• Black-owned businesses
• indie Black-owned bookstores
• tips on overall protest safety
• google doc masterlist of BLM resources

Your Hypocrisy About “Realistic” Teens in YA: Why Do You Hate Us For Being Too Much of a Teenager, but Also Too Much of an Adult?

Oh, hi, just me with another discussion post!

I feel like I haven’t written a proper discussion in a long time!! (Whether or not I actually have is besides the point, it’s been established that I have a terrible memory.) I just keep drafting different ones and then ditching them when I lose my steam.

But this topic is something I’ve been seeing around in the book community for a while now, mainly in different reviews of different YA books, and if you couldn’t read the title, the topic is: the hypocrisy when it comes to the “realistic” portrayal of teens in YA.

I wanted to talk about it today because 1) I just felt like I finally had the right words to say everything I wanted to, 2) it’s something I’ve seen for some time now and wanted to finally bring up, and 3) while it’s terribly hypocritical, it’s also somewhat interesting. (At least to me!!) I also feel like I can offer some unique perspective on it, seeing as I’m both a teen and a reader of YA myself!

How Do I Rate the Books I Read?: A Look at My Rating System and What I Look for in a Book!!

I’m a really indecisive, not confident person.

And this means I struggle a lot with deciding ratings for books! Like a lot!! And so, in an effort to maybe help me decide on ratings more easily (and also to motivate me to READ), I’ve decided to tackle something I’ve been meaning to talk about for along time now: how I rate the books I read!!

I know there are a lot of people who don’t like to rate books, and that’s completely fine and understandable! I personally like ratings because I feel like it’s a way to quickly look back at my stance on the book, even though each rating will depend on the book of course!!

Like I said, I’ve wanted to write this for a long time now; I had it planned before I saw Marie @ Drizzle Hurricane Books talk about the same thing on her blog in November, and then I got inspired to do the same as she did with the cute little rating influence percentages. So make sure to check out Marie’s wonderful post as well!!

4 Things You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty For or Beat Yourself Up Over as a Book Blogger (Coming From Personal Experience!)

This post is brought to you by me feeling in a preachy mood!

Just kidding, I hope this doesn’t come off as a really preachy post! More of like a, “YOU’RE GREAT AND YOU SHOULD THINK SO TOO” post, because I think we all need that reminder sometimes.

Today I’m going to be discussing something that I think a lot of bloggers struggle with: guilt, but I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t beat yourself up over those things! Feeling guilty, while it can be a motivator can improve yourself, more often than not leads to people bringing themselves down, and it makes me so sad to see.

I got inspired to write this post after I saw some comments on the post I wrote on 10 pieces of advice I wish I’d given to my younger blogger self, when I touched on some things I felt bad about in blogging-wise!!

(I also recently read a blog post by Emme @ A Literary Latte that discussed the guilt we feel as readers, and I really liked it, so I wanted to share it with you all! Of course, this post isn’t the same as hers, and I definitely recommend reading it!)

What Makes Me Comment on a Blog Post? Tips to Increase Interaction and Make Your Blog Posts More Compelling

Welcome back to the latest edition of May pretends to know what they’re doing!! 

Today, I’m going to be talking about something I hold very near and dear to my heart: interaction. It’s near and dear to me because 1) I’ve been the worst at it and feel extremely guilty over the lack of it for the past year, but 2) I love doing it and it makes me happy!!

Comments are 100% the number 1 thing I look forward to when I publish a post. Yeah, it might get a lot of views and a lot of likes, but when I manage to get someone to take the time to write out their thoughts in response to a post I wrote?? That’s gold. Plus I just love talking to you guys so much!! (Despite what my silence last year might make you think.)

So today I thought I would share what makes me comment on a blog post, aka what compels me to interact with a blogger, so you’re able to apply those things to your own blog posts! I think interaction is KEY to growing your blog and being a successful blogger (whatever “successful” means to you), and I hope this post will be helpful to encourage that interaction!!

Full disclaimer: I’m by no means an Actual Expert on any of this!! I didn’t study any field related to this type of thing (because I am… still in high school…), and the only “research” I did was this. I’m literally just using my own experiences as a 2-year-old blogger, so if none of what I says actually works, you can blame it on my tendency to put in minimal effort. (Just kidding, this post took me a long time to write.)