Day 8: Quick! Write 15 bullet points of things that appeal to you on blogs.
- Personal replies to comments. Always good to be listened to and have ongoing conversations
- Discussion posts about themes, genres, characters, reading habits, etc. etc.
- Wide variety of books reviewed - old, new, different genres, different age groups... surprise me.
- Well-written content: correct spelling and grammar, and intelligent discussion of the books reviewed. I'm not asking for a thesis, just an idea of why you liked or didn't like a particular read.
- Pictures! Give me something pretty to look at.
- Blogs that are quick to load and don't make my computer freeze up. My laptop, Ruby, needs to be treated gently, and so I won't visit your site if it crashes the internet every time I try to read it.
- Book-to-film comparisons. Is the book always better, or only nearly always?
- Non-book-related posts, whether that be personal updates, film reviews, shoe collection analysis, crafty creations or beautiful baking. I like to get to know the blogger as well as their reading taste.
- Rants - whether about feminism or web etiquette or whether the word "indescribable" should be banished from every writer's vocabulary, it's great that people are passionate about things, whether I agree or disagree with the points made.
- Features, posts or styles that are unique to this particular blogger; not just the same memes and reviews that can be found on a hundred other blogs. (N.b. Memes are great starting points, and I particularly love the Top Ten Tuesdays, but I think your blog benefits from using them sparingly and mixing them with original content.)
- Theme weeks or months: for example a week of Jane Austen posts, Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy, LGBT in teen literature or Round the World in Eighty Books. (Feel free to swipe any of these feature ideas for your own blogs.)
- Geekery! Science fiction, fantasy, comic books... a well-placed Princess Bride, Firefly or Star Trek reference will go a long way in making me like you. Geekery combined with handcrafts, doubly so.
- Likewise, a love of Anne of Green Gables will pretty much guarantee that I will love you forever. Especially if you mention the lesser-known, later books in the series.
- Twitter! It's certainly not essential, but it gives me another way to connect with a blogger and get to know them as a person.
- Bloggers who don't take blogging too seriously. Who do it because they just can't shut up about books, and if anyone from the book industry takes an interest, then that's just a bonus. Book-lovers who want to connect with other book-lovers.
ZOMG, DO I DO THESE THINGS?! Thought every book blogger reading these lists of late. :)
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I think I do most of them, ish, probably. Maybe? I don't really do themed weeks as such, mostly because I just don't have time to organise them at the moment. Except that Page to Screen thing I did a year or two ago, which was definitely good fun.
I also agree with the 'please don't kill my laptop' one - there's ONE book blog I would otherwise be following that completely destroys my laptop every time I open it and I've had to unfollow so I don't keep clicking onto it without thinking. It takes so long to sort itself out that my whole laptop can freeze for 15 minutes and I end up restarting the darn thing and not reading the post in question anyway.
*tries hard to think of a Princess Bride reference, quick* *fails* *sails away towards the Cliffs of Insanity* SEE WHAT I DID THERE?! Yeah, bad example. :(
Writing this list made me think a bit about future ideas for this blog: if I like reading this stuff, maybe other people would too. (like theme weeks or original regular features.)
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