Top Ten Tuesday: Why I Love Books & Blogging

Good morning everyone! And Happy Blogoversary to the hosts of Top Ten Tuesday - The Broke and The Bookish! It's been a fantastic year, and I love following your blog :-)

OK so TTT is my favorite meme of the week, and let's get to it - this week's topic is Why I Love Book Blogging! This should be an easy one :-)

1. Because the book-blogging community is awesome! Honestly, everyone is so nice and social and all have such a STRONG common interest in books and reading. The highlight of my morning is making coffee and sitting down to go through google reader. Now, I started a tv/games/movies/music type of blog over on Wordpress, and I tried searching for a "media" type of community like we book-bloggers have, and it just doesn't exist. Which makes that blog a little less fun. The support that book bloggers give each other is just astounding.

2. Learning about new books! For reals, my to-read list is ever expanding thanks to book blogging. There are such awesome books that I never would have known about or even tried if it wasn't for seeing them on other blogs.

3. "Meeting" people with similar interests! I know it's all just online... but I adore some of you guys! I love finding new book bloggers who are funny or who have similar tastes in books. And I love that thanks to Twitter, I get to actually get to know you guys better. Again, such an awesome community. And while I hope to go to some big book-blogging convention some day so I can meet all of you IRL, that's probably ages away. And I have gotten to meet one awesome book blogger, Steph the Bookworm, because it turns out we live in the same city. She is such a cool person and I can't wait until we can hang out again (when life gets a little less hectic, lol).

4. I get to blab about books. Most of my family aren't readers. It's pretty much me & my older sister, and since she has a job/husband/kids we don't read at the same pace, and sometimes don't read the same things. So a year or two ago, it really sucked to read this AMAZING book, or even a really awful book, and not really be able to talk to anyone about it. Sure, I can talk my boyfriend's ear off, but it's all a one-sided conversation at that point. I love that thanks to my book blog, I can blab on and on about books; about what I like, don't like, want to try, pet peeves, favorite genres, and the various controversies that pop up. And I get feedback! I sometimes almost wish that AIM was still a big thing, so that it would be easier to have these bookish convos with people. But I love that I'm not so alone in my book-love anymore.

5. Memes! OK, some of them are annoying. Actually, the only ones I do regularly is Top Ten Tuesday, and about twice a month or so I'll do an In My Mailbox vlog (IMM is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren). But I do really enjoy a lot of the memes - they're a fun way to blog without posting a review, and they're a GREAT way to find cool new blogs that you might not have discovered otherwise.

6. Readathons! Seriously, I love attempting the semi-annual Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon. The lead-up to it is so exciting... picking books, hoarding snacks and coffee, trying to clear your schedule... and then it's a WHOLE day of reading! Plus coming online to see how my fellow book-bloggers are doing, and trying to support each other to stay awake via Twitter or commenting. It's just too fun. And so that's why I'm trying to host my own little Mini-Readathon next month! It's going to be very laid-back, but also tons of fun! I can't wait!

7. Hearing about bookish news! It's always fun to come online and be surprised by the latest bookish controversy going on. Sometimes it's a news article, sometimes it's a snarky author - but it's always kind of entertaining to see. And book blogging is how I learn about new releases, big bookish events, bookish "holidays", etc.

8. Occassional author feedback! Now I don't get this a lot, because I don't usually accept books from authors or publishers for review. (I'm kind of one of the book-blogging oddballs in that respect, but it's how I roll). But every once in a great while, an author will acknowledge me and my review of their book and that is just the coolest feeling. Not to mention that thanks to my semi-new Twitter account, I can interact with authors once every now and then. I'm telling ya, THESE are the good things about living in the digital age.

9. Challenges! So, I didn't really aim for any challenges this year because I wanted to focus on kind of reading whatever I felt like, and re-reading some of my faves. But I really do love reading challenges. I did a bunch last year and they're so fun! I like interacting with fellow challenge-takers, I like posting challenge updates, and I like that challenges encourage me to broaden my horizons reading-wise. There are so many books and authors that I might not have been familiar with today if it wasn't for challenges.

10. And lastly, hosting giveaways! In all honesty, I get really bored with blogs that host constant giveaways, and I get bored with those giveaway hops. I don't actually enter many giveaways, maybe a couple a year if it's something special. But I do love hosting giveaways! I usually do it in celebration of something, like my birthday or my upcoming readathon. And I haven't given away a book yet - it's usually a gift card so that I don't need the winner's mailing address. But I love that giveaways give me the chance to give something back to my readers, and that makes me happy. Because my readers are the bestest :-)

So that's about it! In short, I LOVE being a book blogger. And I love the book-blogging community to pieces! XOXO guys!