Nick's Book Blog Backup

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. This coming week is my last week home before I head back to university next Sunday. *sad face* I'm going to miss being surrounded by my family. :( Anyways, today's post was inspired by Nereyda's blogger confessions post . If you haven't read it yet, you should check it out for some honest opinions of certain things within the book community. I started writing down some of the confessions for fun, but the list became long, so I decided to post it. Some of these may seem a little harsh and you may not approve of them, but they are my opinions and this is my blog, so I should be able to post what I want. If you disagree, feel free to comment, letting me know! I won't take offense. :) So here goes: Image Source #1 I've had to mute a few bloggers on my Twit...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts.  Image Source Hi everyone! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. I can't believe how it's already a week into August. Time sure does fly by. Today, I wanted to talk a bit about broadening my horizons when it comes to reading. It's a topic that I've been thinking about since the beginning of summer and spurred this post randomly.  Image Source I don't know about you guys, but I'm stuck in this cycle of reading the same genres of books. For the most part, I read contemporary, fantasy, dystopias, historical fiction and some adult contemporaries and historical fiction novels. I can't help but feel that I'm missing out on other genres. I'm someone who settles when I find a genre I enjoy. I used to only read murder mysteries for 2-3 years because I was so comfortable in my bubble and unwi...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi everyone! Today I wanted to talk a little bit about the topic of book shaming . It's a topic that enrages me when I see it or experience it, so I thought it would be a good idea to highlight the various ways that book shaming occurs. To begin, book shaming is basically shaming someone for the books that they read or for simply reading . I personally have experienced this in two ways which I'm going to discuss in this post.   I think the most obvious book shaming occurs in the form of people thinking that it's weird when you're an adult reading YA books. When I got into YA myself, I was a teenager, so I didn't completely understand how frustrating it is for someone to make snarky comments such as ," You read YA? Aren't you a little too old for that? Aren't those books really juvenile...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi book lovers! Today, I thought I would answer a question that many of you have asked me over the past year. I get asked how I'm able to balance university, personal and blogging life and still manage to read about 20-30 books a month . I wish I could say that I had some magical power that I was bestowed upon which allows me to read like a maniac or that my days consists of 30 hours instead of 24 hours, but sadly, that's not really the case. I've just accumulated some habits over the years that allows me to read a book in a day or two. So, I thought I would share some tips with you guys.  Setting aside time for reading is the most important part I think. When I first started college, I would only read a book a week because I was so disorganized when it came to my schedules. I've learned to set aside so...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Yes, the title says it all. I'm breaking up with Twitter and I think it's the best decision for me.  When I first joined Twitter back in 2012, I loved it. Over the past few years, Twitter and the blogging community specifically, has morphed into something that I'm not really happy with. Twitter used to be all about promoting your blog posts and getting to know the people behind the blogs. It was a great place for discussions and just a pleasant way to get to know bloggers better and make new friends and discover new blogs in the process.  As some of you know, I took a one week blogging break last week and I only logged onto Twitter a couple of times during the break. I was surprised that I didn't miss it more. I got back from my break and realized how I actually did not care for Twitter or tweeting anymo...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hello lovely readers! Today, I have a very exciting post that has been brewing ever since I saw the #quietYA hashtag on Twitter. The basic gist of the hashtag was to share underrated books. With all the hyped titles, there are just so many books that fly under my radar frequently. Plus, when you're a blogger, you have a tendency to focus on upcoming reads instead of already released older titles. The conversations on Twitter were very eye-opening because I came to realize just how many great books out there go unread because they are shoved away by other bigger titles. They deserve more love too and it made me sad that I wasn't hearing more about these quiet books. Which is how I came up with the idea for this post. I asked a few of my good blogger friends to share some underrated or unread YA titles with a short ...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi guys! Today I'm here to talk about commenting. This post is partly inspired by Heidi at Rainy Day Ramblings' fabulous discussion post on commenting. I thought I would add my part to the discussion as well and share my thoughts. I personally strongly believe that commenting is one of the most important parts of building your blog's audience. And by that I mean, commenting on other people's blogs and inviting them to visit you, indirectly. Commenting is an extremely time-consuming process, for me. It usually takes me about an hour and a half to go through my feed and write something thoughtful. I actually wake up an hour earlier than I need to so I can get some commenting done before I get to class. So, it can be a huge let down when you take your time to write something encouraging on someone's blog ...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi everyone! Today I wanted to explore whether book bloggers have an impact on book sales. I've had this conversation with friends in the past before where I've wondered if we, as bloggers, have a huge of an impact in the sense that we can lead to making of sales. Without any real statistics,it's hard for me to imagine if we do have that kind of power.  While the YA blogging community might be a HUGE HUGE community with thousands of people from all over the world, we are also pretty much of an isolated community. We don't really have a solid connection with other readers. That is, what I'm trying to say is that most of our readers and commenters are actually other bloggers, at least in mine and some other friends' cases, this is true. I'm sure there are some other bloggers that actually have a l...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi booknerds!  Nereyda and I were having this conversation the other day about what having a book blog really means when we started talking about "reviewing". It got me into my thinking mode and I was able to come to several conclusions, but I was also attacked with so many questions.  First of all, I've come to the conclusion that I am not a reviewer/critic. Merriam Webster defines the review as "a critical evaluation". When I write my "reviews", I'm actually just sharing how I felt of the book and how the book impacted me. I'm not talking about the writing style, the grammatical errors and the typos. Those things don't really bother me and I don't consider them when I'm reading a book unless they are overwhelming. I also don't look for these when I read other blog...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi booknerds! I hope you all had a wonderful week! I have finals this week after which I'll get spring break (a.k.a when I devour all the books!). I'm here to talk today about something that honestly bugs in me in the blogging community. This post was inspired by a conversation I had with Nereyda a long time ago (honestly, I think she inspires all my posts here!!). The whole "the right way to blog".  Source Please excuse my french, but I call complete bullshit on that. I've seen these posts on multiple websites and every time I've come across them, it's made me kinda furious. You know what posts I'm talking about. The ones that discuss how you should create the perfect blog to attract ALL the viewers or the blog that actually suits the writers of these posts. I'm telling you, there i...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. HAPPY VALENTINES DAY, beautiful readers! Since today is all about the day of love (everyday should be day of love!), I thought it was apt to share a list of my favorite OTPs of all-time! I struggled to keep this just at 5, but when I thought about it these are the couples that have remained with me, long after I finished reading the book and that immediately came to mind.  So there you have it! Are some of these couples your favorite OTP as well? Who are some of your OTPs? Please share in the comments below!

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Today I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the ugly side of blogging. Before I get started, please know that this is my personal opinion and I'm in no way trying to attack anyone. These are just things that I have observed throughout my 3 years as a blogger and I'm also genuinely curious about everyone else thinks.  One thing that I have noticed is how my negative reviews usually get more views than my positive ones. I've also noticed a similar trend on my Goodreads reviews. My negative reviews always have a ton more likes than my positive reviews. Even if you take a look around a book's Goodreads page, 90% of the time, the top review, that is the most liked review, is usually a negative review. That makes me a little sad, especially when it comes to my own reviews. I put a lot more effort into my r...

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts. Hi guys!  Today's topic is a little bit controversial. I debated whether it was a good idea to even talk about this on my blog, but after having read Jamie at The Perpetual Page Turner's post , which is absolutely brilliant by the way, and a push from my friend Nereyda at Mostly YA Book Obsessed , I finally got the courage to type this all out. Some of you will probably resent me for this, but I wanted to lift it off my chest because this is something I've been struggling with since the past few months and I've made many observations on Twitter and different blogs that indicate that I'm not the only one. Are some of us obsessed with ARCs? My answer? Yes. When I first started blogging back in December 2011, I didn't even have a freaking clue as to what an ARC was. I started blogging as a way to share my...