Book Blogger Confessions is hosted by For What It’s Worth and Midnyte Reader. On the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month they will pose a question for book bloggers to answer and discuss.
Question: How has blogging and reviewing changed your reading habits? Do you read a genre now that you wouldn’t have tried prior? Or have you been turned off by a genre you used to love?
Blogging has definitely changed my reading habits, and that’s a good thing. Blogging brought me back to YA. I went through my YA phase around the end of elementary school and middle school years and then I moved on to adult books and never looked back, except of course for Harry Potter. Little did I know that YA books started to actually become really well written and enjoyable and I’m so glad that blogging brought me that.
Prior to book blogging I completely stayed away from anything even remotely sci-fi. Now I realize that I kind of do like sci-fi. I don’t like all aspects of sci-fi, but it’s no longer an automatic dismissal anymore.
I don’t want to say that I’m turned off by it anymore, but I find that since starting blogging I am much more picky about the chick lit books that I read. Chick lit is my go to genre and has always been my favorite but now that I’ve read so many great books from other genres a lot of the chick lit books don’t work for me like they used to.
One other thing that blogging has impacted is how much better I am at picking out books I know I’ll like. Though there have been some mis-picks *coughs* Beautiful Disaster *coughs* overall I’ve found that very rarely do I ever pick up a book that’s less than 3 stars anymore.
I think sci-fi should thank blogging because that seems to be the genre everyone is introduced to through it :) Love your post!
My Book Blogger Confessions
I agree! Sci-Fi used to be so niche and now it’s not, probably because of blogging.
My book world was big to begin with, but now it feels infinite. Part of me misses the day where I just found an author I liked and read every damn book by them… but that led to a lot of unsatisfying reading. I think I’ve become a better reader, and I’ve certainly read better books, since becoming a blogger!
Ditto. If I found an author I liked I read anything and everything, but that does lead boredom too.
I used to stay away from Sci-fi as well !! I’m not into the super intense Sci-fi but I don’t pass it up automatically either. I’m also picky about chick lit now as well, and I used to read ANYTHING that was chick lit, lol.
I’m glad there is someone else out there who normally doesn’t read 3 stars anymore. I often(and BF likes to comment about) feel that people will think I’m just flinging out 4 or 5 stars at will but in fact I hardly ever pick out books I don’t like anymore. I have so many on the TBR if I don’t think it will interest me, I don’t pick it up… and more often than not it works out for me!
Thanks for sharing Kimberly, we have a lot in common with our reading habits it seems :)
Lauren @ Lose Time Reading
Yeah I pretty much know what I like, though sometimes I do wonder if I should be a little more stingy with my 5 stars, but if I loved a book, why not? right?
I totally agree that I’ve become a great judge of what I am going to like! :)
I think it’s the writing about it that helps!
The same thing happened to me with sci-fi. I would NEVER have read that genre before. It’s still not my favorite but I’ve found a lot of enjoyable books in genres that I would have turned my nose up at before.
I agree! Sci-fi isn’t my favorite but I don’t automatically discount it anymore. It’s great what blogging has done for my reading habits.
Sigh! I wish I knew how to pick out books I’ll like. I’m no good at it because I just never know. Books often surprise me for good and bad so I just have to keep trying.
I used to have a hard time with it but I’ve really found my stride in recent months. Could be just a run of good luck thought ;)
“One other thing that blogging has impacted is how much better I am at picking out books I know I’ll like…overall I’ve found that very rarely do I ever pick up a book that’s less than 3 stars anymore.”
That has happened to me too, lately. I used to be much more impulsive in my purchases…hence a couple of mis-picks or three for me too. Being part of the blogging community did help – same goes for being a Goodreads member.
Link to my BBC post.
P.S.: new follower :).
I’m still impulsive in my purchases lol, I’m just making better impulsive decisions!
LOL, nice line.
I love that I get so many recommendations from being immersed in the book blogging world – some time too much though :-)
Better to have too many recommendations than none at all!
Yes, it seems like I’m much better at picking out books that I know I’ll enjoy as well! I’ve only written 1 DNF review, and only given 2 books a 2-star rating and only 5 books a 3-star rating! That’s pretty good, I think!
I agree!