Meet the Book Blogger Tag [Original]

Hi everyone! Today I’m here with an original book tag! I’m here with the Meet the Book Blogger Tag because I feel like it would be a great way to introduce ourselves to our followers and readers in a post because if you’re like me, you probably have the majority of this information on a variety of posts!

This post contains some basic questions to our favorite books to everything in between, so you can get to know not only the person on the other side of the screen but who they are as a reader!

I know personally that I find bloggers at different points in their blogging journey and love their posts but don’t really know them (and we all kind of forget to reintroduce ourselves periodically to new followers), so I’m hoping that this will help the new people and our friends get to know us better and become a stronger community!

Rules:

• Thank the blogger who tagged you
• Mention the creator Lauren @ Lala’s Book Reviews
• Tag as many (or as few) people as you’d like
• Have fun and get to know one another!

Introduction

Introduce yourself!

Hi everyone! I’m Lauren! The blogger behind Lala’s Book Reviews! I’m 20, a nursing student, and I live in South Carolina.

Something most everyone wants to know… do you have any pets?

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Yes! I have 2 dogs Chloe a miniature schnauzer and Samson a rescue dog we got as a puppy! Then, about a year and a half ago I started my little chicken farm! I now have 20 chickens, and only 4 of them are named (Will, Jim, and Tessa are my female yellow buff Orpingtons and Sebastian is my dark Brahma rooster).

What is your favorite thing to drink?

I love sweet tea and coffee!

What is your favorite season?

I love them all! Sure in SC it’s hot, but each season even if it’s only for a month you can see the beauty that each season has to offer (except for snow)!

Do you have any special talents?

I can play the piano, and I’m good with numbers (yes, I did enjoy all of my math classes in school).

Blogging

When and why did you start your blog?

I started my blog back in October of 2018 a couple of months after I started my social media accounts on Wix when I was in my first year of college before nursing school. I’ll be honest, I thought blogging was a thing of the past; being 20, it sounded very early 2000s to me, but I was very surprised to see that people were still blogging. I had thought about starting a blog a few years prior when I was still in high school but never followed through with it. I wanted to start a book blog so I could talk about the books I love and recommend, so I took the plunge one night and started playing around on Wix and out came the beginning of my blogging story!

It was a rough few months because I was posting things from reviews to unboxings to wrap-ups/hauls and would get maybe 1 or 2 views if I was lucky and had about 10 followers. I cross posted on twitter, instagram, and facebook and nothing seemed to be working for me. So, in January of 2019, I moved to wordpress as a way to try and re-brand my blog (and I didn’t like how Wix was set up) before I decided to throw in the towel and quit blogging. After a few weeks on wordpress, my stats were doing better, people were commenting, and I felt like the clouds had parted after days of raining.

After being on wordpress for over a year, I feel like I have my foot in the book community, but I’m still not fully in it. But, I’m eternally grateful for the people who I consider to be my blogging friends and those who visit my blog in passing!

What is something that you wish you knew about blogging when you first started?

Don’t be afraid to write non-bookish posts! People think that just because your a book blogger, you can only post reviews and recommendation posts, but don’t limit yourself if you want to talk about something else.

I consider myself to be a book nerd 100%, but books aren’t my only love in life. There are so many other things like my love for music, my pets, cooking and baking, gardening, and I shouldn’t have to feel like I need to hide these other passions of mine by not writing about them because I label myself as a book blogger.

What has been the hardest part about blogging?

Since I talked about growing in the other question, I’m going to have to say deciding how I wanted to run my blog.

There are so many things that goes into creating a blog from coming up with a name, finding your writing style, coming up with post content, deciding how often to post, I mean the list goes on and on.

It’s so overwhelming in the beginning because there’s so many things you see all of these people who seem like they have their stuff together and you want to have a system similar to their’s that you loose your own blogging style in the process.

If you asked me back in October 2018 what a book blog was, I’d say a blog dedicated to writing nothing but reviews, so for me it felt taboo to write other posts that talked about books but not necessarily review them! Over time, I’ve found out (for me at least) that people do want to see reviews/ thoughts on books, but they also want recommendations and unboxings and lists of books that you loved but wouldn’t read again to anything else that you could think of. Don’t be afraid to post!

What has been the most rewarding part of blogging?

This is going to sound so basic, but it has been being able to talk with other people who reads books. I live in a good size town, but I don’t really know anyone who loves reading as much as I do, so it has been amazing to meet people a couple hours away from me to across the ocean who loves reading and being able to talk to them about it!

Do you write your posts a head of time or write them the day of posting?

I write my posts to day of posting (most of the time)! Sometimes I have to get things in place for blog tours, but generally I like to sit down and write it before I post! Blogging has become therapeutic, so it’s good for me to sit down for about an hour and focus on this one thing without a million other things going on around me!

Reading

Who are your top 5 favorite authors?

I can’t stand when people ask who my favorite (implying only one) author is, so I decided to ask for the top 5 (not like that’s any easier).

• Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Jenny Han
• Erin Watt
• C.L. Stone
• Kiera Cass

What genre do you read the most?

I love YA contemporary! I’d say that over half of my bookcases are contemporary. I feel like YA contemporary are a good balance of real life problems (ranging from big to little) with romance. I’m starting to read NA contemporary, but it’s hard to consistently find books that aren’t all sex and romance.

What genre surprised you by how much you love it?

I’ll be honest, I’m a sucker for a good reverse harem book (it’s a fancy title for a polygamist relationship; don’t come at me, let me read my books)! The main thing that I like about is genre is that you don’t have to choose when you have a love triangle. Some of the stories have people who are more accepting and jump right into a relationship while others take a lot of convincing.

I started off with Introductions by C.L. Stone and at the time I didn’t know that it was an RH book, but the series itself (the 10 books at that time) was so entrancing that I started to explore the genre. I’ll be honest, there’s some really great books in this genre while other are probably what y’all are thinking and you need to scrub your eyeballs after reading some of that stuff.

Which popular book didn’t live up to the hype for you?

I’ll be honest, it would be The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I feel like John has a very distinct writing style of thought process, and it’s not one that I can follow. TFIOS was one of the first books that I read with the death of a MC, so I feel like that right there was the reason I didn’t like the book.

Who are some popular authors you haven’t read?

There are a good many! I haven’t read anything by V.E. / Victoria Schwab, Leigh Bardugo (I only read 1 book), Lani Taylor, Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff… this is another list that feels a mile long.

What upcoming release are you excited to read?

I can’t wait to read Crush by Tracy Wolff! This is the sequel to Crave, and I can’t wait to get back into this story! Personally, I’m a werewolf person so when I say that I love Jaxon (who’s a vampire), I love him!

Do you listen to music while reading?

I do! I listen to the music I normally listen to during the day while reading! You can find some of my favorite songs here. It doesn’t bother me as long as I have heard the some before and it’s not new to me! I love when I heard a random song while flipping through the radio or on my phone and it reminds me of something I read!

Where else can we find you online?

I’m all over the place! You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads, and Pinterest!

Tagging:

• Kate @ Kate, a Dreamer
• Sarah Kaye @ Parchment Pages
• Mystery Bookworm Blogs
• Marilu @ My Bookish Court
• Danni @ _forbookssake
• Jordan @ The Heart of a Book Blogger
• Mere @ Lore of the Books
• Ellie @ Eleanor Sophie Writes
• Camille @ Casual Fangirl
• Stephanie @ Between Folded Pages
• and anyone else who would like to do this tag!

Thank y’all for reading this post! I hope that y’all will learn something about each other and hope y’all have fun answering the questions! I tried my best to ask all of the “big” questions and hope I didn’t go overboard with the questions!

Happy reading until next time