When I was a kid I liked to read The Babysitters Club, The Series of Unfortunate Events, The Sleepover Club and The Sisterhood of the the Travelling Pants. The majority of what I read were series books and I think thats partially why I stay away from them now.
During my high school years, I was so caught up with my brand new music obsession that I ceased the hunt for awesome books to read simply because it was too difficult to find anything worth reading.
Then all of a sudden, when I completed school and had a bunch of spare time, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist caught my eye. All I needed to hear was "music", "fiction", "cool" and I was hooked, the fact that Michael Cera was set to star in the movie version didn't cast a bad shadow over it either. This was the book to turn it all around.
I realised Young Adult was the genre for me and went wild with titles like Slam by Nick Hornby, Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin and Go Ask Alice. I also fell onto Sarah Dessen, whose books I absolutely love now.
My wish-list grew enormously from here but I was still limiting myself to what was available at the local library. Around mid-2009 I discovered my very first YA blog, Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf and instantly knew this style of blogging was for me!
I already had the name, Good Golly Miss Holly in the back of my mind from a previous attempt at starting my own clothing store and the rate at which my blog grew followers simply amazed me. I wanted to impress the fellow blog owners and show them I was worth their reading time so I went through a couple of layout changes and hunted down as many memes as I could find but figured out the most popular posts were written in spurts of creativity about seemingly random topics.
I hadn't yet hit the obsession stage of wanting to spend all my money on books but with review copies starting to arrive at my door, it wasn't long before I was knocking out a book a week.
My wish-list grew enormously from here but I was still limiting myself to what was available at the local library. Around mid-2009 I discovered my very first YA blog, Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf and instantly knew this style of blogging was for me!
I already had the name, Good Golly Miss Holly in the back of my mind from a previous attempt at starting my own clothing store and the rate at which my blog grew followers simply amazed me. I wanted to impress the fellow blog owners and show them I was worth their reading time so I went through a couple of layout changes and hunted down as many memes as I could find but figured out the most popular posts were written in spurts of creativity about seemingly random topics.
I hadn't yet hit the obsession stage of wanting to spend all my money on books but with review copies starting to arrive at my door, it wasn't long before I was knocking out a book a week.
My discovery of The Book Depository and hundreds of book blogs, set my shelves alight. When I saw The Story Siren's 1000 followers, I knew this is where I wanted to be someday. I worked on my reviewing skills and even took a stab at the author path with a miserable attempt at NanoWrimo in November 2010.
I could go into much more detail about my reading history but for however long this blogging world lives on and I'm sure it won't be long as the review copies are likely to dry up pretty soon with so many bloggers misusing their trust. I hope to still be reading in five, ten and even fifteen years from now even if it isn't in the same vast quantity it is now.
Q: If you're curious about anything in my life or reading/blogging history, feel free to ask in the comments below!
