It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:
- Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
- Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Book Blog Bird and Books, Coffee, Life, Adventures.
- Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
- Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
- Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
- If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
- If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
- If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!
As a general rule, when I am reviewing books or magazines, I write my first draft on LibraryThing, usually over the course of a couple of days. For novels, I usually read the book through and then write the review, keeping the book on hand to reference back to if I need to refresh my memory on specific details. For short fiction collections and fiction magazines, I usually write the review as I read, adding material on each work of short fiction as soon as I finish reading it. After I've finished the entire collection or magazine, I go back and group the stories by themes and try to draw connections and contrasts between them. Reviewing short fiction collections and magazines usually takes much longer and is more difficult than reviewing novels.
On those occasions when I review television shows or movies I usually watch them at least twice before reviewing, which is why I almost never review shows or movies that I don't have on DVD. The first time I watch the material the whole way through uninterrupted. The second time I take notes as I watch, so as to give myself reminders for when I sit and write the review. I sometimes watch the material again while I write the actual review, using it as background noise.
Previous Follow Friday: Qui Shi Huang's Terra Cotta Army Was Completed in 210 B.C.
Subsequent Follow Friday: Water Boils At 212 Degrees Fahrenheit
Follow Friday Home
Hopping through. Speaking of Roman emperors, did you watch the Rome miniseries on HBO? My husband recently watched it on Amazon streaming and loved it. I need to get to it.
ReplyDeleteMy FF
@Alison Can Read; No, I haven't. I am usually at least a couple years behind when it comes to television show in general, and even more so when it comes to HBO shows. I don't have cable (or actually, a television that connects to the outside world in any way other than streaming service), so I wait to get shows on DVD and then binge watch them in large chunks. I'll probably get to watching Rome at some point in the reasonably near future.
DeleteI'm such a perfectionist that it takes me a while to think of what to write and then I just hope that I can get it down the way I had it in my head.
ReplyDeleteMy FF: http://onceuntold.blogspot.com/2015/05/feature-follow-friday-writing-reviews.html
@Stina: Leaving something out that I intended to say is always a concern. That's why I try to write reviews of short fiction as soon as I finish each story, so the work is fresh in my mind. Its also why I take notes on most stuff as I work through it, to jog my memory when it comes time to write the review.
DeleteYou have a nice, organized reviewing style, which is great! No fuss, no stress. I occasionally (very occasionally) take notes when I'm doing a nonfiction review, but for fiction (I only review novels), I normally just sit at the computer and start typing. I just let the words flow. Later, I do a LOT of revising, until I'm satisfied with the resulting review.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting that you review SF books, as well as SF magazines! I'm a HUGE science fiction fan, although it's been a while since I've read and reviewed any such books for my blog. I want to start reading more of them again, though.
BTW, who are your favorite SF writers? Mine are Ray Bradbury and Cordwainer Smith.
I enjoyed reading your answer to the FF question this week. I'll be checking out your reviews!! New GFC follower!! : )
@Maria Behar: I try to be organized, but I wouldn't say that it is without stress or fuss. I tend to write my reviews "inside out", filling in paragraphs ion the body and then going back to writer the first and last paragraphs at the end. I usually end up doing some additional revisions after that.
DeleteI pretty much review anything vaguely related to science fiction or fantasy (and some things that fall outside those genres).
I have too many "favorite" authors to comfortably list, but the top few would have to be Ursula K. Le Guin, Samuel R. Delany, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and David Brin. I also quite like Catherine Asaro, Kameron Hurley, and Alethea Kontis.
GREAT list!! I should have mentioned LeGuin, as she's also one of my favorites. I have some books by Asaro, but have yet to read them. As for Heinlein, I read "Stranger In A Strange Land" several years ago. Gotta revisit it!! : )
Delete@Maria Behar: I like Heinlein, and Stranger in a Strange Land is good, but I find that his juveniles hold up the best. His 1960s material gets fairly political, although they are all still quite good. Once you reach his 1970s output, he's in full-on dirty old man mode and the novels are very hit or miss.
DeleteGood idea - just writing your reviews as you read! I like to take notes, but I may take a page from your book! I write my reviews first on Goodreads generally and edit a million times before publishing them!
ReplyDeleteNew Bloglovin' follower! :)
@Maggie Seagraves: I find that reviewing short fiction as I go through collections slows down the reading process, but results in better reviews of the individual stories.
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