Tuesday Ten: Reasons I Love Book Blogging

In honor of The Broke and The Bookish's one year aniversary, this week's Top Ten Tuesday topic (yaaay, alliteration!) is Top Ten Reasons I Love Being a Book Blogger. I love this topic, because there's a lot about blogging that I adore.

1. Finding out about awesome books I never would have been exposed to otherwise. Since I've started blogging and reading other blogs I've realized how seriously limiting the selections in most bookstores are, especially when it comes to contemporary/realistic YA. If not for being so involved in the YA community I probably never would have read such books as Rival, Della Says: OMG!, The Espressologist, Rain, Flirt Club, The Kid Table, or Harmonic Feedback. And I never would have thought to pick up a Courtney Summers book at all, which would be a major loss.
2. Making bookworm friends. If not for blogging I never would have met (either in real life or the internet) so many people who share my love of books and YA in particular. It's incredibly awesome to be able to have bookish conversations with people.
3. Getting to know authors. Before I started blogging I'd never been to an author event and mostly thought of authors as very strange and powerful human beings. Somehow they got to write stories and get paid for it! And get people to read them! And to me this is still the coolest thing ever. However, since blogging I've also gotten to know a few authors -- they still amaze me, I'm still in awe, but I've also learned that a lot of the issues I struggle with in my own writing are the same issues that published authors come up against. The difference between us is not the great chasm I once thought it was. Almost as cool as that is the fact that most authors seem to actually enjoy getting emails and tweets from readers, which makes me so happy.
4. I love writing reviews. This might be an odd thing to say because sure, after a while writing reviews can start to feel like a job, a chore that must be done. But the honest truth is that I love it. I love getting to write down and even analyze my reactions to a book -- what worked, what didn't, and if others will have the same reaction as I do.
5. #YALITCHAT. If not for being a part of the blogging world and following some amazing authors and aspiring authors on Twitter, I might never have stumbled upon the #yalitchat, a once-a-week Twitter discussion on writing YA. 
6. I've found critique partners/beta readers. Much like finding good friends, I have a notoriously difficult time finding good CPs and beta readers. I've tried everything from AW forums to in-person writing groups and it wasn't until I started really talking writing with fellow aspiring writers in the YA blogging world that I found a couple of really great beta readers who both give good advice and actually like my writing, even when it's in the rough stages. 
7. Inspiration. I'm constantly inspired by the amazing books I get to read and review and talk to others about. It's awesome. You might expect that after a while talking about all the books and writing down reviews and thinking about them so much would ruin the experience of just reading for me, but it hasn't. No, it seems to make me love it even more somehow.
8. Reading excellent books before anyone else and then being so excited for others to read them. Of course I love getting books in the mail sometimes, but what I really love is getting an ARC of a book that isn't out yet, reading it, and loving it, and being so excited because everyone else is going to love it too (how could they not?) and then just be bursting at the seams for the book to come out, for people to read it, to have people to gush over it with.
9. Reading the other side. I have a bad little habit of going to read all the reviews that disagree with a book I particularly loved (or, um, didn't love). I like to see why other people liked it or didn't like it, how their opinions could be so far from my own. It fascinates me how one book can inspire a thousand varying reactions, some completely opposite each other.
10. It makes me happy. Blogging doesn't have the must do this feeling that school or working has, and a blog post is so much quicker and easier to write then a novel. It doesn't take the place of anything, but sometimes when I'm stuck on a particular plot point or chapter it's nice to know I can still write a nice blog post. Blogging is a very low-pressure hobby and it makes me smile. :)