Welcome to my blogoversary celebration! For the next ELEVEN days, I’ll be sharing guest posts with a huge giveaway on the last day after a post shared by me. Keep track of all the posts in order to enter the huge giveaway at the end!
Our 7th post is written by the lovely Juhina of Maji Bookshelf. Read to see how blogging has changed her life!
I am not exaggerating when I say that blogging has opened up a whole new different world for me. I am the overachiever. I’ve always been that in high school and university. I spent most of my days studying and aiming to be the best at that, valedictorian, honor roll, etc. However I always felt like it wasn’t enough.. my sister has her art and my brother has his sports.. so what do I have? I’ve always loved to read, I won’t bore you with the details but Harry Potter did that to me. However during highschool I outgrew middle grade books.. and for some odd reason I never knew the Young Adult genre existed (and did it? 6 to 8 years ago?) so that is why I started reading Chick Lit novels, Sophie Kinsella, Carole Mathews, etc.. but then I grew bored of those because they got so repetitive.. hence my stopping reading completely. So, 3 years ago, during the summer, I had nothing to do and I wanted to start reading, so I started googling things up and that was when I was introduced to the book blog community. I gobbled up all their contemporary suggestions and went and started reading like crazy. Kristi @ The Story Siren’s blog is what gave me the push to finally start my own blog. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it and you should know by now that failure isn’t an option for me. Still, I started the blog and asked my sister to be a part of it, and hence Maji Bookshelf was born! (How clichéd huh?) I loved being part of a community that got my love for books; I also was ecstatic when I was finally introduced to the Young Adult genre. Initially I exclusively read contemporary books but through blogging and meeting new book lovers, I broadened my reading horizon and got into all sorts of genres, dystopian (which was my favorite genre in 2012), historical fiction, mystery (still a favorite!), and high fantasy (currently a new favorite). Of course contemporary books are and will always be my favorite genre. So going back to the main question shelly asked me.. how has book blogging changed my life? It did.. in such little ways that add up to so much. I am a better writer, I have become more social (I am an introvert), I meet so many new, different, and amazing people, whether online or meeting them in real life at book signings and meet ups. It has broadened my knowledge on so many world issues, whether through other book bloggers or books I read. I have also been able to professionally interact with publishers and also pretend that it’s totally normal to be twitter chatting with some of my favorite authors like it’s no big deal (OMG IT ISSSSSS!). I have become better organized and believe that I am able to juggle my social life, my study life, as well as my blogging life. It gives me satisfaction in knowing that anything IS possible, you can do anything you love if you put your heart in it. Book blogging has also introduced me to booktubing, something that I will always be grateful for. Like I mentioned earlier, I am an introvert and I hate public speaking, but making videos and publishing them for the world to see has helped me so much with that, I can go as far and say that it helped me in my academic life. Finally, book blogging has also been able to help me spread the love for books.. I have so many high school and university friends that always contact me for new book recommendations, some who barely used to read and some that I managed to re-spark the love of reading for. So adding everything that I mentioned in this post.. Book blogging has changed my life in the best possible ways and I am forever thankful to everyone who has made me feel welcome and loved in this community. I love being part of something positive, and this is it. If any of you feel like starting a book blog, I say it is worth it, and if any would love to chat books with me then you can find me on twitter! Hope you all have a wonderful day and thanks Shelly for asking me this question, I never really sat down and thought of all the ways that blogging has affected me and through this I was able to recognize how much it truly has affected my life and brought happiness to it. Thanks for hosting me on your blog!
Thank you Juhina for sharing your thoughts! Spreading the book love is something awesome and I recommend that everyone talk to Juhina if you can on Twitter, she’s the sweetest!
Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for another guest post!
