“Books are our umbilical cord to life. They connect us deeply, and with more meaning, to the world. They aren’t about escaping from ourselves but expanding ourselves, and finding within us the tools we need to survive.”
Matt Haig
My writing and book reviews have evolved over the past fourteen months. From when I first started Avocado Diaries, to now, things have changed. I'm almost 300 blog posts in, which feels crazy. I'm constantly editing old book reviews because I'll go back to link something and see spelling errors that need changing or old links not working, and have to make updates. My grammar has also expanded wonderfully over the past year, and I owe that to the many books I've read.
When I started this site as a hobby, I created an Instagram account and posted pictures and snapshots of the reviews.
I then signed up for a NetGalley account, and started requesting digital copies for my Kindle. It didn't take long to get approved, and soon I had quite a few books to work my way through. My process for reviewing books on NetGalley differs from a physical copy, which you can read more about below.
So, where does everything start?
I get my inspiration for books from many sources. Instagram, publicists, from other publications, through interviews with cover designers and authors, and on the websites of publishing houses (usually under the forthcoming tab).
I'm drawn to great cover design, and it's often the first thing that stands out to me, unless I'm already a fan of the author's work. A few of my favourite repeat authors are Sally Rooney, Lisa Jewell, and Lisa Taddeo.
Sometimes the inspiration comes in a form of an email directly from an author asking me to champion their work, and my mind often goes into overdrive, wondering how I can support them. Can I do a giveaway? Do I have the capacity for a full review? A round-up? Maybe an interview? Sometimes it's just buying a book quietly to champion an author. It all depends, but I try to support as many people as I can, with a strong focus on females in the industry.
How do I actually get my books? Well, aside from buying a lot of them to support an author, I also do receive a fair amount of advanced copies that give me the opportunity to give an opinion on a book before it's released.
NetGalley and GoodReads
NetGalley is a wonderful platform for requesting digital copies of forthcoming books. It's where I received the majority of my books when I started my blog. You can sign up for an account and request books through a number of listed publishing houses.
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| My current NetGalley account — one great book awaits my review |
When I'm approved for a book on NetGalley, I usually log in to the platform and either send the book directly to my Kindle or use
Adobe Digital Editions 4.5, where the book will be converted so that it can be uploaded to my Kobo. Instructions on doing that can be found
here.
Once it's on one of my e-readers, my process is to add it as my current read on GoodReads, then I start actually reviewing the book which pretty straightforward. It's not effortless, but there's a flow to it. I typically start reading early in the morning, around 4am, before anyone else is up (my partner and two pets).
Coffee, me, and my book. It's a special time.
I'll spend the morning reading, start treatment around 9, and read again in the evening. Sometimes I can finish the entire book in a day, sometimes it takes three. While working on the book, I'll make a lot of highlights and notes: things that stood out to me, lines I liked that perhaps I want to include in my review and emotions evoked while reading a particular piece of prose.
Once I've finished the book, I'll export all the notes to my computer and review them again. It's kind of an edited version of the book at this point. Then the upload and formatting process begins. When I started AD, I didn't have much of a format, but now I have a structure. I introduce every review with a synopsis provided by the publisher, then a jacket image, my review, an author bio, and links to purchase the book (not affiliated). I'll share my review on GoodReads, and then schedule my piece for a future date according to my calendar on Todoist (more below).
Physical books
I have a different approach to reviewing physical books than I do for digital copies. My love for physical trumps digital, but the review process is slightly longer, so depending on when I want to share it, I may opt for digital. The reason physical takes longer is due to the fact I'm holding a physical book in my hand and turning my review into something digital.
I just finished
My Face in the Light by Martha Schabas, and although I haven't finished my review yet, I will at some point tomorrow or the next day once I review my notes. My review process for this book was that I read it in approximately two and a half days. For physical books, I rely on my cell phone a lot. I'll open the notes app and start a new note titled with the book name, and there I'll start bulleted points with everything I noticed about the book from start to finish, which usually ends up being around three thousand words.
I'll also use the camera to take pictures of paragraphs that I want to remember. I did this with five pages from Martha's book. I usually like to include one short quote somewhere in my review if the book has been published. If you're reading an advanced copy, it's often not yet quotable since edits are still being made.
When it comes to writing my review, I'll email everything to myself and use Google Docs to paste all the information into one page, and from there, my editing process will begin. When I feel as satisfied as I'm going to be with my review, I'll upload and format it on AD, and review it on GoodReads.
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| Andrew Neel | Unsplash |
Book round-ups
I love writing book round-ups, because they allow me to reach a much larger audience, and to include so many more titles and authors than I could possibly include on my blog. Again, my reviewing process differs for these kinds of reviews.
For a book round-up feature, I usually only have 100 words to sell a reader on a book I loved. There are many reasons I might love a book — the author's previous book may have been one of my favourites, a short story they wrote might have resonated with me, perhaps I just interviewed the cover designer who walked me through the process, or maybe I want to support the publicist or publishing house, or even just the author, who I feel deserves the spotlight.
One thing I will never do, is write about a book I know nothing about. Every book you see my name attached to, it's important to note that I have spent a good amount of time researching it in advance. If it's a round-up of 15 books, for example, I may not have read all 15 cover to cover, but I will have read excerpts, I will have spoken to publicists and teams who were involved, I may have talked to the authors, and I will have read multiple reviews. I'm also tracking every major bookdeal on
Publisher's Marketplace, and start noting books I want to read months in advance.
I also turn to Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. In Canada, I'll look at The Globe & Mail and Toronto Star. NetGalley and GoodReads are also a great way to get a feel for how the book resonated with the general public, and also some of my fellow bookstagrammers, librarians, and booksellers. Depending on how many reviews there are on there, I'll usually read about 25-50 of these.
My favourite tool for managing my book reviews are Google Docs and Todoist (more on that in a bit).
Taking pictures for Instagram
Once I have reviews uploaded and formatted with a scheduled date, I'll usually try to think of something fun to post on Instagram for the day the review is slated to run. I'm taking this opportunity to say I do not appreciate Instagram favouring reels these days, I'm all about the in-feed posts. I have no idea how to do a reel — except an Irish dancing reel. I used to be a professional dancer. Another fun fact.
Anyway, this is another time consuming activity. But it's a lot of fun, even if it does drive Charlie mad. Like the time I climbed a tree to get a picture of Peter Wohlleben's
The Heartbeat of Trees.
Support from publishers and authors
Finally, my favourite software
I don't know where I would be without Google Workspace. I use Gmail, Google Docs, and Sheets every day. Email is self-explanatory, I like that I can label my emails, and file them in different categories. Docs are where I draft every post. Sometimes I start them on my phone when inspiration hits and later carry them over to Docs.
Something I couldn't live without in my writing is
Todoist. I use it multiple times a day. I use it to make note of each book I have requested, the current status of that book (whether it's been accepted or not, or if I need to follow up, maybe I'll even just note down the tracking number). Once I've received it, I can move it to another tab. If the book is in review, I can move it to the review tab, and once it's scheduled, I can move it to the final tab.
When a review is coming up, Todoist keeps me on track and reminds me of my reviews, both the day of, and days leading up to to a review. I can view my entire editorial calendar on there.
It's also great for interviews because I can make note of who I've interviewed, and who I'm waiting for answers from, etc.
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| Courtesy of Todoist |
Takeaways
I'm always thinking of other book content, and other ways to highlight creative directors, book cover designers, and authors. If it's not on my platform, it's through features on another platform. If it's not on that platform, I'm thinking of other ways to support. Working in some kind of publicity for thirteen years, it's still woven into my DNA, and no matter what, I will always be trying to publicize whatever writer I read and love.
Do I worry about the content I put out there? Very much so. I ran a blog for six years before starting this one. It focused on fashion, travel, and lifestyle. I reviewed hotels and restaurants all over the world. I've never written a bad review (except maybe when my Uber driver has screwed up my delivery for the forth time in a week).
If I don't resonate with a book, or it's not for me, I won't write about it. If I'm considering a book, but on the fence about it, I'll purchase a copy and read it myself rather than requesting a copy. I made the mistake on NetGalley early on with requesting a book and disliking it so much that rather than writing a bad review, I just didn't submit one. I didn't want to hurt the author's feelings, knowing they had worked so hard to bring something to life.
I want to end this post by saying, I love what I do. With the full support of my treatment team, this is a form of therapy for me. And it's also a ton of fun. Nothing I do here is sponsored or paid.
I’m grateful to get to spend so much time interacting with authors, designers, and publicists.
Also, important to note, while this might have been a domino effect of what happened yesterday, I've been planning this post for a while. It just felt timely to publish it today.
Bloggers often ask me, what's your process? So, I hope they find this helpful.
