This weekend I have been in Chicago for the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) conference, followed by the ALAN workshop. (Many have wondered about this: ALAN stands for Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE.) As part of the ALAN workshop I organized a breakout session featuring two prominent teenage bloggers who review books and publish essays related to writing, publishing, and reading literature for teens–Ari Valderrama of Reading in Color and Maggie Desmond-O’Brien of Bibliophilia–Maggie’s Bookshelf. Unfortunately, Maggie fell ill shortly before the conference and as a result is appearing virtually through an interview and a PowerPoint of some of her favorite posts. When I received and read the interview this morning, I felt I had to share it with the readers of The Pirate Tree.
Maggie Desmond-O’Brien lives in rural Minnesota, where she was homeschooled for much of her school career. She received her diploma at the age of 15 and now attends college. I met her during a blog tour for Gringolandia; she has a special interest in Latin America and for many summers attended a Spanish-language camp in Minnesota.
When (and at what age) did you start Maggie’s Bookshelf–Bibliophilia? Why did you decide to start the blog?
I began book blogging in August 2008 after a long stretch with a personal writing blog (now offline), when I was fourteen. Before I started Maggie’s Bookshelf, I’d tried starting any number of book clubs and events, but always ended up disappointed that my friends weren’t as into it as I was. Most of my real-world friends are bookworms, too, but I think it is a special kind of obsession to some people, and it’s so hard to connect with people that share that obsession. I think it used to be that you had to live in New York City, or at least on the East Coast, to get even a taste of that, and that was an endless frustration to me. Book blogging has been great because it’s brought so many of these people together at last, around the world.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I also started it because I’d just read a run of really terrible books, and my family quit listening to me complain. I ended up deleting those first reviews from my blog later because they were so nasty! It took me awhile to figure out that so many authors were online, too, and that even brutal honesty can go too far. I’m still embarrassed about those!)
What were your biggest challenges when you first started? Do you still face the same challenges now, and what new challenges have you encountered?
My biggest challenge when I started was figuring out how to exit the vacuum. With my first blog, I never had more than one follower and a comment or two, and I figured book blogging would be more of the same. Imagine my surprise when I discovered The Story Siren, who had thousands of followers even at the time. I found Reading in Color shortly after, and the rest feels like history. That, along with starting a Twitter account, was what opened the door to all sorts of blogs for me.
I still sometimes feel stuck on the outside—there are just too many blogs to keep up with, it feels like!—but I’d say my biggest problem now is the feeling of competition. There’s so much scrabbling over ARCs and interviews and followers and giveaways and “big names” that sometimes just kills the joy of blogging for me. Sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on why I started the blog in the first place, which was just because I loved books, not to be the best or biggest book blog out there.
How do you get the word out about your blog?
Twitter has been a huge help on that. I’ve had a few posts that, if they haven’t gone “viral” per se, have certainly been passed around and brought a lot of attention to my blog, which is always exciting. I spend as much time as I can finding new blogs and commenting on old favorites, because if you can’t take time for other people, you can’t expect them to take the time for you. Blogging really is a social thing, first and foremost.
How do you pick the books that you review?
Mostly through the recommendations of other bloggers! If I see a book getting a lot of buzz, I try to buy it or find it at my library. Of course, I also love finding books that are a little off the beaten path that I can share with people. I’d say books that I’m reviewing on request, mostly from small presses and indie authors, make up about half of what I review.
One thing I’ve tried to be careful of lately is to pick only books I think I’ll like. I went through a phase where I decided to review pretty much everything that came my way, and as a result, I ended up reading a lot of horrible books and getting burnt out on reviewing. Now I focus on books that capture me in some way, mostly quirky sci-fi and contemporary and very little romance. I like romance, but only in small doses.
How does your blog go beyond reviews to address issues of interest to teen readers?
When I’m not writing reviews, I blog about what I’m thinking about, whether that’s serious things like censorship, book banning, and diversity issues in YA, or sillier things like my favorite romantic heroes and heroines, or covers I hate (dead white girls in pretty dresses with tilted faces, ugh!). I’m running a poll on my blog right now about what posts people like best on my blog, and so far my “YA Trends” posts have gotten even more votes than my reviews. That surprised me a lot. The coolest thing about blogging has been watching your words make a difference, even when they just feel like ramblings.
You live in a rural area and have been homeschooled. How has the blog contributed to your educational experience? Do you feel that being homeschooled has given you a unique perspective on the literature? Has it presented any challenges that non-homeschooled bloggers may not have?
Education-wise, the coolest thing about blogging has been how it’s pushed me as a writer. I’m terribly lazy—having a blog with followers and review requests that I feel like I need to keep up on has pushed me further than I think I would have gone otherwise. It’s also been neat to connect with other homeschoolers. We suffer from the same scattering that all the hardcore bibliophiles do, I think. Two other homeschooled book bloggers in particular—Emma at Booking Through 365 (http://bookingthrough365.blogspot.com/) and Jessica at Shut Up! I’m Reading (http://shutupimreading.blogspot.com/) have been wonderful to share experiences and advice with, and homeschooler-all-grown-up, author Jaclyn Dolamore of Magic Under Glass and Between Sea and Sky, has been a huge inspiration to me.
I think the unique perspective I have is due to the fact that, right up until I started college last year, I’ve just had so much time. I would read 250-350 books a year, easily, and that makes you look at books differently, I think. Far from being a challenge, homeschooling has been a spectacular advantage in book blogging. I’ve had so much opportunity and support from my family to just explore.
How has your blog influenced your educational and career plans?
Blogging about books has made me realize that books—writing them, writing about them, editing them, designing covers, whatever—are 100% what I want to do with my life, and that’s changed everything. Once upon a time I was convinced I would be a scientist, maybe a particle physicist or a botanist (I think I even wrote as much on a guest post on Ari’s blog!). Now I know I’ll be a writer, because there is nothing in the world I love more than words.
The people I’ve “met” online through my blog have been a huge influence as well, and have given me so many opportunities I never would have gotten otherwise—this panel is the perfect example! I’ve interviewed my favorite authors, had my reviews blurbed on the back of books I loved, and made a name for myself. I feel like blogging has given me such a head start in life, and it doesn’t get more exciting than that.
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