My Bookish/Blogger Confessions

I've been wanting to write this post up for awhile as I have some bookish/blogger confessions that I thought would be quite fun to post! They're not fascinating, they're not spectacularly interesting but they are thoughts and feelings and things that I'd like to "confess" and I'd be interested to see if you share the same ones, too!

Let the confessions commence!

My Bookish/Blogger Confessions:
  1. My Netgalley ratio is horribly low. And I mean, horribly low. I've seen posts with people saying "My ratio is so bad, it's at 70%." or "50%" - percentages that are quite high. Let me tell you something: My Netgalley ratio only recently reached double digits. Yes, it's horrible and I'm trying my best to raise it. When I first got Netgalley, I requested every book under the sun and now I'm sitting with several books that I have no interest in reading, but I have to in order to raise my ratio. It's quite a quandary, I can assure you. BUT next year I shall solely be focusing on my review copies and when I eventually raise that ratio it shall be a joyous, momentous occasion with plentiful amounts of chocolate cake.

  2.  I'm a slow(ish) reader. I'm not one of those people who can sit down and finish a 400 page book in a couple of hours, I like taking my time to read and I'm the kind of person who likes reading and picturing every single detail. It's very rare for me to read a book in one sitting, as I generally prefer reading books over two or three days.

  3. I'm very behind to jump on bookish bandwagons. Hence the above, I can be quite slow to read books that are being majorly hyped. There are several popular books I haven't read yet: the rest of the Harry Potter series (I plan on reading the next three books over the next few weeks), City of Heavenly Fire, Cress, The Winner's Curse and several hundred other books that have currently escaped my mind. Not only that, but I'm scared to read books that are being hyped because I don't want to have sky-high expectations only to be severely disappointed. Hush Hush and Fangirl being examples of that. I will read the books eventually, but at the moment I'm trying to get through my review pile.  
  4. I feel guilty when I reread. I currently just finished rereading the Percy Jackson series (WHICH I LOVED AND FELT ALL THE FEELS) but after rereading the series, I felt quite bad because I thought of how many review copies I could've read in that time it took to read a series that I'd already read. And I must admit that sometimes it's a dilemma that most book bloggers and even readers in general experience, because why should we read something that we've already read when there's so many new books to read? I mean, I personally reread because I miss the characters who feel like my best friends. I miss the adventures I embarked on with those best friends. Rereading is like living, not reliving, but living a memory all over again and I love that, but, I don't want to feel guilty every time I pick up a book that I've already read. It also doesn't help that I am a slowish reader so reading a book takes me a bit longer and I feel like I'm really "wasting time" in a sense when I reread. But reading is fun, it's my hobby and even if some people view rereading as stupid, if it makes me happy, I'm going to do it, even though I might feel guilty afterwards - which is dumb.

  5. Sometimes I don't feel like reading. And I feel bad for saying that. Sometimes I would rather write, play piano or guitar, draw, blog or do something completely unproductive such as tweet random things or scroll through my Instagram feed. And when I'm doing something that I realise isn't going to actually get me anywhere or dwindle my TBR pile, I start feeling guilty that I'm not reading but I don't want to do something when I don't feel like it, which might result in a reading slump. 

  6. I don't always like writing reviews. Sometimes I finish a book and the last thing I feel like doing is writing a review for that book, especially because I seem to be incapable of writing shorter reviews. Occasionally I don't know what to say and I just stare at the laptop hoping that somehow words might magically appear on screen. Spoiler: They don't. Reviews can be hard to write, especially if you really like the book and I don't always enjoy writing them because writing/formatting a review can take me two hours and sometimes I just want to read other books, but I can't because:

  7. I can't read another book if I haven't finished the review for my previous read. This is a very annoying thing, but it's simultaneously a very helpful thing, as then I don't have 10 books needing to be reviewed. It can be quite annoying though if I want to read another book immediately after but RESTRAINT.

  8. My TBR pile is out of control. Severely out of control. I literally have over 400 physical books and quite a few on my Kindle that I need to read yet I keep buying books. I have, however, been quite good lately and only bought one book the whole of the last couple of months. *pats self on back*

  9. I generally can't read in public places. I'm one of those people who can't read if there's music or a lot of talking, I need relative quietness in order to read which is very, very frustrating. 

  10. I get nervous talking to "bigger" book bloggers. Although they are really nice, I do get nervous talking to them as I know they've been blogging for years and they have quite a large amount of people following them and reading what they have to say. It intimidates me because I don't want to say something silly or amateurish to such well-known bloggers. The bigger bloggers have been very nice to me though, so I'm not as shy to say hi anymore.

These are some of my bookish confessions! Do you do any of these? Which confessions can you make?