Friday, September 6, 2013

An Introduction and My Name

The New Blog


Hello. My name is Olivia Fowler and I’m 16 years old.
So, now that we've got that out of the way, let’s establish some things about this whole blog experience.
       
Even though I have come to accept that this may only be read by my mom and some very kind friends, I will address you all as if you are a large group of people who are interested in the bookish ramblings of teenager. I’m pretty sure I used the word bookish incorrectly, but I think you get my point.

 1. Please excuse any grammatical mistakes I might. There is this thing called Microsoft Word that I depend way too much on, so if you want to blame someone, blame the program. To be perfectly honest, I've never had much of a problem with grammar or spelling, so I think that should be okay. I feel that now someone is going to point out something I did wrong and say “Ha! That girl thinks she’s a competent writer. She wouldn't know grammar if it slapped her in the face!” Okay, maybe not. But you know what I mean.
       
2. Maybe I should have included this in the previous one, but I thought it deserved its own number. There is a ridiculously good chance that I will use the word “y’all”. I’m from Texas. Y’all is a real word. If it bothers you, just let me know. I may or may not do something to change it.

3. I think those are the main general issues that I wanted to get out of the way. Now, it’s time to briefly discuss the actual reason I created this blog: books.

I love to read.  In about third grade, I realized just how amazing books were. In those wonderful, homework-free days, I would come home, find a book (usually one of my older brothers’), and devour it in one sitting. That sounded a lot weirder in print than it did in my head, but it pretty much describes my reading. I could literally just collapse on the couch and finish a book. This caused two things: a slight obsession and extreme procrastination.

I’m almost twice that age now. I’ve read a lot of books, and I have a lot to say about them.
After reaching middle school, I stopped reading books about dogs going on adventures and started reading more books about romance and “serious topics”. I still remember reaching the age when my parents stopped telling me that the books they were reading were too old for me. It was a liberating feeling, knowing than thousands of books were open to me. Except I quickly realized that being boring wasn’t the only reason I didn’t like a book, in fact, it seemed like half the books I picked up were ones that I didn’t want to finish. And that’s the problem-there are so many amazing books, but there are so many books that are just horrible. Finally, I got to the point where I had scoured every booklist my library and Google could provide. I guess I kind of still am at this point.

I have come to realize something important. Once you get to this point, the only thing left to do is discover. There is no feeling like picking up a book you’ve never heard of, reading it, and loving it. It makes you happy.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m here to do the discovering for you. I find the one good book out of the ten on the shelf so you don’t have to feel the disappointment of not finishing that novel with the beautiful cover. I’ll read a lot of genres, a lot of authors, and any books that you can suggest. And maybe you and I will read something amazing and think, this is real writing.

One last thing. If a book is extremely popular, I probably won’t do a review on it unless I love it or hate it. If you want to know what Divergent is like, you can find hundreds of reviews that put it more eloquently than I do.

Thanks, y’all. Thanks for taking the time to read this ridiculous introduction for something that I have wanted to do for longer than anyone realizes. You are absolutely amazing, and trust me, I mean it.

Love,
A girl who needs to stop talking now.

(Olivia)

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