‘Tis The Season of Rereading: The Austin Chronicles

Hi Virtually Readers! It is December which is half YAY ADVENT JESUS FAMILY FOOD SUMMER and half OH NO THE YEAR IS ALMOST DONE. But whether feelings of coziness drive you towards books or feelings of panic drive you towards books, our annual feature ‘Tis the Season of Rereading is back for its fifth (!) year. Way back in 2014, Shar and I decided that we really like rereading books in our holidays and wintertime, and ever since then we’ve had this recurring seasonal feature on Virtually Read. It is fun! As always, there is an open invitation to join in if you would also like to reread a book, write about it and link back to us, but no pressure. Anyway I have some gooood stuff lined up for this but the first one is rereading the Austin Chronicles.

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LitCrawl Recap!

I went to a literature festival a few weeks ago, and I thought that it would be fun to do a whole recap on Virtually Read! This was the first proper book festival I’ve been to—at school we used to have a writing and mountain festival which was cool but a bit random, and I’ve obviously gone to some bookish events, but this was a proper festival. I was going to do lots of things anyway, but then I won some competition on their facebook page and got four tickets to the paid events which was cool. It was sort of at a terrible time (the weekend before I had two exams) but I was pretty over studying at that point anyway, so it was okay.

Emily St John Mandel, and Swirling Complexity

I love it when a book that you’re forced to read becomes fun. And then you like that book so much that you read some of the author’s other books. This happened to me with Station Eleven, by Emily St. John. I had to read for class. I would call it dystopia, but we learned about it as science fiction, which I guess is fair enough. It’s a very clever book, and quite a lovely one, considering how it write about unspeakably horrible events.

Thoughts on Blogging with Shar and Shanti

A where we’re at post, a why we’ve been absent post, an honest and confused post. Lots of information you probably will have guessed, but we’re trying to be honest on this platform, this mini-soapbox.

Thoughts on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

Hey Virtually Readers! Shanti and I recently watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before separately. I thought it might be fun to do a co-discussion with what we thought about it. I’m italics, Shanti is bold, let’s go! 

Thoughts on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Hey Virtually Readers! I just finished a fairly famous science fiction book called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? . It’s by Phillip K. Dick, and very much a part of the sci-fi canon. I can see a lot of the ways it influenced YA dystopia that I really like. Anyway, here is a post with some of my thoughts about it.

Our Fourth Blogoversary!

It’s our blogoversary! Shar and I have been writing about books for 4 years on this little site, and we’ve changed a lot over that time, and hopefully gotten better at writing. We’re going to sort of interview each other about it to celebrate, because writing posts together is fun. This is definitely something to celebrate, and we’re so glad to be here to do it!

On science, reading, and why I’ve been getting into more nonfiction of late

^^^ I hope this post lives up to its title hahaha I titled if before I started writing. As you may know, I’m a science student. Most of the book bloggers I know that have been/are at university are doing arts. This post is about why science people often disregard reading (fiction) and why I think this is silly.

Is it still worth reading if you don’t remember it?

Hi Virtually Readers! The other day I was writing a review that I’d started two weeks after finishing the book, then left half finished. By the time I’d finished it, it had been more than a month and I had forgotten one of the main character’s names, as well as a lot of the minor plot points. To be honest I forget the details of most books I read—a year after I’ve finished it, only a few slightly random snippets of information will remain. So this got me wondering: is it still worth reading a book if you’re not going to remember it?

Book Bloggers Responsibilities

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about whether it is a book bloggers responsibility to promote reading, and if you want to know my thoughts on that, go read the post! but I also promised to write a post about book bloggers responsibilities in general, and this is that post. What are a book blogger’s responsibilities? After all, this is something we do by choice; not just reading, but reading and then making things out of it. Do we have any obligations? And what does that mean for me?