Blogger Spotlight #3: Nancy @ Tumbling Books

Today I'm so excited to share with you my interview with Nancy of Tumbling Books. I had so much fun reading her answers (read them and you'll see why). She even included a photo of her calendar. Yowza! This girl's busy. Anyway! Heeeeere's Nancy! :D

Name: Nancy

Blog Name: Tumbling Books

Blog URL: http://tumblingbooks.com

Blogoversary: October 16, 2011

Preferred genres: Young Adult mostly, though I do like Adult books on occasion and SOMETIMES middle grade books

Short Bio: I'm a 21 year old college student (kind of a senior) and intern. I'm DYING to graduate already, because I feel like I've been at school forever. In "real" life, I'm the most anti-social person ever. I hate seeing people and I hate having to leave the house. Um.. I know Spanish! It's my first language and I know some swear words in Tagalog (I had a friend from the Philippines) that I love to say in my head when I'm angry. (hahahaha hi Nancy -Sab) I'm pretty quiet, NOT shy. When I do want to talk, I talk nonstop. I love Twitter and I love my blog!

CONTACT INFORMATION

Email | Twitter

Introduce yourself.

Hi! My name is Nancy. Oh, fun fact: my mom and my sister are named Nancy too. It was our dad's fault. He liked the name. We call ourselves Nancy Cubed. Yes, we're that cool. lol So, I live with my parents, at least until I graduate. I have a boyfriend, who I have been with since I was 15. That's a lot of years!

I'm hoping I'll be done with college in December 2013. I'll be graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and I'm planning on working in Human Resources. Hopefully, I'll be able to move on to publishing or something book related sometime in the future. I thought about writing books, but I'm so fickle. I've tried before and I just can't stick to it. 

Tell us about your early experiences with book blogging.

I started the blog with my best friend in 2011. We had both been working in a bookstore and had just come back from a book convention with tons of ARCs. We didn't really know what to do with them, so we figured we could review them. Thus, Tumbling Books was born! David left Tumbling Books last year and now I have it all to myself. He made his own blog, though. Check out David's blog: http://david-reviews.com.

Blogging seemed so easy at first, but that's because I was doing it all wrong! My reviews were WAY too short, just a tiny paragraph and I wasn't really "reviewing" the book. It was more like I was answering a very specific question. Did you like this or not? It wasn't good. I also hated memes in the beginning, because I saw so many bloggers using them, I thought that they were overused and I wanted my blog to be unique, but I wasn't really posting much. I posted maybe 1 review a week and had very little to post the other days. So the blog was pretty empty. I've since learned that memes aren't ALWAYS bad and they're good in moderation.

It also took me a while to really learn how to change the coding on the layout of the blog using blogger.com. We had one of those layouts that came with Blogger and I tried my hardest to make it our own, but it just wasn't working. I needed a lot more practice with html and css. I hadn't used it in a while, so the blog was constantly changing from one bad layout to another. Thankfully, I've gotten the hang of that now!

Do you have a blogging schedule/routine or you just go with whatever works?

I kind of have a schedule. I try to have at least 2 reviews a week and at least 1 conversation topic. The conversation topic doesn't have to be anything major, even just Top Ten Tuesday works for me. I try to not schedule reviews right next to each other, but get a day in between in which I'll post the TTT or any random topic I come up with.

I just bought a dry-erase wall calendar to keep myself on track and see everything laid out. I have the Editorial Calendar plugin on wordpress (I love it), but I wanted something that I can actually write on. It's definitely helpful because I don't need to turn on my computer to see what I've posted and what is scheduled. I just look at the calendar and it makes my life so much easier!

My latest blogging routine is writing my reviews on my iPad. I have an iPad keyboard, which is amazing, and it makes typing a lot faster. I find that I'm able to focus so much more on the iPad than on the computer. So I've been writing my reviews and other posts on the iPad and have them sync to the computer. This was all written on the it!

How many books do you own? Do you keep them organized in a particular way?

I own 118 paper books. On my kindle, I have about 200 books. I'm a big, huge fan of ebooks! I don't keep my paper books really organized, I just make sure that they fit on the shelf and are aligned, that's about it. I'm much pickier with my ebooks. They are all organized into categories:

• Most Excited For
• Reading/To Review
• Monthly To Read
• Young Adult
• Adult
• Classics
• Non-Fiction
• Humor
• Finished/Completed Books
• Dictionaries

If you were given the chance to choose and direct a movie adaptation of a book (or series), what would it be and why?

This is a hard question! The first that came to mind was The Selection by Kiera Cass, mainly because I just finished The Elite and I loved it. I don't think I should count that one, though, because there might be a TV show in the works already. So... I would go with Crash by Lisa McMann. This was such a fun book and I really enjoyed it, I think it would be great to see Jules' visions come to life.

THE LIGHTNING ROUND!!!

Favorite TV Show: I would have to pick Psych. I love Shawn and Gus. They're the best TV duo and they are hilarious!

Complete the sentence: "If I had a super power it would be teleportation." I think it would be really cool to be able to go wherever I want and come back home instantly. I hate cars, trains, and all other methods of transportation. I would probably dress like a genie too, just to make it cooler.

Guilty pleasure: I don't know if this counts, but READING IN CLASS. If you haven't done it, DO IT. It's amazing. Reading is so much more fun when you're not supposed to be doing it.

Favorite junk food: Chocolate, of course. I love it and I will gladly replace my meals with it.

Pet peeve: I have so many. I just hate everything. Oh! LOUD MUSIC. If I can hear your music coming from your speakers, car, apartment, radio, it's too loud! I do not want to hear it! UGH. So annoying, especially if I'm trying to read.

Hope you enjoyed the interview! Be sure to check out Nancy's blog, Tumbling Books. ;-)