I talked about doing more memes again, and here we go! There are several Friday memes floating around the book blogosphere and I have decided to join back in with most of them.

First up is Book Beginnings on Fridays, hosted by Gilion @ Rose City Reader

How it works:  Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

and

The Friday 56 was started by Freda @ Freda’s Voice. Freda is currently taking a break from hosting, so in the interim it is being hosted by Anne @ My Head is Full of Books.

How it works:

The ornate script on the board twisted in the candlelight, making the letters and numbers dance in my head.

When we finally found a space, Daniel smiled at me before we parted.

The first iteration of the Book Blogger Hop, which was started in March 2010 by Jennifer @ Crazy-For-Books, ended on December 31, 2012. On February 15, 2013, Billy reintroduced the hop with Jennifer’s approval. The hop will begin on a Friday of each week and end on a Thursday of the following week. Every week, there will be a prompt with a book-related query. The aim of the blog hop is to provide bloggers with an opportunity to follow other blogs, discover new books, make friends with other bloggers, and gain new followers for their own sites.

Which has more power over readers: a book blogger or a professional critic? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer

Answer:

I don’t really like the word “power,” I think of it more as “influence.” That being said, I am more influenced by bloggers than professional critics. Critics tend to have a more “elevated” literary view of things, whereas bloggers are more real and more likely to like a book because of the way it makes them feel than for any literary merit. And I connect with bloggers who are more like me and have similar tastes, so I trust their impressions of books.