Books Are Cool: Speculate on SpecFic (Shaheen)

Welcome to Shaheen from Speculating on SpecFic!

How often do you blog?

I try to post 4 – 6 times a week, including the Waiting On … Wednesday meme and my own Stocktake Saturday (weekly book haul) feature. Sometimes I end up with fewer posts, and sometimes more, depending on the blog tours and author interviews that pass through.

How did you come up with the name of your blog?

Once I had decided I wanted to start a book blog, I sat down and thought about a name. It quickly became clear that I’m not nearly as witty as I had imagined. Since I knew I wanted a Speculative Fiction themed blog, it seemed natural to include Speculation somewhere in the title. Various combinations of “Speculation” and “Speculative Fiction” yielded nonsense or were titles of other blogs, but Speculating on SpecFic was available, so that’s what I went with. I’m really happy with the name, and wouldn’t change it now even if all the other names were available.

Favourite Part of Blogging?

Knowing that I have introduced an epic new read to someone. I started the blog because I moved away from my closest friends, who had made a game of asking me what I was reading when I saw them. They frequently buy the books I recommend, so I wanted to still give them recommendations even if I wasn’t going to see them in person. A blog seemed like the best idea. Now days I love getting a blog comment or tweet from someone saying that they had added a book to their To-Read pile, or bought it, on my recommendation.

Which current reading trends have you been drawn to (dystopian, post apocalyptic, contemporary?)

The emergence of the YA genre has been amazing to watch, because when I was younger there was a lot of YA Contemporary around, but not much by way of YA Speculative Fiction. Once I exhausted what little there was, I jumped up to reading adult novelists like Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks and Christopher Pike.

I read a lot of YA now, and seeing more and more works of YA Fantasy being published is wonderful. As well as Marianne de Pierres’ works, titles like Defiance by C. J. Redwine, Cinder by Marissa Meyer and The Gathering Dark by Leigh Bardugo have been amazing to read. These, alongside the works of Trudi Canavan, Tamora Pierce, and Kate Elliott, make me hopeful about the growth of YA Fantasy.