Book blogger hop: advance reading

This week, I’m once again joining in with Billy at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer‘s book blogger hop, where they post a question which you and other bloggers answer, hopping from blog to blog to see people’s answers. This week, the question is…

How far in advance do you read the books you have scheduled for review?

And the answer is it really depends.  I don’t read a huge amount of review books compared to other bloggers I don’t think, generally sticking to requesting those I am pretty sure I will like (given the author or subject/genre), which means I’m often quite keen to read them and so do as soon as the opportunity arises.

Often, this is months before publication and where I used to fall down is that I wouldn’t review them straight away.  I would make some notes and there they would sit, waiting to be fully written up until close to the release date…by which point the book was no longer clear in my mind and I’m sure I missed much of what I might originally wanted to say.

Now, I review a book as soon as I’ve read it.  I have a personal goal of within 24 hours and am usually quite good at sticking to it.  It’s then scheduled for whenever it needs to be scheduled for.  I’m even organised enough now to have a calendar which shows if I’ve got something posted on a particular day so I can plan when other books with similar review dates can go up (*pats self on back as it’s only taken two years to get this far!).

There is another benefit to this and that’s that I can post the reviews on netgalley earlier than the release date and keep my % up above 80, the magic number and (hopefully) then get approved for more of the books I request (so really want).

What about you, do you read in advance or wait till close to the release date?  If you do, how do you plan your time so you have enough of it to read and review the book without going over (a big fear of mine if I leave things)?

Emma x