If you wonder what this UBP14 is all about, just click on the banner to see how you can connect with other bloggers, but first take a minute to get to know us.
5 Minutes for Books is a sister site to the ultra-popular 5 Minutes for Mom. Janice and Susan asked me to start a book column there way back in 2007. When they decided to branch out into theme-specific sites, they knew they wanted to start one for book reviews since the column was so popular on the site. I’ve been managing the team and the blog since we started in July 2008.- One of my goals from the very beginning was diversity. I hope this site is a resource for people, whether they are looking for a book to read on vacation, a book to help with a specific parenting situation, a new series to hook their kid, or board books to buy for a new nephew.
- Having a team of reviewers helps provide a wide variety of reviews. We each enjoy different types of fiction, our kids are different ages and enjoy different types of books, and since we read and review what we enjoy reading, there’s gotta be a little something for everyone. There are five of us and you can see our smiling faces in the right sidebar. I started at the very beginning, Dawn joined us pretty soon after we hit our groove, then Nancy, then Elizabeth, and Michelle is our newest (though she feels like family now). You can find out more about us by checking out our Reviewer Bios.
- We don’t just review books! At least once a month, you can usually find a movie review on our site.
Our two most popular features are our relatively new Friday’s Five where we share a list of 5 somethings. Today, it’s 5 Things about Us, but check out some of our recent columns. The other most popular thing we do is What’s on Your Nightstand, on the 4th Tuesday of each month. We invite people to link up a list of the books they hope to read this month, whether it’s one novel and one read-aloud with your family or five or more books that you are hoping to plow through. Some people also use it as a review roundup of the books they finished reading last month. Community was another goal we had for the site. We actually used to have something on every Tuesday of the month, but the others fell away from lack of interest. We are proud that people still love this monthly feature, which is something we started in the very beginning! Mark your calendar for April 22 and join us this month!
How to Find the Books You Want
Because we post on such a broad variety of topics, we know that you might just pick and choose which reviews you read, and that’s great. Want to know how to find more of what you do like? If you’re reading a review in a category you like, click the category label and more of the same will come up (i.e. memoir). You can get to the same place — pulling up books by category — by scrolling down to the archives by category at the top of the sidebar.
You can also use our search box to search for specific titles or authors. It works really well — give it a try! That’s such an important feature, it’s at the very top of the right sidebar.
Party Chit Chat
We’d love to know you were here. Please leave a comment — whether this is your first time or you are a regular reader — and tell us what kind of reviews you are usually looking for. If it’s fiction for you, tell us what you usually read. If it’s books for your kids, tell us their ages.
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Before you go, we’d really love to stay in touch. Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.
UBP14 participant played with all your social media icons and liked, followed, joined and posted all that was available to me. Thanks for sharing some of your wonderful reviews. I loved that you can do movie reviews. I really a big time couch potato if i not blogging. Blogging has helped me get away from one monitor to another.