February 25, 2021

Interview With a Bookstagrammer - February 2021

Welcome to February's 'Interview With a Bookstagrammer! This month we spoke to the brilliant Erik (@breakevenbooks). We love Erik's bookstagram, but we really recommend you checking out his booktube channel too for some great book chat!

Thanks for talking with us, Erik!

How did you first become involved with the bookstagram/booktube community? Can you remember the moment you decided to create your account?

I actually owe it to my friend Kylee. She told me that I should start a blog because I talked about books so much and that kind of sparked everything kicking off. I made a blog and started doing book reviews and kind of built up this brand of Breakeven Books. Then I ventured into the booktube world and have been making videos for about 2 years now. The bookstagram came around somewhere in the middle of all of this and I used it a lot for book giveaways and short reviews of books that I enjoyed! I mainly focus on my booktube now but still try and post to all platforms as much as I can!

What’s your favourite part of the community and why is it so important to you?

I think my favorite part is connecting with other book lovers. It is so nice to be a part of this community of like minded people that all enjoy reading. We uplift and support each other in our goals to read and share our opinions and recommendations to each other. I have found so many good books because of this community!

Has your content evolved over the years, tell us more about that! What opportunities has bookstagram/booktube brought you?

Definitely! I started out just writing book review blog posts and now I am creating book related videos on Youtube where I discuss my favorite books, what I will be reading each month, my thoughts on the books I read each month and lots of other creative content. I created a winter readathon with my boyfriend called the Reindeer Readathon and I am even delving into book Tik Tok now (still new to that though).

Do you have any other hobbies alongside books and reading? We’d love to hear more about them…

I spend most of my time reading and writing when I can but when I do find time, I love to play video games with my friends. It is our way of bonding since we all live in different cities. We mainly play a game called League of Legends. Other than that, I play volleyball, rock climb and am always down for some board game nights.

Have you always loved books? Tell us the book that cemented your love of reading! Any particular author who’s a huge inspiration?

I’ve loved books ever since I learned to read. It was the most exciting thing for me growing up because these books could transport us to another world and everything was open to our imagination. The book that really got me back into reading in college was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and then I read Read Rising by Pierce Brown and I was hooked. I will read anything by him as I have yet to be disappointed. His books always have me on the edge of my seat and are just done so well.

Let’s talk about your favourite characters! You can invite three fictional characters from literature to a dinner party, who are they and why did you choose them?

Haha, most of the characters from my favorite series are pretty barbaric so I’m not sure I would want to invite them to dinner (although it would be quite entertaining). I think I would invite Mark Wanted from The Martian because his commentary would be hilarious. Then I would invite Kay Grant from The Illuminae Files since I feel like she could teach me a thing or two about coding. And lastly, I would invite Finnick Odair because who wouldn’t want to look at him from across the dinner table *insert heart eyes here*.

What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year?

I think it would be Iron Heart by Nina Varela. It came out last year but I read the first one in 2019 (Crier’s War) and loved it so much and just recently got Iron Heart for Christmas so I am super excited to jump back in and find out what is going to happen. It is also a sapphic read so that’s a plus since I love books with LGBTQ+ rep.

Tell us your favourite account to follow! What do you love about it?

I really love Hilary from Melted Books (@melted_books). She is super inspiring and does Tiktok and Youtube as well! We comment on each others videos all the time and I just think she is so creative with her content!

Okay final hard hitting question… Dog ear or bookmark?

Bookmarks 100%. I have a huge collection of them (I have TikToks showing them off) and I use them in a rotation so that they all get some love. If you dog ear books then all I have to say is…..HOW DARE YOU! JK I’m friendly and everyone can do what they please with their own books :)

Anything else you'd like to add or tell us about?

Let’s follow each other! Here are links to my social media.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BreakevenBooks

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakevenbooks/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/24593912-erik-mcmanus

TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJnULMok/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/breakevenbooks

Email: breakevenbooks@gmail.com

Erik's Favourites

Use the code ERIK10 until 26th March to get 10% off Erik's favourite items.

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