An Interview with Kristina in Canada | Reading Around the Globe

1. What is your name? Kristina
2. Blog URL? Books and Dachshunds
3. Twitter handle? @DoxieLover_27
4. Where do you live? In the province of New-Brunswick, Canada
5. Do you find that there is a culture of reading where you live? If not, tell us a bit how you came to be one! I don’t think so.. It’s not something that’s really “known” if it make sense? When I was in school people was shaming me for reading (like mostly everywhere I think) so it’s always coming to a surprise when coworkers turns out to love reading, specially if younger than me. You’d see a few people reading, and we have a public library at work; but nothing that’s really mediatized alot and screamed up the rooftops. For me reading was passed down onto me by my godmother. She had a HUGE library and I started by borrowing her tintin’s adventures comics and she’d read them to me. Aswell as the find waldo and later after we moved we’d have little reading nights when she’d come visit us. Meaning we would just chill on her bed together and read our own book, sometimes sharing a few bits
6. What kinds of books do you enjoy reading?  Thrillers and Romance has been a love since the beginning. Then I’ve found a love for Contemporaries, YA and fantasy later when I discovered the book blogging world.
7. Have you always been a reader? Yes! As early as I remember. (see Q.5)
8. Do you also read books published in your native language/published locally to you? If so, tell us a bit about what kinds of books are published in your country! Oh yeah! I love to read in French, after a while of reading in English my brain just need that “rest” with easily readable stuff. Although we are a legally bilingual town, majority of what our bookstore has is English. We’d have like HALF in French books of what they own of English books. Which was a bummer when I couldn’t read in both my languages, but now I can freely pick whichever so I’m not too too bothered now. Though I don’t read published locally (though I’d read Quebec-based books! One province away..) just because most of what is published here that I know of is mainly Historical Acadian fiction stuff.. And you should know Historical is NOT my cup of tea.. Fiction or not. The most iconic one is “La sagouine”, where a nearby town has made a whole tourist-y island thing were actors live-act as the characters in their old-looking houses and hosts theater dinners.
9. Are there libraries where you live? If so, what kinds of books can you find there? Are you able to get the books that you want? We do have public libraries, it’s even available on overdrive which surprised me alot! I’m honestly not sure about how soon we get new release as I haven’t used it that much times yet (SHAME, I know) but I find we have quite the variety. Specially in Teenage books translated in french! I was surprised to see how many french books our library had when we stepped in it for the first time – I hasn’t looked at the English selection, but mostly all that I searched for on Overdrive was there.. But I do live in one of the biggest town in NB, I think, probably the second big one – so it makes sense ours is bigger than smaller towns up north.
10. How prevalent are English published books where you live in bookstores? (For example, books printed by HarperCollins.) To be honest it’s not something I really pay attention of.. Though we do have one of Barnes & Nobles Canadian equivalent (Indigo Chapters) -and from what I’m seeing on the website, it’s pretty available for us. If they do not carry it, we can order it on their website to have it delivered in our store or to our house.
11. Do you use NetGalley or Edelweiss to request electronic galleys for review? If so, what kind of success rate would you estimate for you personally? I do! I had quite the lot of rejection when I started over there.. But honestly it doesn’t seems like it’s affecting me so much anymore. I upped my Netgalley ratio at 100% and now sitting at 94% (missing two books, one of which I cannot open); so I’m mostly getting accepted for what I do request, though I don’t request as much as I did anymore.For stats; I have 9 declined, 14 of feedback sent already, and 2 I still need to get to read and send feedback on. Splitted between English and French NetGalley.
12. Do you experience hurdles or barriers to access for the kinds of books that you read? Please explain if so. Because I enjoy books written in France’s French, yes. We have no problem having English books available in our town, mostly because of us being legally bilingual & English peeps having LOTS more advantages VS us French speakers.. But as I said our French section is not even half of the English section, so there’s a lot of books from France or maybe other countries too that we don’t have. This had been a problem when I was searching for specific France youtuber’s novels; which as I mentioned I could’ve had ordered online but for some reason I prefer not to. Though if you don’t KNOW what France book you want, you may miss on something you’d wanna read but haven’t stumbled across.
13. If you could make one change to the publishing landscape, what would you do? Mostly for our region’s publishing.. I’d love to have more fiction ! I’m sure there’s LOTS I don’t know of, but probably a good 80% are cultural or historical coming from our authors… which is meh. Though a guy I used to know published a poetry book with the help of one of my old teacher’s (she have a publishing house now) but I haven’t read it.
14. Help other international bloggers out… What resources do you use to obtain the books that you want to read? This question is hard for me.. As most in our community read English, which because of the bilingual status and bigger town of the province we are quite good on that side, despite not being US. And Netgalley hasn’t been much of an hassle for me either, I’d suggest to see and grow your ratio near the 90% as much as you can with the “open read” books and hopefully publishers wouldn’t pay much attention to where you are from and would wanna take advantage of that ratio instead. Otherwise I have no idea..
15. Do you have any other experiences as a reader around the world that you would like to share? Not that I can think of!

Please note that all experiences reflected in the interviews are personal and are not meant to generalize what reading access is like in each country. If you are interested in participating please DM me on Twitter.