I'd want to highlight No. 6 in particular: interact -- interact -- interact.
And bear in mind that most of the discussion takes place in the dashboard post comments -- and the only people who will see your own posts are those who are already following you. So posting reviews (or other things) will only get you a response if and to the extent that you've acquired a sufficiently large following *to begin with* -- which means that in order to meet people, you really *need* to seek out people *you* want to follow first, and then join the conversation on *their* blog posts, because that is virtually the only meaningful way for people who are not yet following you to take note of you.
(We do have the "shout-out for underfollowed blogs" thread, and thank God a newbie recently discovered in on their own, but ordinarily for someone to be mentioned there it requires someone of the community to have stumbled across the "underfollowed" blog.)
That said, there are a few discussion groups that have been on the active side recently:
* The Flat Book Society (science and popular science nonfiction)
* The Bingo Group (to the newbies: that's the center of activities for all sorts of reading-related games, not just bingo -- and it's by far the most "social" of the groups IMHO)
* The Detection Club (Golden Age mysteries and detective fiction)
* More Historical Than Fiction (as the title indicates, history and historical fiction)
* Mansions, Moonlight and Menace (Gothic romance)
Most of the discussions related to these groups still occurs in the comments of dashboard posts, not in the actual discussion groups. But most of the groups at least have a place where you can say hello, introduce yourself, and find out what's going on in the group at the moment.
I'll just add to Themis's excellent notes by mentioning a small point of etiquette involving #6: there are a lot of people here who don't like others re-blogging their book reviews. I think everyone is pretty o.k. with re-blogging posts about interesting links, events, giveaways, etc. but NOT reviews. New members should check with the post's author regarding re-blogging reviews first.
And bear in mind that most of the discussion takes place in the dashboard post comments -- and the only people who will see your own posts are those who are already following you. So posting reviews (or other things) will only get you a response if and to the extent that you've acquired a sufficiently large following *to begin with* -- which means that in order to meet people, you really *need* to seek out people *you* want to follow first, and then join the conversation on *their* blog posts, because that is virtually the only meaningful way for people who are not yet following you to take note of you.
(We do have the "shout-out for underfollowed blogs" thread, and thank God a newbie recently discovered in on their own, but ordinarily for someone to be mentioned there it requires someone of the community to have stumbled across the "underfollowed" blog.)
That said, there are a few discussion groups that have been on the active side recently:
* The Flat Book Society (science and popular science nonfiction)
* The Bingo Group (to the newbies: that's the center of activities for all sorts of reading-related games, not just bingo -- and it's by far the most "social" of the groups IMHO)
* The Detection Club (Golden Age mysteries and detective fiction)
* More Historical Than Fiction (as the title indicates, history and historical fiction)
* Mansions, Moonlight and Menace (Gothic romance)
Most of the discussions related to these groups still occurs in the comments of dashboard posts, not in the actual discussion groups. But most of the groups at least have a place where you can say hello, introduce yourself, and find out what's going on in the group at the moment.