Books are great. And that’s just a given. It seems really weird saying what’s always seemed so obvious to me. But that’s besides the point. Joining the Guardian children’s and teen books site is surely a pinnacle in my tale (my autobiography would be called “Confessions of a Bookaholic’, for reference), and as part of what you do for the site, you gain so much experience and you find yourself throw into a level where so many new things happen, and I’m writing today to talk about just one of these.

Those of you who happened to notice or those of you who stalk me in the site or even in real life will know that my review of Phoenix by SF Said went up recently, and it was released and announced to the world via the medium of Twitter and it was sent out like this:

Believe it or not, @LuWrites was the first to respond with a bit of criticism towards my thoughts. I responded, and then this happened:

Yes, you did read that. The SF Said who wrote the book tweeted back! And the best part? He isn’t the only one to have done so!

I reviewed Solitaire by Alice Oseman a while ago for the site, and that got tweeted as follows:

And then this happened in turn:

But my point in writing is not to tell you about how much authors can find me on Twitter. True, it is pretty cool to go onto Twitter and see Alice Oseman has just tweeted you back about your review, but that isn’t the point.

Twitter is known for being a unique way of connecting, something a social network is designed to do. Just recently, Taylor Swift started stalking some of her fans preceding the release of 1989, and called it #Taylurking. That’s music and a whole different section of The Guardian completely. However, connecting and talking about books via Twitter and other means is something I wholeheartedly encourage, because reading books and just saying, “That was good!” is nowhere near good enough any more, and to have the authors themselves taking a role in this really does say something. It says that our society applauds reading and it wants to connect with them.

How do I know? I did research, and not just one Google search this time round (see review of A Song For Ella Grey)! I went on Tumblr (great start! I know) and I searched for The Fault In Our Stars.

Tumblr is one of those places where fandoms live and thrive amongst each other, and so a simple search for The Fault In Our Stars turns up some pretty weird things, such gems including:

* A creepy GIF of Ansel Elgort turning round and smiling at the camera in a tux. (Thank you worldvalentine!)

* A picture of the final page of TFIOS (thank you lovebringsemotions!)

* A fantastic design for a T-Shirt that I will be ordering and showing to my geography teacher, which, with no copyright intended, I present to you in all it’s glory below (thank you blacwidov)

My point being that people are connecting over books today and social networks are now a stage for this to occur. Twitter and Tumblr are now hubs for this type of activity, and we really should be encouraging this. So if you’ve got a thought or a wacky idea for a T-Shirt, share it with the world and the authors themselves. Lord knows you might even be answered.

And seeing as we seem to all be struggling with this sort of thing, I leave you with these wise words from @whatSFsaid

If you have any thoughts on anything or want to recommend a future book for me to review, tweet me @thurrockjoshua.

Have you got a great story of connecting with an author on Twitter? Let us know by emailing childrens.books@theguardian.com with the heading “author connect” or on Twitter @Gdnchildrensbks and we’ll add the best to this page.

Book loving teens can also connect with other book loving teens who are members of the Guardian children’s and teen booksite by using the #GdnBookMembers and then following each other! Love books and not a member of our site? Come on in, the water’s fine!