The Sunshine Blogger Award Part Two

Part two of The Sunshine Blogger Award comes with answers to all the questions I was asked by another three nominators. I was tagged by Niraja at Fantastic Books and Where to Find Them, Sarah at Paper Words, and Laura at The Book Corps. Thanks so much for the tag everyone, I had a lot of fun with this one so I hope you enjoy reading my answers just as much.

Rules:

• Thank the person who nominated you.
• Answer 11 questions set by the person who nominated you.
• Nominate 11 bloggers to receive the award and write them 11 new questions to answer.

Niraja’s Questions:

1. Name the last song that was stuck in your head.

Green Light by Lorde. Kind of an addictive song but I had one sentence from the chorus stuck in my head for days and it drove me insane.

2. What is/are your favourite book(s)?

If I could only pick one series and one standalone it would have to be the Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I feel like if I tried to list anymore this would end up becoming a mile long list full of amazing books I’ve read so far.

3. What is your favourite season and…

Winter. Simply because there is nothing better than being warm and cosy inside while it’s dark, cold and miserable outside.

4. …Your favourite colour?

Blue.

5. What is a movie you’ll never get tired of re-watching and…

The Mummy. This is a film I do watch over and over again, I normally have it playing on repeat most nights in the background as I’m blogging.

6. …A book you’ll never get tired of re-reading?

The Harry Potter series. It’s a cliché yes, but it’s true. This is a series I do re-read over and over again, at least once a year, and I’ve yet to get tired of it so it’s definitely the honest answer.

7. Do you make New Year’s resolutions, and if so, do you stick to them?

I try not to make New Year’s Resolutions simply because I never do stick to them. It seems like every time I make any I barely get through January before breaking them.

8. What is one goal you have in life?

To be happy and content with my life and the choices I’ve made. I don’t want to be able to look back on any part of my life and regret what I did or didn’t do.

9. What is your favourite word?

I really love words that have no translation into English. At the moment my favourite is tsundoku, which is a Japanese word for leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled together with other unread books. I feel like this kind of applies to me and my book buying habits.

10. If you could rewrite any book, what book would it be and how would you rewrite it?

The Crown’s Game by Evelyn Skye. This book had an amazing concept but the story itself was not as good as I hoped it would be. If I had a chance to re-write it I would take out the love triangle and the insta-love aspects, and the make the battle the two magicians fought one with more at stake, one where you genuinely feared for their lives because it was full of risk and danger.

11. I adore Sam’s idea of giving five amazing bloggers a shout-out, and I encourage you to do so as well! Share the love.

So these are five bloggers who I always love talking to, who I always love seeing posts from and who just make me want to be a better blogger myself.

Marie at Drizzle and Hurricane Books

May at Forever and Everly

Melissa at Book Nerd Momo

Reg at She Latitude

Stephanie at Teacher of YA’s Book Blog

Then again I do love everyone I talk to one WordPress, everyone I follow and everyone who follows me. You’re all amazing people.

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Sarah’s Questions:

1. Tell us about a book or series you loved as a child and still love today.

I’ve talked about Harry Potter a lot throughout part one and two of this award, at least it seems like it, so I’m going to talk about a different series I loved as a child and that was A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Basically I was addicted to these books, and there was nothing more I loved than reading about Violet, Klaus and Sunny as they tried to outrun and outwit Count Olaf.

2. Tell us about the last book you gave five stars to.

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. When I finally got around to picking up his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series last year I loved it, and I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get around to this second series. The Lost Hero doesn’t feature Percy, and there’s very little of Annabeth or any of the characters from the first series, but I still loved the story and was addicted from the very first page.

3. What was the last book you DNF and why?

I don’t DNF finish books often so the last book I DNF was back in 2015 when I was in the middle of my biggest reading slump to date. I’d started reading Prodigy by Marie Lu but despite the fact that I loved the first in the series, and despite the fact I was sure it would be an amazing book, I just couldn’t get through it. One day I will go back to that series, hopefully it will be a case of second time’s the charm.

4. What is your favourite classic?

I’m not a massive fan of classics. In fact I’d probably only say I’ve read one book that could be classed as a classic and that’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

5. Is there a genre you don’t read or enjoy? Why not?

Well I’m not a massive fan of classics, as I mentioned above, and I’ve never read a non-fiction book for fun either, but other than that I’ll pretty much pick up anything that catches my eye.

6. Do you set monthly TBRs? Why/Why Not?

I do set monthly TBRs, simply because there are always books I want to try and get through each month so setting a monthly TBR keeps that goal clear in my mind. Actually getting through them all is another thing all-together.

7. Open to page 23 of the book you are currently reading. Share the first sentence.

I’m currently reading The Son of Neptune. I finally managed to get around to the second series that Rick Riordan has written set in Percy Jackson’s world, and it only took me a year.

“Usually he loved the water, but this river seemed…powerful, and not necessarily friendly.”

8. Do you have a guilty pleasure read?

It’s not so much of a guilty pleasure read but whenever I have nothing else on my immediate TBR list, or just don’t feel much like starting anything new, I’ll pick up Carry On by Rainbow Rowell again.

9. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which is another book I’ve mentioned a lot in this tag but as my all-time favourite standalone it’s really the only acceptable answer for this question.

10. Is there a book to screen adaptation you liked? Why did you like it? (Don’t pick Harry Potter pretty please!)

I feel like I kind of answered this question before. It was a similar question, though not the same, but my answer for it is the same and that’s The Princess Bride. It’s a brilliant book but a better film in my opinion, and definitely a favourite of mine because it helped me understand the book better.

11. Post a picture of a beautiful book cover.

Honestly my picture does not do this cover justice but this is one of the most gorgeous books I own, and even if the story turns out to not be as good as I hope it will be I won’t regret having this one on my bookshelves at all.

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Laura’s Questions:

1. Do you prefer books with one POV or multiple POVs, and why?

One POV. Simply because more times than not I find books with multiple POVs don’t have as solid character development as books with one POV do. It seems like the more characters you try and tell a story from, the more shaky the development of those characters are.

2. What is the best book you read in high school (or primary/elementary for those still in high school)?

Honestly there isn’t one. I wasn’t a fan of required reading in high school, and now that I’ve finished I can’t think of one book I actually liked because I didn’t like any of them.

3. Can you remember the book that got you hooked onto reading?

Bringing up this series again, and yes it’s a cliché answer, but the Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling. It was the first series I can remember reading and the first series I loved as well. I was obsessed from the first page of the first book.

4. What is a quote from a book that has stuck with you?

“The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them – not all, but most – who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they’d done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place. Wondering when killing became so comfortable.”

– The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

5. What is your favourite TV show?

iZombie. It combined my two favourite TV genres, supernatural and crime, to create a show where a zombie eats brains and uses the visions she gets from those brains to solve murders.

6. If you could live in one fictional world (book, movie, show, etc), which would it be and why?

I’m going to pick a different book, that I haven’t featured in this tag yet, and go with Caraval. I think it would be such fun to live in a world where the games were real, and where I could spend five nights taking part and experiencing real magic, or as close to it as I’ll likely ever get.

7. Is there a character that you absolutely hate? Who and why?

Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. I remember reading somewhere that everyone hates Umbridge more than Voldemort because Voldemort is the villain you never have to face in real life, but Umbridge is the villain everyone has had to face at one point or another. Definitely true in my opinion.

8. Who is your go-to author (author who releases a book and you buy and read without looking at blurb)?

There are a fair few but the main one would be V.E. Schwab. Every book she has released so far I have loved and I know that will probably prove true of anything she releases from here on out.

9. Pick your two favourite characters of all time. Now sacrifice one! (The universe is at stake)

All right, two favourite characters are Cinder from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer and Kell from the Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. For this, the hardest question I have had to answer so far, I’m going to have to pick Cinder.

It was a hard choice but Kell’s life is tied to Rhy’s so I wouldn’t just be killing him I’d be killing Rhy as well, and comparatively it just meant that Cinder was the lesser of two evils.

10. Is there an author/book you refuse to read? Why?

Nope, not one I can think of. I normally try and give all authors/books a chance, even if they have largely negative reviews I won’t know for sure until I read it myself.

11. What is your favourite genre and why?

Fantasy. It was the first genre I picked up and the first genre I fell in love with. It lets me travel to far away worlds I’ll never get to experience for myself otherwise, and for a few hours I can escape my magic-less life and experience magic and wonder through the characters.