Liebster Award

This award is supposed to be for bloggers with under 200 followers, and yes I have a fair few more than that by now but I was nominated so I’m going to answer the questions I was set. I was tagged by May at Forever and Everly, and Lost in Words. Thanks both so much for the tag, I had a lot of fun with this one so I hope you enjoy reading my answers just as much.

Rules:

• Thank the person(s) who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Answer the 11 questions they gave you.
• Nominate 11 blogs and let them know they’ve been tagged.
• Give them 11 questions to answer.

May’s Questions:

1. If you were to stop blogging, what would be the reason?

I’ve been thinking about this recently, don’t worry this isn’t me announcing I’m going to be leaving WordPress anytime soon, and I feel like the only reason I would ever stop blogging would be if I no longer had the time. I’m always going to love reading, and I’m likely always going to love writing reviews and tags and discussions; however one day in the far future I’m going to have moved up in my job to the point where I can no longer dedicate the time needed to blog.

Don’t worry, like I said this is a long way off.

2. What are some hobbies you have?

Other than blogging and reading, which are kind of an obvious ones, I enjoy writing, baking and travelling.

3. Would you rather be dead or die? (Yes, there’s a difference.)

Definitely a difference, and if I had to choose I’d say I’d rather be dead. No matter what way you look at it dying is going to be scary and possibly painful, I’d like to skip that and just go straight to the being dead part.

And wow this a morbid answer.

4. Do you like mangoes???

Yes I actually really do. It’s one of my favourite fruits alongside pineapple, melon, and at the moment pomegranates.

5. What book would you not feel guilty about stomping on, tearing, and burning in a fire?

Obviously I would never stomp on, tear, or burn a book, no matter how bad it was, but for the sake of answering this question…

Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

Normally I love fairytale retellings, and as a Snow Queen retelling which I hadn’t seen done before I was incredibly excited for Stealing Snow. Unfortunately the book epically failed to live up to my expectations. At the same time the plot felt like it should have been two books worth of story but there was barely enough action to fill one, Snow was a character I couldn’t connect with, and this book also had a love square.

Let that sink in, not a love triangle but a love square.

6. What blogs do you always look forward to reading? (Or, if you’re afraid your dear readers might feel bad: What type of blogs do you tend to follow? ie. book blogs, lifestyle blogs, writing blogs, etc.)

There are always going to be plenty of bloggers whose posts I look forwards to seeing, basically anyone I follow have posts I love reading. However because naming them would take up way too much time space and time, let’s just say if I’m following you yours are posts I look forwards to reading, I’m going to answer the second part of this question.

The blogs I follow are always going to be book blogs. I look for people who share the same interests as me, people who read YA or fantasy books, people who have aesthetically pleasing blogs because I’m a very visual person.

7. What’s one moment in your life you’d choose to play over and over again (aka. re-experience over and over again?)

It would be the day I finished university and moved back home. I was done with my three-year long course so my dad drove down to Brighton to pick me up, I had way too much stuff I needed to bring home with me and there was no way I could have taken it all on the train. We went out to dinner together and then I drove us both home, I’d recently passed my driving test.

I wouldn’t say it was a special day, at that point I still didn’t know my final grade, but it’s just a really fond memory I have that I’d love to re-live.

8. You have the choice of reading a book you hate, every single day, or reading one good book per year. Which do you choose?

One good book per year. Life is too short to read books you hate, and after reading a book I hate every single day I feel like eventually I’d get tired of reading. I never want that to happen, even if it means I can only read one good book a year.

9. What’s one food you will never get tired of eating??? (One food, people, one.)

Doritos tortilla chips. Doesn’t matter what flavour – Cool Original, Tangy Cheese, Chilli Heatwave, Lightly Salted – I could eat them all day ever day and I don’t think I’d ever get tired of them.

10. What would you do if someone walked up to you and gave you 100 bucks?

I’d ask them why they were giving me this money. As great as having 100 bucks would be, imagine all the books you could buy, no one gives anything away for free, especially not money.

11. How are you right now?

Happy, content, a little tired. I’m drafting this post late at night so I should probably go to sleep soon (I’m not going to, I’m going to stay up a little later and read), I don’t have to go to work tomorrow so I’m watching old Harry Potter movies (I’ve just finished The Philosopher’s Stone so I’ll be putting on The Chamber of Secrets now) and working on my blog.

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Lost in Words’ Questions:

1. If there was a place where you could go to stop the world and get off it for a while and relax, where would you go? What would it be like? What would be there and what would you do there?

Cancun, Mexico. It was the first beach holiday me and my sister went on together and while we didn’t spent all our time out there by the pool or on the beach taking advantage of the fact that we were staying in an all-exclusive hotel we did take a couple of days to do just that. When it comes to places to relax Cancun is my all-time ideal.

2. What is one of your best memories from your life so far? (it doesn’t have to be related to books or reading, but it can be)

Most of my best memories are the simple ones where I’ve been with my family. Sitting at the kitchen table one evening after getting home from work chatting with my mum while she cooks dinner, driving home from university with my dad after he came down to help me pack and move, spending the day at Thorpe Park riding on all the insane-ly fast roller coasters with my sister.

3. When you read do you picture the events of the book as images or a like a film playing inside your head?

All the time, I picture the books I’m reading as images in my head more than as a film (if that makes sense).  I think that’s why I’m disappointed with book to film adaptations something, because no matter what they can never quite live up to what I’ve imagined in my head (then again I doubt anything could).

4. Do you ever find that there is either a character or a setting (or both), in a book, that you just couldn’t picture in your head while reading it? If so – what book and what characters/settings?

Not really, but if a book is told in first person POV and I don’t like the main character (two recent examples include All the Wind in the World by Samantha Mabry and The Truth and Lies of Ella Black by Emily Barr) then although I can still picture the story I find it really hard to get into it.

5. What imaginary world from a book would you most want to live in? (if not for life then just for a holiday)

The Night Circus, which has pretty much become my go-to answer for this question. I love the book and if I had an opportunity to visit Le Cirque des Reves myself I’d never come back again.

6. If you could read in another language, what language would it be?

Definitely Italian. One of my resolutions for this year was to learn another language, so far it isn’t going too well but I guess there’s still time to turn that around though.

7. Which fictional character would you like to be friends with, and why?

Lila from Shades of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I want to go on an adventure so I’d get Lila to take me from Grey London to Red London where there’s plenty of magic waiting, and then I’d probably never come back because what’s Grey London compared to Red?

8. What books do you think will become known as ‘Classics’ – in the future?

The Harry Potter series is definitely one of them (if it isn’t already that is). Asides from that obvious answer I think some of the books released recently, like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and The Exact Opposite of Okay by Laura Steven, which focus on issues people are struggling with today will one day be classics.

9. What is your strangest book related obsession? (if you don’t have one then what is the strangest book related fact about you)

A lot of my book obsessions are ones I think everyone shares. I like the covers to match on my bookshelves (one of the reasons I hate cover changes halfway through a series is because I either need to live with mis-matched covers or buy the whole series all over again) and I hate it when my books get needlessly damaged, but who can say they’re any different, right?

10. If you had one extra day in the week, that nobody knew about and didn’t count to your week, what would you do with it?

I’d be really boring and use it to catch up on everything I put off during the rest of the week. I’d do more blogging, blog hopping, and reading, I’d catch up on writing and planning (something I’m admittedly terrible at) my WIP, I’d make more progress in learning Italian, and I’d even do some baking.

11. Name 5 books that you think should be taught and studied in English in schools, and should be a part of the curriculum? And do you think this will make students enjoy English more and make them want to read more books – because they are better and more recent books? (For example in UK – we study classics like Charles Dickens books, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Shakespeare and things like that. What books should they be replaced with?)

These are favourite books of mine so I don’t know if anyone will be surprised to see some of these on my list for this question, but I certainly would have enjoyed my English classes a lot more if I’d been able to read these books rather than Julius Caesar or A Doll’s House.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling – Cliché but I couldn’t not feature it.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas – For the same reason I mentioned in the above question.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – It’s a beautiful book and there’s bound to be plenty you could study in it.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor – Mainly for the same reasons I picked The Night Circus.

Vicious by V.E. Schwab – I couldn’t not have a V.E. Schwab book on this list.

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I’m not going to nominate anyone for this award, because like I said earlier this is supposed to be for bloggers with under 200 followers and I don’t really count anymore.

So instead let me know what your answers for these questions would be. What’s book would you not feel guilty about stomping on, tearing, and burning in a fire? Which fictional character would you like to be friends with, and why?