Feature & Follow (September 28): Balderdash!

Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than having a friend show up unexpectedly at your door with a Dr. Pepper float from Sonic, JUST FOR YOU.

Just kidding. That happened a few weeks ago, and it was amazing. I don’t think it’s beatable.

Today’s question is:

What is the BIGGEST word you’ve seen used in a book lately – that made you stop and look it up?

Okay, this may come across as me being a little bit braggy, but honestly I think it’s more of a nerdy thing. When I got together with my friends in high school, we played Scrabble or Boggle (or Alternative Guess Who, which is amazing fun. “Does your person claim their favorite song is Freebird, but in reality, it’s Call Me Maybe? No?” *flips down Bill, Maria, and Richard* That has nothing to do with anything, except that I need to go buy a Guess Who set right now so I can play that with someone). When my family has game night, we play Balderdash (also great fun). I’ve always had a fairly extensive vocabulary. I’m that annoying person that other people tell to “stop using big words,” except that I don’t realize the words I’m using are big.

*sigh* You hate me now, don’t you?

Anyway, I’ve never had to stop and look up a big word. That’s not to say I’ve never come across a new word while reading, but I try to figure out the meaning from context clues (and sometimes I am wrong; I thought for the longest time that “nonplussed” meant “unconcerned,” when in fact it means the opposite). But I honestly can’t ever remember breaking out the dictionary or heading over to Wikipedia to figure out what a word meant.

That said, the book that most recently stumped me, not with vocabulary but with terminology, was The Unnaturalists by Tiffany Trent. I don’t have the book anymore, so I can’t give you an example, but I felt like I needed an advanced degree in the mythologies of several cultures to fully grasp everything in there. I understood enough to grasp what was going on, but some of the little things left me…nonplussed.*

I really want to go raid the Toys & Games section of Target now. Probably not the intended side effect of this topic.

P.S. If you’re going to follow anyway, you should go ahead and enter my Six Months of Blogging Giveaway. You can win your choice of any one of my favorite books I’ve read while blogging. Doesn’t that sound fun?

*Do you see what I did there? (And yes, I realize I used it kind of incorrectly AGAIN, but I couldn’t resist.)

Feature & Follow (September 7) – Current Read

Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than finding a pair of jeans that make you look two sizes smaller than you actually are, yet are still strangely comfortable. But not better than finding out that they are on sale for 75% off, because that would be ridiculous.

Today’s question is:

What are you reading right now? What do you think of it?

I am currently reading The City’s Son by Tom Pollock. I requested it on NetGalley because another blogger — and I can’t even remember who it was now — was raving about it a couple months ago. So far I’m only about 15% of the way through, and I honestly don’t know my thoughts. The world is fascinating, but I’m not completely connected to the characters yet. And I’m not sure if I’m a fan of stories told from two POVs where one is first person and one is third. I like consistency in multiple POV stories.

So I’m undecided. I’ll let you know my thoughts when I finish. At least I can say this for sure — the world-building is unique. Very unique. There are demon-esque trains. That fight. And a being made out of garbage scraps, who is, as far as I can tell, a good guy. That right there made it worth picking up.

Feature & Follow (July 27) – Required Reading

Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are the best thing in the world after chocolate for breakfast.

Come on, you know you’ve had chocolate for breakfast and that it’s awesome.

Today’s question is:

What was your favorite required reading in school?

Ummm…so this is hard because my school didn’t require…how shall we put it…good books. 

Lord of the Rings? No.

Anne of Green Gables? No.

Chronicles of Narnia? No.

Little Women? No.

Anything by Jane Austen? No.

I had to read things like The Grapes of Wrath (which was so boring, I actually broke out the Cliff’s Notes, which I am pretty adamantly opposed to) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (which…okay, I have a story about that one, but it’s long and I won’t get into it now). I know they are considered classics and all the Classic Lit people are going to come and beat me now, probably with a copy of The Grapes of Wrath because it’s just so darn BIG, but you can’t ever convince me that either of those books is good.

Tess, in particular…well. I have a story about how this book caused a group of otherwise highly intellectual straight-A high school seniors to turn rebellious and a little bit crazy. But now’s not the time.

[One day, I need to write an entire post — or maybe a series of posts — about my senior year AP English class and our spacey teacher. It’s mind boggling, folks.]

I also don’t like The Great Gatsby. There, I’ve said it.

Anyway.

I remember a whopping two, yes, TWO, books that I was required to read that I actually liked. Both of which I read in that weird and somewhat surreal AP English class.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. (The superior Bronte sister, in my opinion.)

I love how untraditional this story is, how neither of the main characters is particularly attractive or swoon-worthy, how neither of them really feels like they need romance to be complete as a person.

And yet, it’s somehow a beautiful love story. Complex and emotional and fabulous.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Dystopian before dystopian was a thing. I honestly couldn’t tell you what it was about this book that I liked. Just that I really, really liked it.

Also, I gave my presentation on this book in a leather miniskirt and black fishnets, to be in character. Because my English class was so weird that that was normal.

Thankfully, there are no pictures. Just thought you’d like to know.

Feature & Follow (July 13) – Why I Started Blogging

Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors rock my world.

Today’s question is simple:

What started you Blogging?

As you’re probably aware, I haven’t been book blogging all that long. I started this blog at the end of March, a scant 3.5 months ago. I have, however, run a personal blog for years, the content of which was ravenously consumed by members of my immediate family. They wanted to read about my kids, and I provided oodles of info on that subject, and they were appeased.

Yes, I still write that blog. No, I’m not going to tell you where to find it. Sorry.

But I’m assuming this question is referring to book blogging. So as far as that goes, I started this blog for several reasons:

1) I was consuming too much television and felt my brain turning to mush (even though I watch awesome television). And I was all like, “Hey, self, remember when you used to read all the time and be semi-intelligent? How’s about you start that up again?”

“In my day, television was called books.

Name that movie.

2) I feared that if I simply made the resolution “I’m going to read more” without any accountability, I wouldn’t read more. So I set up a blog. Voilà, accountability!

It’s the same reason I got a running partner. But the problem there is that she is about as motivated to run as I am, so on our most recently scheduled running day, we went to go see Spider-Man and I ate almost an entire bucket of popcorn. But it’s okay, because Spider-Man rocked my world almost as much as repeat visitors.

3) Most books I read are not the same books my husband or friends read. And I always wanted to talk about books when I finished reading, and was always disappointed that I didn’t have anyone to discuss them with. I thought writing reviews would be a good way to get all my thoughts out into the world, and then maybe people would even read them and we could talk about them. But even if no one read them, just the act of writing helped me process my thoughts about a book.

4) I would be lying if I didn’t admit there was a bit of a draw in the idea that if I actually could dredge up some readers, publicists might want to send me advance copies of books I really wanted to read. For free. Before they were released.

No, I didn’t start the blog “for the ARCs,” but if you don’t see the appeal in the idea of being able to read a highly-anticipated book before release, then you must have that crazy thing called “patience” that I’ve heard about but never really possessed. And I envy you.

 **********************

So there you go. That’s why I got started.

Of course, if you wanted to ask why I’m still blogging — yes, a whopping 3.5 months later — the answer would be slightly different. It would involve the awesome bookish community, the great bloggers and authors I’ve met (either in person or online), the way it’s gotten my creative juices flowing, the way it’s inspired me to come out of my shell and share more of my passions than just reading (like So You Think You Can Dance. And comic book superheroes. And other things that may or may not be just as nerdy).

But you didn’t ask that. So I won’t tell you.

Feature & Follow (June 29) – Birthday Character Surprise

Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re new to my blog, welcome! I’d love it if you could follow via one of the options in my sidebar (LinkyFollowers, Networked Blogs, email or RSS). Be sure to let me know your follow method in the comments so I can return the favor!

I’ve also got a snazzy button you can grab. If you wanted to put it on your blog, that’d be groovy.

Today’s question is:

Q: Birthday Wishes — Blow out the candles and imagine what character could pop out of your cake…who is it and what book are they from??

Again, I need to point out that I am an adult who reads YA. Most characters in the books I read are teenagers. It would semi creepy for me to request that a teenager pop out of my cake, because…yeah.

Although really, it would be weird for me to request anyone to jump out of my cake, because I’m happily married with small kids, and I don’t know many married people with kids who like people jumping out of their birthday cakes.

But that is a super-boring answer. So let’s just put that aside for a moment.

Also, comics are kinda like books, right?

Sooooo…

I pick Hawkeye. Who will be shooting arrows (preferably not at me). So there.

[P.S. This question is oddly appropriate, because the 29th is my brother’s birthday. And although I’m assuming he would not want Hawkeye jumping out of his cake, I am still wishing him a happy birthday. So happy birthday bro!]