Follow Friday (16)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View and Alison at Alison Can Read.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  

Welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First Parajunkee & Alison will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is: Define what characteristics your favorite books share. Do they all have a kick ass heroine or is the hot love interest the Alpha Male?

This is actually a really good question.  The biggest characteristic is good writing.  Now that may sound really vague, but you know when something is well written.  The curse of being an English Lit and a Creative Writing major is that you study good writing.  You annotate good writing.  You live good writing.  So no matter how fun the plot is or how interesting the characters, if the writing is mediocre it affects everything.

Other characteristics stick out too.  A strong female character.  I like when my girls reflect the vision I have for females in my own head, and that is one of strength, independence, and intelligence  I dislike simpering females immensely.  I also appreciate fast-paced plots.  I like to get sucked in and it just keeps going.  But I do try to open my horizons when I read, and I think every one should do that as well!

What are some of your book characteristics?

Tweet

Follow Friday (15)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View and Alison at Alison Can Read.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  

Welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First Parajunkee & Alison will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is: Many readers/bloggers are also big music fans. Tell us about a few of your favorite bands/singers that we should listen to in 2012.

This is an awesome question, as I really love music. 

I'm going to try and pick things that I really enjoy and I hope that you will as well!

Drumming Song - Florence and the Machine

Saskia Hamilton - Ben Folds with Nick Hornby

Galaxies - Owl City

Safe & Sound - Taylor Swift with The Civil Wars

I hope you all enjoy the music!

Tweet

Follow Friday (14)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View and Alison at Alison Can Read.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  

Welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First Parajunkee & Alison will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is: When you’ve read a book, what do you do with it? (Keep it, give it away, donate it, sell it, swap it..?)

Oh this is a scary question.  Scary because I am such a horder it is ridiculous!!!  I have been told that this Christmas I am not allowed to get ANY books as presents (which makes me very depressed).  BUT, in my defense, I do give away many of my books.  I do so through Nearly New Books, which is a giveaway feature I do almost every other week here on Eli to the nth, and though donations to my local used bookstore.  Oh and donations to my library (SUPPORT LIBRARIES!!)  This obsession with owning the books I read is a reason why I have a shaky relationship with the returns date on my library books.  :clutches books to chest: I WILL NEVER GIVE YOU BACK!!!!!!!

What about you guys? Any other hoarders out there?

Tweet

Follow Friday (13)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View and Alison at Alison Can Read.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  

Welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First Parajunkee & Alison will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:
Keeping with the Spirit of Giving this season, what book do you think EVERYONE should read and if you could, you would buy it for all of your family and friends?

This is such a hard question!!  I love so so many books!  I think I'll have to split this into two categories: prose & poetry.  I read so much poetry (which some of you may or may not have known since I don't really talk about it much), and obviously read a lot of prose.  There are certainly books from each category (not even going into YA vs Adult, Fiction vs Non-Fiction, etc.) that I think everybody needs to read, and that I would buy for my whole family (of course I can't guarantee they'd appreciate the gesture...)

My picks:

PROSE

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

This book has made such an impact on my personal and literary life.  It is one of the most amazing books I've read, and it really tells such a brutal, beautiful story.  This is a must-have on everybody's shelf, even if you aren't into "young adult".  My family practically knows the book by heart, as well, since I talk about it all the time.

POETRY

Etcetera by E. E. Cummings

This man is my poet.  Each poem I read, I find a connection and a cadence that I fall in love with.  Some people find his poems perhaps overly complicated or just strange, but I find he uses that to make the words shine.  It is in the absurdity of some of his works that I find inspiration.  Another work needed on each shelf, and something I know most of my family won't get, but will love because I love it!

It is interesting to think that I am the only "reader" in my family.  Of course, each member reads their own thing: romance, sci-fi, military.  But I am the only one that runs the gamut.  In a way, it makes it hard to share what I love with them, but at the same time a joy to help them experience something wonderful and new!

Tweet

Follow Friday (12)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View and Alison at Alison Can Read.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  

Welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First PJV & Alison will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

In light of 11.11.11 and Veteran's Day tell us about your favorite solider and how he or she is saving the world. Fictional or real life.

My favorite soldier is my father.  He was in the Navy for over 25 years, and retired just a few years ago before the war in Afganistan and Iraq broke out.  Which I am thankful for, but he was sorry not to be fighting, defending the country he so believes in.  If you want to see a real American, then I implore you to meet and speak with a soldier.  They believe in the core values of America so much: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  

My father tells me so many stories (the ones he can anyway) about doing his duty for the country.  Serving during the Gulf War forced him to see death and destruction first hand, exactly what the amazing men and women fighting now are forced to see.  That can change people.  It isn't easy.  I hate the people who are so ignorant to call soldiers warmongers when what they do is nothing like that.  

So on this Veteran's Day, as I'm enjoying an awesome BBQ with my father and the rest of my family, I want you to go out and research the soldiers of this nation: what they do for you and what risks they take every day.  Remember, not all of them are as lucky as others, and they don't all come back home safe and sound; because of that, we need to give them all the support possible even if you don't believe in the cause they're fighting for.  It's not the cause we need to focus on, it's the people.

Tweet

Follow Friday (11)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

Q: ACK! Your favorite book/movie character (ex. Hermione Granger played by Emma Watson) just walked into the room!  Who is it and what would be your first reaction? You get extra points if you include visual stimulation.


Who would it be?

What is my reaction? Eric Northman...oh man.  I mean he is awesome in the Sookie Stackhouse books, but Alexander Skarsgard plays him so very very well.  If I met him in real life, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to talk at all!

Tweet

Follow Friday (10)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

In light of the summer solstice, also known as Midsummer, let's talk about fairies! What is your favorite fairy tale or story that revolves around the fey?

This is super easy for me because I love love love fairy stories!

YA favorite:

The Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa

Adult favorite:

The Merry Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton

Both series are so good, and contain traditional and new elements of the fae.  

And both have romance (of course Merry Gentry also has TONS of sex so NOT for kids at all!). You should check them out if you haven't already!

Tweet

Follow Friday (09)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today.

• First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. 

• Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

GENRE WARS!!! What's your favorite genre, and what book in that genre made it your favorite?


Oh this is a hard question!!  But even while I LOVE supernatural YA, my first love was contemporary YA.  I just love reading about characters who could have been my best friends in high school.  And the man who really made it my favorite was John Green with his book Looking for Alaska.  Such a good book!

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps. 

Tweet

Follow Friday (08)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

Q. It's circle time. Time for us to open up and share. 

Can you tell us FIVE quirky habits or things about you? We all have them...

1. When I have over-medium eggs, I cut off the whites, eat them separately, then scoop the entire yolk up and eat it in one go.
2. When I'm thinking I suck air through my front teeth, making a squeaky sound.
3. I eat each section of my food one at a time.
4. I only use pink or yellow highlighters
5. I have to color coordinate my school supplies.

WHAT A WEIRDO!

Tweet

Follow Friday (07)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

Q. The Blogger Apocalypse made me a little emotional.

What is the most emotional scene in a book that you have read lately?

I think the most emotional scene I’ve read in a book lately was probably in God-Shaped Hole by Tiffanie DeBartolo.  It is such an emotional book, and then surprise just slams into unexpectedly and completely.  If you are looking for a really great Adult Contemporary book then you should check this one out; it’s fantastic!

Tweet

Follow Friday (06)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

Share your current fav. television show! Tell us a bit about it...

 

I answered this just a couple posts ago and I'll link it here:
Community for the WIN!

It is an awesome comedy on NBC starring Joel Mchale from The Soup and Chevy Chase from everything (lol), plus some other outstanding comedians including Ken Jeong, that's right, the naked Asian man from The Hangover!  CHECK IT OUT!!!

Tweet

Follow Friday (05)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

This week's question is:

What is your favorite romance hero-type? Stereotype wise.
Do you like the strong silent type or the brute macho man?

I'd have  to say that I'm attracted to the reformed bad boy.  You know, the ones with a gruff rough exterior, but yet they're all gooey inside?  Some which come to mind: Patch from Hush, Hush, Patrick Verona from 10 Things I Hate About You, and Quince Fletcher from Forgive My Fins.  Each of these boys put up a tough act, and they are tough; definitely able to take care of themselves.  BUT, when they find that one girl they become sensitive and loving and awesome!  A good mix of both is important!  Of course I do appreciate the occasional "All-American" types.  I just really like boys!!  : )

 

Tweet

Follow Friday (04)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

 

This week's question is: 

What is the book you are currently 'pushing'? (Pushing mean trying to get people to read it)

 These two!!!!!

 

Both are so fantastic in their own right, and both are 2011 debut authors, so they need support from readers!!!  AtU is sci-fi dystopia with a dash of romance; AatFK is a romance filled with soul searching!  Go buy both and enjoy!!!!!

DFTBA, 

Tweet

Follow Friday (03)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

 This week's question is: 

What is/was your favorite subject in school?

I love English so much, I'm studying Secondary English Education at University.

Of course, I'm going a little crazy in my internship right now.  But still.  Love it.

Tweet

Follow Friday (02)

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi, welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

 This week's question is: What makes up your non-human family?? My non-human friendly consists of this guy: 

His name is Jebbery (pronounced like Jeffery, but with Bs), Jebbers/Jib-Jab/Jeb for short.  

He is a Beagle/Basset Hound mix.  

I got him for my 22nd birthday, and will have had him for a year on January 20th.  

He is a rescue dog from the Tampa Bay Beagle Rescue (WARNING: don't view webpage unless you're yearning for a puppy.  They tug at your heart), and I could not have gotten a better dog.  My sister and I went to an adoption event with a different dog in mind, who turned out to be a little too hyper for us.  But as we were walking to leave, Jeb nudged up against my leg and I immediately fell in love.  

God gave Jeb to me that day, and I thank him for it always.

Tweet

Follow Friday....on Saturday!

Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.  It is an awesome opportunity to network other book blogs.  Here's a blurb about it from her site!

Hi welcome to Follow Friday! Let me tell you what is going on today. First PJV will be featuring one blogger from this great community each Friday along with having the Follow My Book Blog feature. Each week one blogger will be selected as a feature, so sign up for the Follow Feature. Future features are picked randomly.

 This week's question is: What book(s) have you discovered lately from someone's book blog?

 

Since I've gotten involved with book blogging, I've found so many!  But I think the one I'm excited about the most right now is Wither by Lauren DeStefano.  It just sounds so awesome.  Summary!

Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.


When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limted time she has left.     (Goodreads)

What have you all discovered from other blogs?  Let me now in the comments and DFTBA!

  

Tweet