Book Questionnaire

I got tagged to do this by Ashley @sparkylovesbooks​ over on tumblr! Thank you!

  1. What is your favorite book?
    You expect me to pick just one??? God I guess I have to go with….um… Screw it, I’m picking a whole series! I pick the Tales of the Kingdom series by Cynthia Voigt.
  2. What was the last book you read?
    The last book I finished was The Beast is an Animal by Peternelle van Arsdale. I reviewed it as well.
  3. What is the worst book you’ve ever read?
    Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Ugh.
  4. Top 7 book characters.
    Elske // Elske by Cynthia Voigt
    Oriel // The Wings of a Falcon by Cynthia Voigt
    Jacob’s Hollow // Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs
    Dicey // The Tillerman Cycle by Cynthia Voigt
    Ripred // The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins
    Noah // The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater
    Enna // The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale
  5. What is your favorite genre?
    YA Fantasy.
  6. Book you cried the hardest reading?
    That would be a book I read way back in elementary or middle school called The Soul of the Silver Dog.
  7. Book you laughed the hardest reading?
    Any of Robert Fulghum’s works! I actually got kicked out of class once because I was reading one of his books and couldn’t control my laughter.
  8. Which book character(s) do you most relate to?
    Rinna Agget from Shannon Hale’s Forest Born.
  9. Favorite author(s)?
    Top 3: Cynthia VoigtShannon HaleRobert Fulghum.
  10. Do you judge books by their covers?
    Oh, not as often as I used to. When I went out of the house more, I would stand at the shelves and grab up any book with an interesting cover to try. But these days I usually find my books online, so the covers don’t come into it as often.
  11. What is your favorite quote from a book?
    “Don’t sell yourself short. You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think.” – Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
  12. Which book do you recommend to friends and family most?
    Well, probably Cynthia Voigt’s books. I love the way she writes so much, and she writes across genres so I feel like there’s more of a chance for someone to like something of hers.
  13. Which book is so special to you that you don’t share it with others?
    I’m going to assume this means “which physical copy of a book will you not share” in which case the answer is: Almost every book I own because I trust NO ONE with my books. I barely even let my husband handle them.
  14. Do you have any signed books?
    Yes, but no. I have two books that were signed by a musician friend, sort of an inside joke, but none signed by authors.
  15. Have you met any authors?
    Unfortunately, no, but I’ve had some nice correspondence with a few.
  16. Buy books new, used, or go to the library?
    Since I don’t have much money my typical method is to get any books I want to read from the library, then if I like it I will add it to my list of books to buy. The books I buy are mostly used, but every so often I get a gift card or something and I’ll order new books.
  17. Where is your favorite place to read?
    My prefered place to read is in a comfortable office chair at a desk. That way I can rest my arms on the desk and keep a decent enough posture with very little effort.
  18. Prefer books set in the past or the future?
    Past.
  19. What 5 elements would your ideal book have?
    Water, air, fire– Okay, bad joke…
    Witchcraft, brown people!, badass ladies, queer people, and a fantasy setting.
  20. Do you ever hope to publish your own book?
    No, I’m not much of a writer.
  21. Prefer stand alone or series?
    Well I always love a series and I read a lot more of them, but it’s nice to read a contained story when I can find a good one.
  22. Do you mark/highlight/dog ear your books or keep them in perfect condition? 
    I try not to dog ear, but I slip up. Non-fiction I’m happy to highlight/notate/etc., but not usually my fiction.
  23. Hardbacks or paperbacks?
    Hardback, for durability.
  24. Do you watch any booktubers?
    I like Mary’s videos (@books-and-cookies​), but aside from a few videos here and there I never really spent much time on booktube. I really should though.
  25. Do you like twist endings?
    Depends on how it’s executed… A twist for the sake of having one is just boring.
  26. Do you reread books?
    Oh yes. Too often probably.
  27. E-readers or physical copies of books?
    I prefer physical copies, but only because it can hurt my eyes to read on a screen for too long.
  28. A book that makes you feel comforted?
    The Tillerman Cycle books by Cynthia Voigt.
  29. Would you rather read an ending that makes you feel happy or sad?
    Happy. Does anyone say sad? Honestly, I got plenty of sad, I read to be less miserable.
  30. Favorite villain in a book? 
    I guess, Warner, from the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi. I don’t usually like villain’s in books, mostly just movies/tv shows.
  31. Do you like to write reviews when you finish a book?
    I do like to, but I’m new to it.
  32. Do you experience “book hangovers”?
    Oh man, constantly! The more I love a world the harder it is to move on.

What Are You Reading Wednesdays: August 2, 2017

What Are You Reading Wednesdays #WAYRW is a weekly feature on It’s A Reading Thing. Everyone is welcome to participate.

Grab the book you are currently reading and answer three questions:

  1. What’s the name of your current read?
  2. Go to page 34 in your book or 34% in your eBook and share a couple of sentences.
  3. Would you like to live in the world that exists within your book? Why or why not?

  1. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  2. His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that extatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, was estimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of the others; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make every allowance for the colonel’s advanced state of life which humanity required.
  3. Only in theory. And if I could leave whenever I chose!

Musing Monday – Except It’s Wednesday… Oops!

So Musing Monday wasn’t actually posted on Monday on the source blog, so I didn’t intend to do it this week, but I happened to be over there and saw that it had been added and would give me the chance to talk about two different things I wanted to blog about. So here is Musing Monday/Wednesday:

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme, hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker, that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Has a book ever made you crave a specific type of food?


I wish I could read Jane Austen’s Persuasion, but… I have literally never been able to get past the first few chapters before I was ready to bash my head against a wall!
However, I think I’ve come up with a solution, which is lucky because I’ve got reading Persuasion as one of my 2017 goals.
Starting this week, I’m going to read one chapter a week of Persuasion. When I’m in the last four chapters I’ll read two a week. By the end of the year I’ll have finally finished Persuasion after years of trying!

Has a book ever made you crave a specific type of food?
YES! THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO TALK ABOUT THIS!
So if you’ve ever read a fantasy novel, you will know what I’m talking about when I mention their food. This does apply to everything they eat, but especially to the food the characters eat while traveling.
There’s just something about the way authors describe the bread and the salted meats and the fresh game and THE FUCKING HUNKS OF CHEESE! Nothing like a good ol’ fantasy novel to get me wishing I was gnawing on a hunk of cheese like a rat!
My favorite fantasy novels that include things like this are the Tales of the Kingdom books by Cynthia Voigt.

WWW Wednesday: August 2, 2017

Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at Should be Reading and revived on Taking on a World of Words. Just answer the three W’s!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?


Currently Reading:  Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
This is a reread for me. I read it about 10 years ago, so I figured it was about time for a second round.

I remembered the story pretty much perfectly, but I had lost some of the nuance of the experience. For instance, I had forgotten how it felt like almost every conversation Elinor and Marianne have feels like borderline fighting!

I don’t like this one as much as Pride and Prejudice, but all of Austen’s works are good. I do think this one could do with a bit more snark though!

The main thing I’ve discovered during this reread:  I knew Marianne was dramatic, but it seems so much more over-the-top this time around!

Recently Finished:  The Beast is an Animal by Peternelle van Arsdale
I picked this book up for a booklr Read-A-Thon. I was too tired to keep reading a classic novel, and this one practically jumped off the shelves screaming to be read! (Not…you know…literally. I would have run away.)

It was the perfect one for Read-A-Thon. An quick, easy read, which was still engrossing enough to make me forget I was about to fall asleep!

I saw on Goodreads that the author is working on a second novel in the same genre, which I plan to keep an eye out for.

I wrote a review for this one, which you can read here!

Reading Next: The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson
(Little Blue Envelope, book 2)
I figure my next book should be a fluffier sort of read. And since I read the first book in this duet ages back, it’s probably past time to get to this one!

I may actually start this book before I completely finish Sense and Sensibility if I find myself needing a break from the somewhat denser writing style.

Some updates on my 2017 goals…

I was looking at some older posts and discovered I had made progress on some of my smaller goals for 2017 reading!

In this post I listed 5 books I wanted to reread this year. So far I’ve gone through 4 of those 5!

In this post I listed 5 books from my TBR that I wanted to finally get to in 2017. So far I’ve crossed 1 of them off the list.

Here I list some book related goals:

  • Read 75 50 books in 2017 (Goal changed as of June, because I’m having major depression reading slumps this year…)20/50 complete
  • Start writing book reviews – CHECK! I have been writing reviews for some of the books I read, but I think I would like to do more. And I certainly need to get better at it.
  • Get my home library set up again – Sadly not done, but I’m hoping it will be in the next couple months.
  • Force myself to reread ACOTAR (instead of just skipping it and going to ACOMAF) so I can make a post listing every warning sign of Tamlin being a bad guy because a lot of people haven’t noticed them and have asked me to point them out – I only half did this one. I reread it, but I didn’t make a post about all the Tamlin creeps because I was hurrying to read it and get to ACOWAR.
  • Make more original posts Make more posts for each book I read – So far I’m doing alright on this one, but could be better.

The biggie of course is this post where I list all the books I own, but haven’t read. Unfortunately, so far I’ve only read 1 off this list!


Speaking of challenges, I plan to make a page about all the reading challenges I’ve been working on this year. I should have done it ages ago, but I’m a master procrastinator!

July 30th Read-A-Thon Wrap-Up

Oh, man, I enjoyed that! I’m actually glad I was only able to sleep 2 hours so I could participate in the Read-A-Thon all day long! (That is, I’m glad I remembered there was a Read-A-Thon after a few hours of staring at a wall wondering why I was awake…)

As for my goals, I said I would love to finish a whole book, but that all I really wanted was an entire day of reading. I’m happy to say I met both those rather vague goals!

I read the entirety of The Beast is an Animal by Peternelle van Arsdale and made progress (if a bit slower than I’d have liked) on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

Time Started:  9:16am
Time Ended:  11:59pm
Pages Read:  463  (The Beast is an Animal – 352 pages; Sense and Sensibility – 111 pages)

I took 2 breaks for meals, 2 for surfing the net to give my sleepy brain a break from reading, and 1 to have a chat with my husband after he finally got of work (most of the chat was about The Beast is an Animal anyway).

Thanks again to Mary @books-and-cookies for the fun Read-A-Thon! I hope we have another one soon!

July 30th Read-A-Thon Goals

@books-and-cookies Read-A-Thon Day! (Learn More)

I’m not sure I have a firm goal here. It would be cool to finish a whole book, but as long as I get a full day of reading in I’m satisfied!

I’ll be starting with Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen since I am a chapter into it already.
If I get in the mood for something more modern I’ve got many others from the library I have been neglecting… *cough* Crashed *cough

(I’d also like to say that if any of you read-a-thon participants have Goodreads and would like to add me, please feel free! I’m “darkestwings” over there. I’m on mobile right now or I would add a link.)

Edit: Goodreads Link!

What Are You Reading Wednesdays: June 21, 2017

What Are You Reading Wednesdays #WAYRW is a weekly feature on It’s A Reading Thing. Everyone is welcome to participate.

Grab the book you are currently reading and answer three questions:

  1. What’s the name of your current read?
  2. Go to page 34 in your book or 34% in your eBook and share a couple of sentences.
  3. Would you like to live in the world that exists within your book? Why or why not?

  1. Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, book 3) by Maggie Stiefvater
  2. Even thinking about the pit made long-ago venom hum and burn in his throat; effortlessly he conjured the image of warning-striped insects prowling the thin skin between his fingers. He had nearly forgotten how horrifying and compelling it was to relive the moment.
  3. Oh, of course. Who could resist a world with modern conveniences and magic and masterful sass? Not me!