Liebster Award

So the other day I got a new email about a comment on my blog and I'm like YES I LOVE COMMENTS WOO HOO.

And Jazzie Kings of The Book Dancer blog nominated me for a Liebster Award.

And I was like............what the heck is a Liebster Award?

Liebster in German has several meanings including dearest, sweetest, kindest, nicest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, welcome, and sweetheart (I stole that from Jazzie's post mwahaha).

So the Liebster Award is a way for newer bloggers to connect and say hey dude I think your blog is cool and deserves some viewers. And for this Award there are rules!

I'd like to thank Jazzie enormously. That was so incredibly sweet of you.

The Rules

1. List 11 facts about yourself. 

2. Answer the 11 questions asked by whoever nominated you. 

3. Nominate 9 bloggers with less than 300 followers and leave them a comment saying they've been nominated.

4. Ask 11 new questions for your chosen nominees.

5. You cannot re-nominate the blog that nominated you.

Let's Get This Party Started

Eleven Facts

1. Right now I'm studying pre-pharmacy and aspire to one day be a pharmacist. Go science.

2. My favorite place to read is on my dock (I live on a lake) in the summer. It's perfection.

3. I have an older sister who is almost as obsessed with reading as I am. I often finish books and chuck them into her room and demand she read them right that second.

4. For as long as I can remember I always have The Mexican Hat Dance in the back of my mind. I tap it out on whatever surface is near me. I also have this problem with the Febreze jingle.

5. When I get really stressed out on airplanes my trick is to sing Bingo (as in there was a farmer was had a dog...I even do the claps in my head). It's very therapeutic. 

6. I'm more of a cat person than a dog person. Although my dream dog is a Pomeranian.

7. I can only watch TV when the volume is on a multiple of five.

8. I like to obsess over things. It doesn't matter if it's books, movies, TV shows, or music. I will read,watch, or listen to it over and over and over again until I meet my next obsession.

9. I'm a Slytherin and maintain my green and silver pride. We're not all jerks yo.

10. I really love score music. I could listen to it for hours. 

11. I can't whistle. Never have been able to, never will.

Eleven Response to the Questions from Jazzie

1. What would your daemon be and why? (If you haven't read His Dark Materials, a daemon is like the physical manifestation of your soul/conscience. It's eternally linked to you emotionally and is always with you.) I did read this series a while back. I think my daemon would be a cat, which some might view as boring but I do not. Cats are wise and watchful. They know the correct moment to strike.
2. What would your boggart be? (If you haven't read Harry Potter or watched the movies at least, you need to get on that bandwagon - Siriusly! *cough* Sorry, bad joke.) Or if you prefer to be Divergent, what would your fear landscape include? What do I fear most? Heights I guess. Can you turn that into a boggart? Would it be a giant cliff??? My guess is no. So I'd probably say it'd be some sort of altered, twisted version of myself showing me my future as an incredible failure and terrible human being.
3. What's your earliest memory of reading? My mom always really loved to read this book called Dinner at the Panda Palace. It had a lot of counting and pictures. On my own my first real series read was Harry Potter in second grade.
4. What is your most anticipated book of 2014? (Sorry, Becky, I stole your question) It was City of Heavenly Fire. But now I've already gotten and read it so now it's Into the Afterlight, the last book in The Darkest Minds Trilogy by Alexandra Bracken.
5. Who is your favorite secondary character and why? This is a total cop out, but I'm going to name more than one. Drawing the lines between main and secondary characters is a murky subject. Some of my favorites are Magnus Bane from the Shadowhunter Chronicles, Hassan from an Abundance of Katherines, and Chubs from The Darkest Minds.
6. What about your favorite villain? The villain I love to hate the most is probably President Snow from the Hunger Games. Valentine Morgenstern from the Mortal Instruments is a close second.
7. What is something you enjoy besides reading? I love playing tennis and binge watching TV.
8. What is your favorite place (other than your hometown, if you like your hometown) that you've been to? I'm a total beach person. I'd say my favorite place I've been to was Playa del Carmen in Mexico or Holden Beach in North Carolina!
9. What book do you feel guilty about not having read yet? The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. I've heard nothing but good things about it and I've been putting it off for years.
10.  If you were stuck on a deserted island, what book would you want with you? The answer can't be "How to Build Boat/Raft out of Coconuts" though that would probably be the smartest choice. I would take a dictionary. That's a weird answer. I mean, I'd probably get bored if I took a real book. I could learn a couple new words everyday until I knew everything. If I had to take a real book I'd probably go with Clockwork Princess because it's awesome and I could use a good cry.
11. Last question just because I need some suggestions: Do you read graphic novels? If you do, what are some good ones? If you don't, why not? I have never read a graphic novel. I don't know if I ever will, but I'm not adverse to the idea. I've just never had the urge.

My Questions for the Nominees

1. What is your favorite feel-good book?

2. What book has made you cry the hardest?

3. If you could live in any book universe, which one would you pick?

4. What book that you were really looking forward to really let you down?

5. If you had to be a Downworlder (vampire,werewolf, warlock, or fairy) which one would you want to be?

6. What's your all time favorite stand alone?

7. If you could meet one author who would you pick?

8. Which book character do you want to be best friends with?

9. If you had the opportunity to slap one book character who would you smack?

10. What's your favorite book-to-movie adaptation?

11. What book has had the most life-changing impact on your life?

And the Nominees are....

• bookshelves of doom
• The Page Sage
• whatchYAreading? (I laughed out loud reading their Will vs Jem "discussion")
• Rebecca-Books
• Oh, For the Love of Books!
• My Reading Frenzy
• Reading is dreaming with eyes open
• bookwormblogger9
• Courtney Reads

(Side Note: If I screwed up and you have more than 300 followers, my apologies. I tried to figure it out the best I could. You could still do it and I still think your blog is pretty neat regardless.)

Thanks again to Jazzie for the nomination. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm pretty fresh to the whole blogging thing and this was a nice compliment to get.

Origin Story

Origin Story: How this Blog Came to Be

Recently my cousin Gabby started a fashion blog because fashion is one of her passions in life. When she told me about it I said, "You know what I would blog about?" and she immediately answered, "Books." Then my sister Chrissy, who has a motivational blog, chimed in saying I should totally write one.

And I thought why not? It is not as though the thought had never crossed my mind. I had contemplated writing a book blog for a long time. So what was holding me back? Fear, a reoccurring theme in my life. When I was growing up my friends never liked books like I liked books. And I had been taught at a very young age the mentality that to be different is to be alone.

I started to love reading when I was eight years old. I was in the second grade. This was when I really started reading on my own and picking out my own books. It all started with Harry Potter. I ripped through the first four books and wanted more. I started to read all the time. I read whatever I could find.

This continued on as I was in elementary school. I was always excited when we had to read books for class and got an insane amount of accelerated reader points. I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in the fourth grade. I got bored with the books at the elementary school library and started taking them from my sister. I still had not realized that this was not the norm. 

Then I entered junior high. I like to refer to this period of my life as The Dark Period. There was a lot of drama, self-hatred, and pretending. It was then that I noticed that not only did people not like books, but they thought people who read books were lame. I did not want to be lame. I wanted to be cool. I know that makes my life sound like a cheesy teen movie, but that's just how it was.

So I stopped reading and traded in my books for liquid eyeliner and skinny jeans (which was NOT a good look on me). I started to think of myself as part of a group rather than an individual.  Through events that have nothing to do with this story I started speaking a lot less out of fear that people would make fun of me.

I was your stereotypical, unoriginal sellout for a while. My plan to be cool did not involve a lot of time for reading. I still read to get enough points for school and got away with reading "acceptable" books like Twilight.

When I hit high school I ditched the heavy eyeliner and most of the self-hatred. I still read from time to time, but not as much as I used to. I never really talked about books or reading either.

Then when I was in tenth grade I impulsively downloaded The Hunger Games on my Nook. And I finished it in two days. And I was like:

And I read the next one just as fast. I stayed up until four in the morning to finish the last one (I remember because the science MCAs were the next day and I thought sorry Ms. Brown, but I need to know how Mockingjay ends). And I wanted to keep reading. (Yeah, I read THG before it was super big. I'm such a reading hipster.)

Next it was the Divergent series (which the movie just came out!). Then it was Percy Jackson and the Olympians. And the Delirium series. And I started telling my sister to read these books. And she told her friends to read them. They started giving me recommendations too. I started reading like I was eight years old again and couldn't get enough. I made a Goodreads account and stopped being ashamed of loving books.

Then during my senior year I read City of Bones and I was obsessed. I saw that they were making a movie for it and I was ecstatic. I was looking at movie stuff online when I stumbled upon a trailer talk video. This is when I discovered BookTube. There were thousands of videos of reviews and recommendations. I started watching them for hours and made lists of books to read.

I started to tweet about books and started following book accounts. They started following me back. I no longer tried to hide that fact that I read. I discovered that some of my friends did like to read and I would lend then books and we would discuss.

I realized I was wrong when I thought that people thought reading books was lame. I was just looking at the wrong people. For we all have our passions in life, and just because the people around you don't share them doesn't mean that nobody does.

Now I'm nineteen years old and still read all the time. Books are still number one on my list of favorite things. So I'm excited to write this blog. Things you can expect from me include: reviews, recommendations, book-to-movie adaptation discussions, quotes, and some random book fun! Also some TV, not book movies, music, and real life stuff from time to time. I do other stuff besides read...occasionally.

Love, 

Michelle

"One must always be careful of books," said Tessa," and what is inside them, for words have to power to change us." -Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel