The Sunshine Blogger Award

The Sunshine Blogger Award is an award given by fellow bloggers to those who are creative, positive, and inspiring, while spreading sunshine to the blogging community. Before we get to the requirements and whatnot, a big thank you goes first to Sarah over at All The Book Blog Names Are Taken for nominating me for this award!!

I love being part of the book blogging community! Admittedly I often feel as though I'm never reading the same books as anyone else and I know my commenting is still way too sporadic, however book blog visiting is my happy place and, now that blogging is such an important part of my life, I would struggle to envisage a future without it and without knowing you're all out there.

The Rules:
1. Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you in a post and link back to their blog
2. Answer 11 questions the blogger asked you
3. Nominate 11 blogs to receive the award and write for them 11 new questions
4. List the rules and display the sunshine blogger award in your post and/or on your blog

So here's Sarah's questions with my answers:
1. What genres do you prefer? Why?
I'd say global literary fiction is my favourite because I love discovering new cultures and lifestyles through my reading. That said, I regularly genre hop so don't have set genres I prefer.

2. What genres do you refuse to read? Why?
I have genres I think I don't like, but have then enjoyed occasional books from those genres so I guess it's complicated! I wrote a 50/50 Friday post about this

3. What is the easiest thing about blogging for you? The hardest?
Rambling away is the easiest part for me. For someone who is very nervous and often silent in real life situations, I find I can launch into typing the kind of monologues for my blog that I just wouldn't dare to actually voice in person. It's like the pressure of an actual person (or, terror of terrors, several people!) listening causes my brain to panic and I can tell from the expressions on their faces that folks think I'm talking absolute gibberish. They never get my jokes either. I don't have the same problem with writing.
The hardest part is stopping blogging long enough to actually go and read a book!

4. If you could become a character in any book, which book and why?
I do become the characters in pretty much every book I love - which is usually at least one a week! For the time I'm reading, and the imagination time afterwards, I'm happily in that world before I leave it to wander into another.

5. If you could travel to any period in history, which would it be, and why?
This is such a tricky one because I'd have conditions! I'd love to visit The Labyrinth Of The Spirits era Barcelona, or The Miniaturist's Amsterdam, or the Japan of Silk, etc, etc, etc but I doubt I'd survive very long if I just showed up as me. I'd need to morph into someone appropriate for each setting or be more of a fly on the wall incarnation I think.

6. Do you ever DNF books? What makes you DNF?
I have to have absolutely no idea what is going on in a book, or be very offended by the content (Rudyard Kipling, I'm looking at you here!) in order to DNF and it's rare for me. Usually I plough on giving the author the benefit of the doubt and hoping something will improve eventually. Occasionally this has actually worked, but more often I realise I've wasted good time in which I could have been reading something much better. I need to work on upping my DNFs.

7. Who are your favorite authors?
The next ones! I'm such a reading magpie that I'm usually attracted to shiny new-to-me authors over ones I've read before. I do eagerly grab new books by, say, Terry Tyler or Elif Shafak or Pascal Garnier, but now I've started listing, I realise there's so many other names clamouring to be added so it might actually be quicker to identify disappointments than favourites.

8. How important is book cover quality to you? Why?
I use book cover quality as a way to identify story type, but it's usually only a reliable indicator of the publisher's budget. I've read amazing indie books with dodgy cover art and appalling mass market works with beautiful covers. I am as attracted as the next reader by a pretty cover, but I've learned through experience that appearances are sneakily deceptive!

9. Name a character that you would want to be best friends with, and why.
This is a tricky-to-narrow down question! Possibly Alma from All Things because I appreciate her kindness and sense of humour, and she knows all the fab vegan eateries in San Francisco.

10. Name a character who would become your mortal enemy, should you ever cross paths in real life.
I can't think of a single character for this question, sorry. To be honest, my attitude is that life's too short to waste any of my energy on hatred so, while certain people do irritate and upset me, I'll avoid them rather than working anyone up to enemy status.

11. Which authors would you invite to a dinner party? (never mind silly things like death)
I'd love to chat with historic writers like Margaret Cavendish or Louisa May Alcott because their world views would be so very different to ours today. It might be fun to mix them up with modern women who inspire me - Edna Adan Ismail and Dr Hawa Abdi, Ece Temelkuran and Nesrine Malik. I think we could have the whole world put to rights before we even got to dessert!

I haven't checked things like whether my nominees have already done this award. Instead, I've picked 11 blogs which I feel can always be relied upon to be creative, positive and inspiring. So, if you're on the lookout for that sort of book blog, these are my highly recommendeds!

1. Daniela @ Bookiverse
2. Olivia @ Olivia's Catastrophe
3. Aj @ Read All The Things
4. Carrie @ The Butterfly Reader
5. Joy @ Joyous Reads
6. Dani @ Perspective Of A Writer
7. Chuckles @ Chuckles Book Cave
8. Nicci @ Sunny Buzzy Books
9. Heather @ Based On A True Story
10. Karen @ For What It's Worth
11. Samantha @ We Live And Breathe Books

And my questions for those 11 are:

1. If you read about characters eating a tempting new food do you then buy/cook it for yourself?
2. Have you ever visited somewhere purely because it sounded great in a book?
3. Or chosen a book because it was set somewhere you love?
4. Have you ever felt obliged to read something because 'everyone else' had? If so, what? And was it worth it?
5. Which author(s) inspire(s) you?
6. How does the size of your TBR affect your reading choices?
7. How do you keep track of other bloggers' recommendations? And do you ever get round to reading those books?
8. Do you like using libraries, Little Libraries, or book exchanges?
9. What strategies do you have to drag yourself out of a reading slump?
10. Are your nearest and dearest as bookish as you are?
11. If we were all Icelandic, what book(s) would you be hoping to get for Jolabokaflod?


Phew! That's quite enough thinking for one day!
Huge thanks again to Sarah at All The Book Blog Names Are Taken. This was fun :-)