Would You Rather Tag - Booknerd Edition!

This is a tag that's been circling around the booktube nation. It was originally done by RayKayBooks but I found it while catching up on recent Katytastic videos that I've missed. Apparently I've missed a lot. Anywho, I thought it'd be fun to bring it to the blog world because the questions are fun.

Would you rather...

1. Read only trilogies or stand-alones?
I'm going to go with trilogies. Most of my favorite books are from series or trilogies - though mostly trilogies since basically every book nowadays is part of a trilogy. I love stand-alones but there just aren't enough in the fantasy genre. I think they only one I've read is Eye of the Dragon by Stephen King - really good by the way. Stand-alones seem to be a contemporary thing and I don't read enough contemporary to justify only reading stand-alones.

2. Read only female or male authors?
Like Kat, I don't at all condone reading one or the other simply based on the author's gender. However,  for the sake of Would You Rather if I had to choose, I'd have to go with female authors. Somehow most of my book shelves consist of female authors. Not on purpose, it just sort of happened that way. ... Oh my god, If I only read female authors, I could never read Percy Jackson again - the HORROR. I don't like this question.

3. Shop at Barnes & Noble or Amazon?
I guess I'm a little biased when it comes to this one considering I work at BN and my employee discount is freaking awesome. But even before I started working there, it just never occurred to me to shop for books on Amazon. I'm more of a peruse the bookshelves kind of person. I don't do much online shopping to begin with - except for Christmas. I hate going to stores around Christmas. People are crazy. Plus, Amazon is being terrible to their authors and tampering with customer orders. That's not right.

4. All books become movies or t.v. shows?
I think I'm going to go for movies. A lot of stuff needs to be added to TV shows to keep them going. Even though details tend to get taken out to become movies, I think I'd rather that then extra stuff be thrown in for the sake of longevity. Grr... but at the same time, I don't like when things are taken out. Teddy Lupin needed to be in the final scene of Deathly Hallows. I'm still going to stick with movies but only faithful adaptations where only minor details are removed from the script. Teddy was not a minor detail damn it!

5. Read 5 pages per day or 5 books per week?
Wow, five books a week is tough for me but I'm going to choose that one. If I was limited to five pages a day, I think I'd go crazy. What if something really intense is happening at the end of the five pages? I'd need to know!!

6. Be a professional reviewer or author?
Author definitely. Technically speaking I majored in English with a concentration in creative writing so I could work on my writing skills to become a published author but I only took like two writing classes and the rest were lit courses. I'm not really sure how I managed that one. But I'd definitely want to be an author over a reviewer. I generally like writing reviews because they spark conversations about books but I'd rather write my own books than be stuck only writing reviews. 

7. Only read your top 20 favorite books over and over or always read new ones that you haven't read before?
Definitely only ever read new books. I love my favorite books - that's why they're my favorites - and I love rereading them. Still, I couldn't only be limited to them over and over and over without ever getting the chance to discover new books with new worlds and new characters. That'd be terrible.

8. Be a librarian or book seller?
Again I'm a little biased here. I am a bookseller and I love it. Technically, I think it'd be amazing to one day own my own indie book store decorated in a fantasy/magic theme with a little café attached that sold coffee and tea in Alice and Wonderland-ish teacups. Yes, I've thought a lot about this. But I'd rather be a bookseller because it's a lot of fun to interact with customers and make suggestions to find new books that they'd like then have them come back and tell you what they thought about it.

9. Only read your favorite genre, or every genre except your favorite?
Even though I mostly stick with the fantasy genre, if I were only limited to that, I think I'd get really bored. I'm going to go with read every genre except my favorite because there's a lot of cool stuff out there that I haven't experienced yet and I need to read it all. Someone figure out how to stop time so we can all hang out and just read all the books for forever.

10. Only read physical books or eBooks?
Physical books. Hands down. No contest there. I don't really like reading eBooks. I understand the convenience of them especially when you're traveling but there's nothing like holding an actual book in your hands and turning the pages and smelling the book smell and cuddling the book when it makes you happy or shaking the crap out of it when it makes you mad... okay I'll stop there. I'm beginning to sound crazy. Physical books though. Yeah, they're better.

I'm not going to tag anyone but if anyone feels like doing this, let me know below.

Top Ten Tuesday #8: Top Ten Books That I Want to Read but Don't Own Yet

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/meme created by The Broke and the Bookish.

I want to read all the books!!!! Why isn't there enough time in the world???

1. The Giver by Lois Lowry - Gah! I know! The movie just came out but even before that was in the works I've wanted to read this. I never had to read it for school because my grammar school believed in nonsense like a reading textbook filled with excerpts instead of shelling out money for actual books for students.

 

2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - Same goes for this one. I never read it for school but people rave about it so much that I need to read it.

3. If I Stay by Gale Forman - I'm totally falling for the new craze in YA contemporary and If I Stay has made it to my TBR list. I'd seen this book around before but since contemporary isn't usually my thing, I wasn't too interested in it.

4. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas - My favorite booktuber, Katytastic, talks about the Throne of Glass series all the time. I need in on the awesomeness. By the way, if you don't watch Kat, you should totally watch Kat.

5. Attachments (and Landline) by Rainbow Rowell - Fangirl and Eleanor and Park both made for cute, fun reading experiences intertwined with epic feels. I need more Rainbow Rowell on my shelves, without a doubt.

6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - This came up as a suggested read during one of my book club polls so I finally read a summary of what it's about. It sounds really interesting though I'm a little wary that I won't get all the 80s pop culture references. I'm all for a John Hughes movie night any day of the week but that's just about where my 80s knowledge ends. Well, that and the original 21 Jump Street TV series.

7. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman - I just read volume one of The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel. Now, I'm in a Neil Gaiman sort of mood and The Ocean at the End of the Lane has been on my TBR ever since I heard of it coming out. Therefore, it's earned a mention on this list.

8. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy - Post-apocalyptic dystopian? Count me in.  This is another book that I've heard really good things about. The Infinite Sea comes out soon too though so I may just wait until I can get both at once and marathon through them.

9. Wonder by R. J. Palacio - I have heard nothing but great things about this book from everyone who has read it. I'm actually surprised it hasn't won a Newbery Award or at least an honor. Though, honestly, I don't know much about how the Newbery's are given out. Plus, there's a little e-book novella that released recently that I want to read too.

10. Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean - So I've had this obsession with Peter Pan ever since I was little. If Neverland were real, I'd definitely live there - especially if Hook looks like Colin O'Donoghue. I'll read basically any adaptation of a Peter Pan story (except for that surfer one. That's just too weird for me.) This is the first authorized sequel to J. M. Barrie's book and I don't own it yet. It's awful and I should probably do something about that. 

Update aka I'm back!!

Hello everyone! I'm finally back from my almost two month hiatus! I've definitely missed blogging but my hiatus was not remotely unproductive. Here's why:

1. As I mentioned in my last update, my boyfriend and I remodeled my kitchen. For future reference, I do not suggest remodeling your own kitchen no matter how easy IKEA furniture is to put together. Especially when you're two 24 year olds with full time jobs who have no actual contracting experience beyond just being fairly handy with tools. We ran into a bunch of random problems but after four weeks, it came out awesome and even more importantly, everything functions just as it's supposed to.

We went from this partially demolished horrible-ness:

(I should mention that my grandparents moved into this house in the 70s. Aside from the countertop which my uncle installed sometime in the 80s and the appliances, this was the kitchen that came with the house.)

To this loveliness:

All that's left is to tile the backsplash with the really pretty tiles I picked out. I tried to do it myself but I ended up cracking tiles in attempt to cut outlet holes. Oops.

 

 

2. If you live in the US and have a local BN that you frequent, you might have heard of the Get Pop Cultured Summer that was a three week long line-up of different events. As an employee of my local BN, I was thrust right in the middle of preparing/ running some of the events in it. Here's some stuff that made for it:

Several 3D snowflakes of varying sizes, an Olaf for our Pin the Carrot on Olaf game, and an ice palace for Elsa which was basically the same height as me all for our Frozen Friday event which had an insane turn out. The kids had fun though and I had fun making stuff for it.

 

 

 

I also did a Batman story time and got to dress up as Luna for our Page to Screen weekend. Sorry, I was not wearing a wig. I don't think I'd make a very good blonde. It's good to have fun at work sometimes.

 

What I was not remotely productive about this summer was reading. I started reading Code Name Verity at the beginning of July for a book club I'm in but I never got past page 50. What's worse is I'm a mod for that book club. Oops again. I'm not usually one to DNF a book but this was my second time trying to read it. I know, people really love this book but maybe I was just too busy or too tired (I barely slept most of July) to get into it.

Oh well, third time's a charm, yeah?

 

Before my hiatus, I meant to write a review of Eleanor and Park but it's not fresh enough in my mind anymore for me to do it justice. I will say that I whole heartedly loved the book and I need a sequel or at least a movie to tide me over until a sequel is written because that last line... not cool. I was fully expecting to flip the page and see another chapter.

I need to know what was said!!!

Anywho, I'm back on my regular trek through books now so expect reviews and other bookish fun to come! Also, anyone know of some good layout sites? I'm looking to get an original layout done. I'd do it myself but I'm mediocre at best with my knock off photo editing program and I basically suck at HTML/CSS. I have someone in mind but it's a little over my price range. I'm open to any suggestions =)