Tag!

I've been tagged by Sharon for the Real Neat Blog Award! Thank you, Sharon! The directions say to make up your own questions and tag seven more bloggers, but... um... I don't know seven other bloggers. I'll do my best.

1) What bookish activities do you participate in (besides actually, you know, reading)?

I read Sharon's blog! I used to read a few other reader-review blogs as well, but the ones I liked best stopped posting, so now I'm pretty review-blog-monogamous. I do participate in message board threads about books, and in the past month or two I've discovered BookTube, and found a few whose content I enjoy and taste I respect. I'm also in a meatspace book club.

2) What are the five most recent books you've put on your radar (to-read, library hold, acquired, etc.)?

1) Giant Days, Vol. 3 -- released today; ordered today from amazon. 'Nuff said.
2) Lifelode by Jo Walton --added to amazon wish list today.
3) I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson --added to my informal TBR list a week or two ago.
4) The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater --next book I plan to take out of the library.
5) Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs-- ordered the audiobook for a Christmas present for The Son; we will wind up listening to this together in the car.

3) What book or author do you push into people's hands most often?

Most of the people I know IRL are parents, so I wind up recommending The Son's favorite books: The True Meaning of Smekday, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series, and anything by Rick Riordan.

4) Library or bookstore?

Ooh, that's tough. For most of my life I would have said bookstore, but in the past few years I've discovered the joys of borrowing books, and I actually spend a LOT of time at my local library, since I tutor there, and it's the best place for me to work when I'm drafting a novel. Plus, both the BAM and the used book store in my area just closed in the last year. So I think library is winning at the moment.

5) Ebook or print? (Feel free to get emotional on the subject.)

Print, though I do have Kindle for Mac and sometimes read ebooks on my laptop (I'm reading War and Peace that way now, after starting it on audiobook). I'm warming up to the idea of an e-reader for several purposes, but I also feel like my brain interacts with text differently when it's on paper, and I suspect there are some books I would much prefer to read that way no matter how comfortable I eventually, inevitably become with ebooks.

6) What was the last book that you did not finish?

It may wind up being the book I'm reading right now for book club: I Love Dick by Chris Krause. I hate this book so much it's making me physically angry to read it. The front matter is like four pages of reviewers hyperbolizing over how this is the most brilliant, important feminist novel to come out of the 20th century, and the back cover is just a bunch of name-dropping of post-feminist celebrities who luuurve it (Lena Dunham! Tavi Gevinson! Alexa Chung!). But I think it is a giant pile of crap that exemplifies everything I despise about the Literary Fiction/Literary Criticism circle jerk of shallow pretentiousness. In fact, it would not be going too far to say that this book exemplifies everything that made me leave my MFA program to move to a small town in the country and start writing genre fiction.

7) Who do you share books with? What are your bookish communities?

I belong a feminist message board that has several book threads (where I met Sharon, in fact), but I don't post to the main fiction one because I feel like everyone's having serious conversations about Highly Lauded Books That Matter, and I'm over here reading space opera or YA fantasy or some shit. Also, because of the nature of that board, threads go on forever and ever and it can be intimidating to jump into a long-running conversation-- like, there's no way if the book you're posting about was just the subject of a 5-page discussion last week without going back and reading a lot of content.

However, I also belong to a baby naming message board, and am a frequent contributor on the book threads there, I think because the book threads start fresh each month, there are fewer people participating in the discussion, and I find the conversation easier to follow.

There's also my book club, which is a kind of hilariously cliché "moms drinking wine and eating brownies and gossiping about the teacher who got arrested for DUI, and oh shit it's 9:30 we need to start talking about the book!" book club. But the women are great and it gets me reading things I wouldn't pick up otherwise. I Love Dick notwithstanding.

That was fun!

I'm going to tag:

Joely
Jennifer

And that's all I got. Sorry! Though I'd love to hear your answers, Sharon. We could go back and forth forever.

1) What was your first book love?
2) Where is your favorite place to read?
3) What do you use for bookmarks?
4) Have you read any books you liked but were embarrassed to read in public because the cover and/or title was so awful?
5) If you could choose any author to write a book to your specifications, who would it be?
6) What is your favorite book couple/love story of all time?
7) Audiobooks: yay or nay?