Feature and Follow Friday

Participating in all kinds of follow memes today, hoping to get back in the game.

Next comes Feature & Follow Friday hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.

This week's featured blogs:
 
The Book Addicted Girl
and
The Little Book Blog

This week's question: Let's step away from books for a second and get personal. What t-shirt slogan best describes you?

That's a hard question to answer as I purposely don't wear t-shirts with slogans on them. BUT, there is this absolutely adorable t-shirt sold in my friend's shop that I do occasionally sport. It's a chipmunk/squirrel creature his hands up (I think of it as a him) and the word bubble coming from his mouth says, "Books Rule!" That describes me to a...well...pardon the pun...T.

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

Busy week, work-wise, meaning slow week, blogging-wise, but I'm always thrilled to participate in the weekly Book Blogger Hop and Follow Friday memes.

This week's Book Blogger Hop question:

What book are you most looking forward to seeing published in 2011? Why are you anticipating that book?

I think I'm going to have to pull from a previous Waiting-on-Wednesday meme post about Anne Patchett's State of Wonder, being published in June 2011. Having been given Bel Canto by a best friend, the publication of State of Wonder not only provides me with a (hopefully) enraptured new reading experience, but will give the added pleasure of sharing yet another wonderful book with my best friend(s).

This week's Follow Friday question:

What is/was your favorite subject in school?

This was and still is a tie between English and that category known as "Social Studies". In terms of Social Studies, I don't just mean history, because dates are the bane of my existence, and I don't just mean sociology, because I'm interested in more than social systems; I mean the two of them put together. When I was in 8th grade, my classmates both hated and loved me for my ability to ask a seemingly innocuous question that the teacher would then spend 25 minutes answering; loved it if they wanted to goof off in class, hated it if they just wanted to move on to the next topic. I remember in my yearbook for that year, my Social Studies teacher wrote something about me doing well with a career in English and being so insulted because I wanted to be an Anthropologist and teach cultural studies. I can't say he was wrong, though, as I currently work in publishing. In terms of English, well, when you read as much as I do, it's sort of a natural fit. I double-majored in college, English with a focus in children's literature, Anthropology with a focus in Native American studies, wrote two theses, and though I now have an MFA in Writing Literature for Children, still dream of getting my dual JD/PhD in Legal Anthropology. I'm young, there's still plenty of time for many new careers.

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

Trying to get back into the swing of weekly blogging, and what better way than to participate in the weekly crazes 

Follow Friday and Book Blogger Hop?

This week's Book Blogger Hop question:

"Why do you read the genre that you do?  What draws you to it?"

Well, as my reading tastes are wildly eclectic (ahem, excuse the shameless reference to my blog name), I am drawn to various genres because they all satisfy something specifically different in me. I don't get the same pleasure from a children's picturebook vs. children's novel, much less the same from a paranormal romance vs. adult non-fiction (all of which I read on a weekly basis). So, in short, it depends on my mood, on the time of year, on whether I'm traveling, on where I'll be reading the book, on how long I'll have to read at any given time, on what I read last, on what I last ate (just kidding), etc.

This week's Follow Friday question:

What makes up your non-human family? 

I don't currently have a non-human family of my own. My parents have a large black lab and a half-domesticated, feral barn cat. The house I live in has a cat, but it belongs to the owners and only likes me if a) they're not home, or b) it wants to be fed. But someday I will live with a blue Great Dane named Bella (that name was decided upon PRE-Twilight, folks, so don't even go there) and a stray cat.

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

How could I almost forget? 

It's Book Blogger Hop and Follow Friday time!

This week's Book Blogger Hop question:

"What very popular and hyped book in the blogosphere did you NOT enjoy and how did you feel about posting your review?"

Sadly, especially considering how much I enjoyed The History of Love, Nicole Krauss's new novel,
Great House was a big disappointment to me. I found it difficult to relate to the narrator, the story elements I wanted to hear more about were not the ones expanded upon, and frankly, I thought the writing was a little boring. In addition to all of that, I just got the sense that the book was trying so hard to be literary, and I really dislike it when writing is aware of itself. So, I stopped reading it about half-way through. And didn't post a review because I tend to avoid posting negative reviews. This is just my own philosophy, but life's too short to continue reading a book you don't like, and there are so many books I did enjoy to blog about that I don't feel the need to blog about those I didn't.

This week's Follow Friday question:

What do you do besides reading / reviewing as a hobby?

If there's any time left over between work, reading, sleeping, eating, and working out, I craft, I photograph, I play the piano when there's one around, I'm considering learning the harmonica, I knit, I sew, I mixed-media collage, I make cards, I cook, I bake, and I'm always looking for more.

 Now then, nice to meet you all!

Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday

It's that time again: 

Follow the yellow brick road, follow your dreams, and follow me
because it's 

Book Blogger Hop and Follow Friday!

This week's Book Blogger Hop question:

  "Since Thanksgiving is coming up next week, let's use this week's Hop to share what we are most thankful for and what our holiday traditions are!"

Most thankful for - how to answer without being a cliche or a jerk? I'm thankful for all the usual - a loving family, my fairly decent health, the fact that I have a job that allows me to buy fresh, local, and organic food most days of the month. But I'm also thankful for those things most people don't openly talk about:

- I'm thankful I'm recognized as an attractive person by most physical standards. I genuinely believe life is more difficult for those judged as having a less-than-traditional beauty.

- I'm grateful I have some sort of fashion sense (not saying it's good fashion, just that I have a sense of it), so that I know how to dress my non-commercialized body type in attractive ways.

- I'm thankful I was born with a natural intelligence. The educational advantages my parents worked hard to give me, aside, it's undeniable that I have both book and life smarts and I use them.

- I'm thankful I was raised to question life, to give in to curiosity, and to be a "doer", as in one who gets off one's ass to go out and explore the world first-hand (though this really goes back to being thankful for my family).

- In short, I'm thankful to be me, where I am, who I am, right now.

As for Thanksgiving traditions, well, first I try to reconcile Native American history with European American history. Then I travel to Syracuse, NY to have a big Thanksgiving dinner with my Polish grandmother, my father, my mother, my sister, my brother, and my 3 cousins (and whoever they bring [of the paramour variety] to Thanksgiving this year). This will be our first Thanksgiving without my uncle. PJF, may you forever rest in peace. You, and your wine-loosened tongue filling in the awkward conversational gaps with even more awkward family stories, will be missed.

Today's Follow Friday question:

 

"How long have you been blogging?"

That's a complicated one. As you can tell by the archive on the side of this blog, I've been blogging since February 2009. In reality, I've been blogging since 2007, but the original blog was more for me and my family. Those posts were deleted to make way for a new book-related public blog. BUT to complicate that, the original book blog was actually called Afterthoughts..., accompanied by Afterthoughts for Adults, accompanied by Afterfonts. I also blogged on my former store's blog, A Reading Odyssey, as well as blogging with my former grad school cohort (former grad school, former cohort, current good friends) on The Guinea Pigs blog. 

 

My current blog, Wildly Read, began in early November when I decided I wanted one blog to rule them all. Collected here are all the posts from all three of my previous blogs, the bookstore blog, and the Guinea Pigs blog, plus all the new posts I now create. Hence the need for new followers. I can import my posts; I can't import my follower list.