The Book Fests Awards

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This afternoon I will be doing the Book Fests Award – thank you so much to Bex from My Shelf and Myself for nominating me, it’s been an exhausting week, and I hadn’t spent as much time as I wanted on my blog so this really cheered me up.

THE RULES:

• It’s always proper and the right thing to do, when you receive something from someone, you thank them. It’s the same with this award. You can link the blogger who presents the award blog in the post you use to fulfil the requirements of the award.
• Answer the award questions that will be listed below.
• Write a Fifty Words Story, because it’s fun.
• Award five or more bloggers with this Award.
• Ask them a question of your making, you’ll like them to answer.
• Put up the award image badge on your blog via image widget.

A book you started but never finished…but want to finish. What stopped you from continuing to read it?

There aren’t many books that I’ve not finished reading, the list of books I’ve not finished but actually want to is even shorter. In fact I think it may actually be limited to just the one, The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith. I had the eBook rather than a physical book and at the time I went through a phase of really not liking reading eBooks, I had, and still have an iPad rather than a Kindle, and just wasn’t enjoying reading on it that much. I always regretted not finishing reading it, and actually recently borrowed a copy from the library, so should be rectifying this in the next week or so

What elements attract you to a book, which makes you need to read it?

I’m one of those people who have the unfortunate habit of judging a book by its cover, if I’m browsing Waterstones or NetGalley looking for my next read it’s usually a cover that catches my eye and then the blurb that draws me in. Often it’s a crime or thriller, but I’ve been looking to widen what I read this year so I’ve started looking at a lot of YA, and I can tell you there’s a lot of great covers out there at the moment!

Which books do you prefer, e-copy or hard copy?

Hard copy. Every time. I do currently have a fair few ARC eBooks from NetGalley but given a choice I would still pick a hard copy. As I mentioned above I have an iPad rather than a Kindle to read on, and it’s just a little too heavy for long periods of reading. I think this must be a little psychological, I’m sure some of the books I’ve read are heavier than my iPad but that doesn’t bother me. There’s just something about having an actual book in my hand and physically turning the pages that I love. Plus I love having the book up on my shelf, my aim one day is to be able to afford a house where I can dedicate a room to be my library, I still have all my childhood books stored at my mum’s house waiting for me.

What book are you currently reading or going to read next?

It’s been a quiet week or so for me reading wise, I recently finished Ragdoll by Daniel Cole, I’m not 100% what I’m going to read next, I’ve got ARC eBooks of Beware That Girl and Lessons in Falling to read, and I recently bought Little Deaths, Unconventional and Heartless to read.

Is it fair to judge a book by its film?

I don’t think so, if I like a film adaptation and I haven’t read the book yet I’m more likely to pick it up, but not liking a film wouldn’t stop me from picking up the book. I think every reader knows that you can’t fit everything from a novel into a couple of hours on-screen, and even a successful adaptation like the Harry Potter series, will still divide fans of the books as there will always be debate about the bits of the book that didn’t make it into the movie that should have, bits that made it in that shouldn’t have, or bits that have been made up just for the film, or changed from the book to the movie – Deathly Hallows Part 2 I’m looking at you here…

What book did you badly judge by its cover and ended up loving?

This question I really struggled with, there probably aren’t that many books I didn’t like the look of but then went on to read. If I go back to being a teenager I remember being told we had to read To Kill A Mockingbird for our GCSE, I remember being really annoyed we were the only class that had to read it, every single other class in my year group (and there were more than 10) all were given a different book to read, and none anywhere near a long as TKAM. The editions we had at school were all a bit tatty and not the most interesting to look at, it didn’t take me long to get into it though, and looking back I don’t think it was an accident that the class with the only mixed race girl in a year of 450 students ended up reading it.

Which book character have you felt the most kin with and able to relate with?

Like Bex the first I related to was Hermione, how could I not, when the book came out I was about the same age, top of my class and I even have the frizzy hair! I remember walking out of the first film a few years later with my dad and him turning to me and asking when J.K Rowling had met me as Hermione was so clearly like me. I must say I wasn’t quite as bad as the early books Hermione, I would consider death worse than detention, not that I ever had a detention! As these days I read a lot of crime novels I don’t find too many that I relate to, for me that doesn’t make a book any less enjoyable, and I would probably be a little worried if I found myself relating to a lot of serial killers. I did recently find myself relating to Tanzie in Jojo Moyes’ The One Plus One, she’s another young girl that others consider a bit strange and geeky, do you see a pattern emerging lol

If you could trade lives with one book character, who would it be and why?

Again like Bex it would have to be someone from Hogwarts! Harry Potter was just a huge part of my childhood and to this day I still think a lot on the lessons of acceptance and the struggle of doing the right thing vs doing the easy thing that the series taught me. I don’t think I’d want the pressures of being Hermione though, I think I’d probably fit into Ravenclaw quite well, although all the sorting quizzes suggest I belong in Slytherin.

Bex’s question: what’s a book that you have absolutely loved, but nobody else seems to have heard of?

This is a really difficult one for me! I have a habit of reading a lot books by the big crime writers and who hasn’t heard of Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. One crime writer who perhaps doesn’t yet have quite the same worldwide recognition, but deserves it is James Oswald. I believe the first couple of novels in the Inspector McLean series were self published before they were picked up by Penguin who have been publishing them since 2017. I wouldn’t say he was a complete unknown though so perhaps I’ll go back in time slightly to my teenage years. Social media wasn’t really a thing, that makes me sound old, so information wasn’t quite so easily shared. I really loved the Fearless series by Francine Pascal, in the UK at least it was nowhere near as well-known as her Sweet Valley series was thanks to the TV series but I much preferred Fearless. I wrote a little about it in my post on My Childhood Favourites.

My story:

She loves the spring – the sound of the birds in the sky, the bluebells and snowdrops pushing up through the ground and the new buds forming on the bare tree branches. This year is different however; it’s not just a new beginning for the world, but one for her too.

I hope you enjoyed reading my answers – a fifty word story is harder than you’d think! Feel free to share your own answers in the comments!

I nominate:

• Emma @ Damp Pebbles
• Fiction Fan
• Jo @ Once Upon A Bookcase
• Kelly @ Kelly’s Rambles
• Chelle @ Tales of Yesterday

Apologies if any of you have already been nominated!

My question: You’ve been given an article in a major newspaper’s culture section. You can review just one book – What do you pick?

Thanks again Bex!