Bookish Superlatives Survey

Jamie from the Perpetual Pageturner has come up with a new survey! Remember the A-Z book survey? Well this new one looks like fun too! Click the link to get to her post and participate :)

Characters

Most Likely To Change The World
Tris from Divergent. She's got the courage, the fight, and the principles.

Cutest Couple
This is actually really hard! What does cute mean anyway? There are so many couples I love but whether they're cute is another story. Hm. Maybe Tod and Kaylee from the Soul Screamers series? I also really like Bram and Nora from Dearly, Departed. Yeah I know, we're talking about cute and I give you zombie romance...

Class Clown
Maybe Jamie from The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. Or Alaska from Looking for Alaska. She sure knows how to pull off a prank. Or no wait! Puck, from the Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa. Puck gets the title.

Most Likely To Become Famous For Their Athletic/Musical/Artistic Abilities
Music: Bailey from Dirty Little Secret by Jennifer Echols.

All Around Good Person
Eddie from Vampire Academy / Bloodlines. He looks out for everyone.

Biggest Flirt
Adrian Ivashkov. Kaidan Rowe. Those guys know how to get a girl's number... 

Most Likely To Be Fought Over 
Noah Shaw from the Mara Dyer series. I can also imagine a lot of people fighting over St. Clair from Anna and the French Kiss.

Mostly Likely To Be Friends Forever
Maybe Donna and Navin from Karen Mahoney's Iron Witch series. Or Emma and Kaylee from Soul Screamers. But I'm missing a really great friendship team, I just know it...

Most Likely To Have Their Own Reality Show 
Mimi from the Blue Bloods series. She's definitely conceited enough to have cameras following her everywhere from shopping to her stylist to her parties.

Most Unique
Varen Nethers. I'm not quite sure what he even is exactly but I've never read anyone like him.

Most Likely To Survive An Apocalypse
Katniss from the Hunger Games. That girl would survive just about anything.

Most Likely To Be A Villain
Jesse from Michelle Davidson Argyle's The Breakaway. He already is a criminal but I think he might as well rise in their ranks...
Or Lila from the Curse Workers series. She's a crime family heiress and one badass girl.

Biggest Wallflower
Um... Simon from The Mortal Instruments before he turns into a vampire?

Most Likely To Break Your Heart
Will Herondale. He broke it very badly. Or Noah from the Mara Dyer series. I'm sure he's broken his share of hearts twice over.

Most Changed
Mac from the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning. Starts out as some sort of barbie, becomes one badass fighter against the fae.

Most Likely To Get Arrested
I know so many smartass characters, why won't none of them come to mind?!
Maybe Beth from Dare You To by Katie McGarry.

Self Proclaimed God/Goddess
Jace from The Mortal Instruments. I like the guy, but that ego...
Or Daemon from Obsidian.

Best Person To Bring Home To Mom & Dad
Erm... maybe Hale from Heist Society. You know, he may be a thief but he's also a filthy rich heir and he knows how to behave in polite society and charm people.

Books

Most Likely To Make You Cry 
Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare. Made me cry sooo hard!! Will, Jem, Tessa. What a knot you make.
Oh and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I was book-hungover, and that's not usual with me.

Dares To Be Different (in world, plot, storytelling, etc.) 
In storytelling: Nevermore by Kelly Creagh. I also find Holly Black's books to be different and courageous in what she depicts. She also often features LGBT characters.
Brenna Yovanoff's The Replacement was also unlike anything else I've read.

Best Dressed (pretty cover!)
Oh my god, only one?! Anyway, I'm still impressed by this one.

Most Likely To Make You Swoon 
I'm not a swooner generally but some of the things Tod Hudson says to Kaylee certainly come close... so maybe If I Die? It's likely to make me cry too though...

Loveliest Prose 
Nevermore by Kelly Creagh. Beautiful, beautiful writing. New descriptions and somehow... condensed. I also love all the E.A. Poe references.

Most Likely To Be A Favorite Of 2013
Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief
April Genevieve Tucholke - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Michelle Hodkin - The Evolution of Mara Dyer

I've read a lot of amazing books this year!!

Most Likely To Change The World (or change your life)
Divergent had a very big impact on me concerning who I am and who I want to be.
As for contemporary books, I can recommend Just One Day by Gayle Forman.

Book You Are Most Likely To Keep Putting Off

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Shocking, isn't it? But I'm not sure I'll ever read it. I know I'm not ready for it. I don't feel like opening old wounds, and I know Green's writing well enough to know he'd make me feel it.

Most Likely To End Up As Christmas Gifts For Everyone You Know
Me giving other people books... not necessarily a good idea ^^''
But I think Pushing the Limits or Shadow and Bone would make fairly good presents.

Most Likely To Be Thrown
Does that mean from my collection?
I have an ecopy of Beautiful Disaster that I won. If it was print, I'd gladly throw it out. It glorifies are very unhealthy relationship and the plot is all over the place.

Most Likely To Be Reread More Than Once
The Mara Dyer series. Throne of Glass.  The Infernal Devices series. The Fever series. Loads and loads of books... I really wish I had the time!

Most Likely To Make You Read Through An Earthquake Because It’s THAT Engrossing 
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness was extremely engrossing!

Most Likely To Be Passed On To Your Children

My editions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, illustrated by Alan Lee. They're very beautiful!

Most Likely To Break Your Heart Into A Million Pieces
Isn't that very similar to the make you cry question? Take those from there and add Black Heart by Holly Black to it. It was a great conclusion to the trilogy but it did break my heart at points.

Most Likely To Brighten Up Your Day
Losing It by Cora Carmack. It was a lot of fun! Oh, or Croak by Gina Damico. Funniest novel involving reapers ever XD


Do you agree/disagree with my choices? So often I felt like if you'd have asked me at any other time, I would have come up with much better answers...

Top Ten Tuesday: most memorable secondary characters

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new topic that the participants come up with a top ten list for.


This week is all about the favorite secondary characters we can't get out of our heads

I love secondary characters. Sometimes, they actually appeal to me more than the main ones. However, trying to come up with a top ten made me realize that sometimes it's actually quite hard to determine whether someone is a secondary character or part of the 'main character crew'. Because let's face it, there is usually more than just one main character, it's just that one of them is often the narrator.

Anyway, here are - in no particular order - some of my favorites

Jenks - The Hollows series, by Kim Harrison
Jenks is a pixy with a temper and one of the foulest (and funniest) mouths you can imagine. Also, he's got a wife and over 50 children populating Rachel's back garden! As her pixy sidekick, he's ace at disabling security so Rachel can do some reconnoitering. And he's also simply a good and loyal friend.

Uncle Mort - Croak series, by Gina Damico
He's a Grim reaper and the first one to keep Lex's temper in check. Also, he's got the craziest hair, a motorcycle, and a really cool house. He's also not averse to bending laws if he sees it fit. The kind of guy you want at your side when the shit hits the fan.

Magnus Bane - The Mortal Instruments / The Infernal Devices, by Cassandra Claire
High Warlock of Brooklyn. Throws the best parties and has an extravagant fashion sense. Always getting involved in Shadowhunter business despite himself. I love his relationship to Alec (there should be more LGBT couples/characters in YA) and I think it's fascinating that he's in both series and in a way helps tying the stories together.

Sabine - Soul Screamers series, by Rachel Vincent
She's one of those cases where I'm unsure whether she'd count as a main character. At first, I hated her. But she and her blunt but honest statements really won me over. Even if she was hard on Kaylee, there was usually some truth to what she was saying. Best frenemies, I guess, but seriously - Sabine gets some of the best lines! Also, the girl is literally a Nightmare and feeds on fear. Not something you come across very often in YA.

Will - Masque of the Red Death, by Bethany Griffin
Again, is Will a main character? I can't decide. But I've always preferred him to Elliott. He's devoted to his siblings above all else, he's kind, and well... he's the type of guy I find attractive ^^' Dark, quiet, handsome, tattooed... with just a hint of danger.

Dani O'Malley - Fever series, by Karen Marie Moning
Dani's just badass. The youngest of the Sidhe-seers and the one with the highest fae bodycount. She's got superspeed, she's fierce, and she's still got that swagger that comes from feeling young and invincible. And still there are these moments when you realize that she's seen and had to deal with things that should be well beyond the scope of a 14-year-old. I really need to read Iced, the spin-off series that focuses on her.

Vlad - Night Huntress series, by Jeaniene Frost
Vlad's also got his own spin-off books but I haven't read  them yet. He's the Vlad Tepes. Dracula. Only without the cape. Instead, he can let other vamps go up in flames. Also, he's a snarky, kinda cynical anti-hero and he loves to piss Bones off. In short, he makes me laugh and he's protective of Cat, so I like him.

Adrian Ivashkov - Vampire Academy series, by Richelle Mead
Is he a secondary character? I think so, at least in the first couple of books. I'll be honest, it took me a while to grow to like him, partly due to the fact that he's constantly drunk in the beginning. However, I felt so sorry for him at the end of VA and I'm very glad he's in a way getting a 'second chance' in Bloodlines. He's a combination of genius, madness, and self-deprecation-masked-by-cockyness I find fascinating. There's a lot more to him than you'd expect at first.

Ziri - Days of Blood and Starlight, by Laini Taylor
Oh Ziri. How I cried for you in DoBaS. I hoped for your happy ending against hope, and of course my hopes were dashed. For now. But I love how Laini Taylor expanded his role in this sequel! I can't say more without spoilers but let's just say Ziri has a special place in my heart.

Barron Sharpe - Curse Workers trilogy, by Holly Black
I'll be honest: I don't like Barron. I feel kind of sorry for him... sometimes. But he's fascinating, and that's more important to me in a character than that they're likeable. He can erase or alter other people's memories, but there's a backlash against himself and he erodes his own memory, taking with it parts of his personality. If he didn't write it down, he wouldn't remember who he was. There's something tragic in that, as well as something pathetic and nefarious.

So that's my top ten! A close runner-up was Jackal from Julie Kagawa's The Eternity Cure because of his sarcastic remarks and reluctant change/development of character. I love how he pushes Allies buttons.
What do you think of my top ten? Do we share any picks? And what did you come up with? I'd love to get to know some new books/series I might like based on the secondary characters in them :)

A-Z Book Survey

This is an awesome survey that Jaimie  from The Perpetual Page-Turner put together. I love surveys but I haven't actually filled one out in ages, so this should be fun!

Author you’ve read the most books from:

Difficult. I've read tons of Wolfgang Hohlbein's books (I must own between 20-30 and have read more), also quite a lot of Rachel Vincent (11) and Stephen King (20? no clue).

Best sequel ever:

Um... I really like The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan. It's the second book in the trilogy and my favorite of the three. I also loved The Evolution of Mara Dyer.

Currently Reading:

I'm re-reading Melissa Marr's Ink Exchange.

Drink of Choice While Reading:

Coke Zero, but I'm forbidden to drink it at the moment because the artificial sugar troubles my intestines. So now it's Rivella Blau, a Swiss drink.

E-Reader of Physical Book?

I prefer physical books because the covers are pretty and you get something tangible for your money. I like putting them on my shelf and smelling them ^^'' But as my shelves become more cramped, I've learned to appreciate my kindle. Also, you can have the book immediately.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School: 

 I was horribly shy and not popular enough to have many picks/dates but I love Noah from the Mara Dyer series. Seth from Wicked Lovely is also a fantastic guy.

Glad you gave this book a chance:

Blood Rights by Kristen Painter. I didn't expect it to be this good! It's a vampire book but it felt by no means like 'something I've read before' if you know what I mean.

Hidden Gem Book:

A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin.

Important Moment in your Reading Life:
Unf. Many. But one was reading Stephen King when I was 15 and realizing that I liked him, that I liked dark, liked horror, and that was okay. My mum had warned me off him for years because he 'writes these gross, bloody horror novels' but she'd never actually read one. Reading and liking him made me realize that I could like books that my mum didn't like (our reading tastes are otherwise quite similar).

Just Finished: 

 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

 Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:

I can't read books about cancer. That includes The Fault in Our Stars. I'm not ready to go through that and relive certain memories. Not doing that to myself.

I also dislike books where girls obsess so much over boys that their whole life and tastes etc. revolve only about them and they only like what their BF likes etc. Also, books where the sex substitutes for plot. I don't mind sex in books but I need an actual story and great characters.

Longest Book You’ve Read:

Probably The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer-Bradley. I was 14. The version I read had 1115 pages. Closest to that came Shogun by James Clavell and the 5th Harry Potter (both 1000+).

Major book hangover because of:

The Book Thief. That's why I decided on a re-read. Divergent by Veronica Roth also really lingered on my mind, as did all of Stephen King's Dark Tower books.

Number of Bookcases You Own:

Two in my room at my parents' house. Another big one for my apartment, plus two smaller ones that also have other stuff on them. But I also have a number of books in a closet and in various boxes... I must own over 500.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:

I love to re-read, but in the last 2 or so years I've rarely had the time :( I've read Katja Brandis' Daresh series multiple times, same for all the Harry Potter books, The Hobbit (5 times), The Lord of the Rings (4), Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite, Holly Black's Tithe (4?), and lots of books by German authors.

 Preferred Place To Read:

My bed, the table, or one of my parents' sofas. I also read on the train a lot but it's not a preferred place.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.” 

Poppy Z. Brite - Lost Souls

There are soooo many quotes! I tend to remember poetry though and it's too lengthy to quote here.

Reading Regret:

Beautiful Disaster. What a waste of time.

Also, not reading the Mara Dyer books and Divergent sooner!

 Series You Started And Need To Finish(all books are out in series):

A LOT. I still need to read Oath Bound by Rachel Vincent. Finish Kim Harrison's The Hollows. The Sookie Stackhouse books (I've 2 or 3 left). There are many more I'm simply behind on, and some that are finished but I haven't started them yet.

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

You are trying to kill me >.<

Stephen King - Wizard and Glass

Holly Black - Red Glove

Laini Taylor - Daugher of Smoke and Bone

And, to throw in a classic, Jane Eyre.

Unapologetic Fangirl For: 

Holly Black, Kelly Creagh, Melissa Marr. They are so good. If I met them, words would fail me.

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke - my copy has shipped!!

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Worst Bookish Habit:

Err... I read way more of them than I review? I buy too many of them?

X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

Can't do that right now because nearly all my books are boxed up in the basement... those on the shelf in my old room where I currently live again are nearly all German.

Your latest book purchase:

Nachtgeister (Nightlife) by Rob Thurman. Spontaneous buy at a store that's closing and now everything's 40% off or more.

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

The Book Thief

Shadow and Bone

Where She Went

I just spent over an hour doing this and it's now 2:40am... I need to sleep.

Do we have anything in common? Have you done the survey too? Please link me up :)

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Beginnings and Endings

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new topic that the participants come up with a top ten list for.

This week's topic is about our favorite beginnings and endings of books

This is really hard because while I often think "This is an awesome way of beginning a book!" it's kind of hard to remember these things when you should put them on a list...

Here goes in no particular order:


Great opening lines


The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”
I love this beginning! It made me immediately want to keep reading!



The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - Stephen King
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
One of my all-time favorite series. I read this sentence when I was 15 and I was hooked.



The Demon's Lexicon - Sarah Rees Brennan
"The pipe under the sink was leaking again. It wouldn't have been so bad, except that Nick kept his favourite sword under the sink."
I devoured this book. Evil magicians, demons, swords under the sink, and tons of snarky humor! And Nick is one of a kind.



Der Process (The Trial) - Franz Kafka
"Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."
("Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.")
I know many hate Kafka (at least the whole class apart from me did) but I really like his style and the way the power dynamics in his stories work, as well as the way he uses space and dimensions. This translation isn't bad, although 'wrong' should actually be something more like 'evil'.



Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
"It was a pleasure to burn. It was a pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed."
Amazing book! If you love reading at all, you've got to read this at some point.



And some favorite closing lines:



On the Road - Jack Kerouac
"The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."
Not my favorite quote from the book, but still a good way to open things up and round off the story.



The Evolution of Mara Dyer - Michelle Hodkin
"This is what I knew: I was trapped in my body, in that bed, at that moment. But even as I looked out through the windows of my eyes, through the bars of my prison, I knew i wouldn't be trapped forever. They rattled my cage to see if I'd bite. When they released me, they'd see the answer was yes."
Go get them, Mara! This series is soooo good, after that ending I just can't wait for the last book!



The Replacement - Brenna Yovanoff
"I reached for Tate, feeling for the warmth of her hand, and linked my fingers through hers. The only thing that mattered was the weight of her head on my shoulder. Our lives were limitless and unknowable, not perfect, but ours. This was life in Gentry. This is just what we do."
This book has SO many quotable lines, but I just really like this ending as well. It works perfectly.



White Cat - Holly Black
"Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don't deserve, and could never deserve. Marks are stupid, and pathetic, and sad. Marks think they're going to go home one night and have the girl the loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con."
This is an amazing ending because it's the epitome of Cassel's voice, and an important motif in the whole series. I also like it because it is bitter... which is a quote in itself.



Some Quiet Place - Kelsey Sutton
"Fear tries to snatch the keys, but I manage to jerk them away just in time. He scowls down at me. 'The world can spin without me for a few minutes, woman. Come on, I've never driven before.' I laugh, a sound that he cuts short with a kiss that tastes of strawberries and terror."
This is a pretty random choice. It's a book I read fairly recently, and I just really like the ending.


Once more, most of these choices were quite random. It was hard to actually find opening sentences because most of my books are boxed up somewhere so it's not like I can snatch them from the shelf and look up beginnings and endings. But I really like the ones I came up with! What do you think of them? And what did you choose?

Armchair BEA: YA Lit and wrap up

I really enjoyed Armchair BEA, but I didn't manage to get a themed post up every day. Sometimes I felt daunted or lazy, but I do feel bad about not posting yesterday so I want to talk about that topic now and then wrap things up.

The first topic of yesterday was 'keeping it real', and to be honest I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to mean. It's about growing an audience and keeping blogging fun.
I'm not sure I'm really doing that much in terms of marketing my blog. I'm doing this for the books and because I enjoy interacting with other bloggers and authors. Of course the ARCs are a plus, but they also put quite a bit of stress on me. The audience growing kind of happened 'naturally' over time, through participating in memes and, I admit, giveaways, though I didn't actually participate in all that many hops. But after my first one I suddenly had over 200 GFC followers, which kind of creeped me out because I felt like I had to step up my game or I'd embarrass myself in front of 200 potential readers.

I feel like content-wise, I'm currently stagnating a bit. I started having discussion posts, which is something I really enjoy, but I really want to get more reviews up and I'm struggling with that. I want to branch out and be more interactive, but it just takes so much time, time that I could spend with friends or writing my own stories or watching movies or reading my huge pile of books. I feel like I'm just sort of stumbling along at the moment and I need to find a way to catch up with things and be more active on twitter again.
So yeah, ramble end. I hope people enjoy what reviews I manage to put up and won't abandon me when my introvert tendencies show ^^'' I promise that for my blogoversary in 2 weeks, I'll put together something cool!


The second topic I wanted to get to was Children's and YA literature. I can't say much about children's lit because I don't read anything below YA at this point, but YA really is close to my heart. I'm a little above the intended age group at 24, but I see no point to be ashamed of reading what I read, and besides, lots of adults do (it's still weird to think of myself as an adult). I hear a lot of people saying they do it because there wasn't much of a YA market back when they were in their teens, but that's not true for me. Maybe it's a German vs. English/American thing, but there were plenty of great books, both fantasy and contemporary, around for me to read when I grew up. I read adult books too though, mostly borrowed from my mum.

I had a phase when I read a lot of adult fantasy /UF/paranormal, but I can't quite pinpoint when I went back into the this 'new' wave of YA fantasy. It had something to do with when I went from reading German books to reading only English ones, but I can't say which book triggered it. I think it was before Twilight. One reason why I enjoy YA so much is that in adult lit, there aren't all that many topics that interest me unless it's a fantasy book. It's all about careers and getting a guy and marrying and babies whatnot, unless it's a crime novel and those bore me. I don't care about the problems of 30-something people. I hope that once I reach that age, I will have different problems, a different life.

YA is just... fresher. It's more familiar. I remember what it was like to be a teen. There are a lot of great voices, and voice is the aspect of a novel I probably enjoy most. It makes the book feel alive. YA is open to so many different issues and genres (I see MG, YA, NA and adult as categories rather than genres). There are books about social problems (poverty, addiction, illness), there is fantasy/paranormal, there is self-discovery, figuring out who you are and what you want, figuring out relationships. Things are moving, happening. I feel like as an adult, I have started to stagnate (one of my biggest fears as a teen) and reading YA makes me want to shake myself up and be more active (Divergent almost made me run out and do something reckless or get another tattoo. I  was so close!).

In this post, we're supposed to list books that we think below on every kid's shelves or otherwise give recommendations, but to be honest I don't feel comfortable telling people what they're supposed to read. That I enjoyed it is no guarantee someone else will. Also, I could list way too many books.
So instead, here's a grid with some of the books I rated 5 stars on goodreads:

Carmen's bookshelf: read

Carmen's favorite books »

So, to wrap things up...
Unfortunately for me, this weeks was so busy that I didn't have as much time to interact with other bloggers as I would have liked, but one of my highlights was meeting another Swiss blogger, Lexxie from (Un)conventional Book Views. I also enjoyed the discussion on Classics, and reading about other bloggers' experiences about blog ethics. Since I was mostly absent from twitter though, I think I missed quite a lot of the action of what was actually going on on the real-life BEA convention, as well as a bunch of awesome giveaways *sigh* Anyhow, I don't regret taking part in Armchair BEA, since it raised a lot of fundamental blogging questions for me that sort of get swept under the carpet in the day-to-day mechanics of keeping up.

Your turn! What do you do to keep blogging real and fun? What's your take on YA literature? Do you have highlights from the week to share, or was there a post of mine that you liked in particular (or one that you thought was a waste of web-paper)?

Armchair BEA introduction

Hey guys :) Since BEA is in New York and I'm stuck back here in Switzerland, I've decided to take part in Armchair BEA because it sounds like a fun event!

For those of you who don't know me yet, here's an introduction:

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?
   I'm 24 year old Swiss student (working on my English Lit MA) and part-time office worker who has always loved to read. I prefer English books to German ones. I've been blogging for close to a year and previously to that I was following various blogs for another year or so, before deciding that I wanted to be a real part of the community instead of just watching from the sidelines :) I've found that I really enjoy discussing with others and obsessing over books on the net! I also enjoy the contact with authors and the privilege to get to read books early.


2. What are you currently reading, or what is your favorite book you have read so far in 2013?
   There were sooo many that I enjoyed!! I finally read Brenna Yovanoff's The Replacement, which blew me away. I ached so much while reading it... in the best way. Other highlights were The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay, Divergent by Veronica Roth (yes, I'm late to the party but damn what an awesome book!), Just One Day by Gayle Forman, and In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winter.


3. Tell us one non-book-related thing that everyone reading your blog may not know about you.
   I like a lot of pretty hard music like metalcore, but I also enjoy acoustic bands. Some of my favorites: AFI, Parkway Drive, As I Lay Dying, Funeral For A Friend, Story of the Year, Young Guns, Nightwish, Motionless in White, Asking Alexandria, Paramore, City and Colour, Alkaline Trio, Danko Jones, HIM, Social Distortion, Nine Inch Nails, Placebo... I could go on for a while ^^''


4. If you could eat dinner with any author or character, who would it be and why?
   *overload of possibilities* errrm... Oscar Wilde? He'd be a witty conversationalist, and he'd make sure the afterparty is unforgettable. But I'd also love to meet Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, or Melissa Marr and lots of others! As for characters, I have  a soft spot for Will Herondale. Magnus Bane would also be fun XD There are sooo many others! But with some of them I'm not sure I'd like to meet them, no matter how intriguing they may be (hint: Jerico Barrons).


5. What literary location would you most like to visit? Why?
   Not sure what's meant by literary location. A place famous for its poets/writers? A place/world from inside a book? I think of the former I've been to quite a few - I was lucky enough to visit Oscar Wilde's grave before it was walled in behind glass, I've been to Westminster Abbey, and to Dublin. I'd love to visit New York and San Francisco though! Those are also 'literary' cities to me.
   As for book worlds, that's always a double-edged sword because horrible things tend to happen in them ^^' That being said, I'd like to see Wonderland, Hogwarts, or the world from Kim Harrison's The Hollows series. The world in Lia Habel's Dearly, Departed also fascinated me. Or Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus! I remember mourning the fact that I could never experience its wonders for real.

Alright, that's it from me! I hope you have a somewhat better picture of who I am now :) I'd love to get to know you! If you leave a comment and link me back to your post, I'll be sure to check it out! Even more so if we have favorite books (or maybe bands?) in common ;)