Liebster Award - Double Whammy

Because I'm a ~*pro blogger*~ I've put this off for like ages. M from Backlist Books nominated me probably a year or so ago. Shaina from Shaina Reads did maybe a month ago. And like two other people have since then. So HERE IT IS. I've combined the M and Shaina questions. I'll spare you the other two sets just because nobody needs to know that much about me. But thanks to Diaries of a Book Lover and A Reading Habit!

The Rules

1. Make sure you thank and link back the person who nominated you.
2. List 11 facts about yourself.
3. Answer the 11 questions put forward by whoever nominated you.
4. Ask 11 new questions to 9 bloggers. (They must have less than 200 followers on Bloglovin' or their preferred method. You cannot re-nominate the blog that nominated you.)
5. Go to their blog and inform them that they have been nominated!

11 Facts About Me 

Don't worry, I won't give you guys 22 facts about me.

1. I've written 4 novels and perform at a lot of live lit and poetry readings. 
2. I almost went to college for linguistics. I've studied Japanese, Spanish, French, Welsh, and Sanskrit!
3. I can play the bagpipes.
4. If you didn't know, I'm from Minnesota. But I don't have a cabin and a boat up at the lake. Or an accent, really. Sorry.
5. I love thrifting, fashion, and makeup. I actually took a Garment Construction class a couple years ago. One of my classmates went on to be on Project Runway!
6. I never got my driver's license. Weird, I know. I just like haven't gotten around to it? And living in Chicago has also made it super unnecessary. Maybe I'll schedule a test for spring break. Nope, just checked, it's all booked up. Maybe next year!
7. I love love love camping. And traveling in general. I've got mad wanderlust, unlike the rest of my family.
8. I intern at an animation studio.
9. My friends and I once made an Animal Crossing town named Culver's and we named all of the characters after employees at our local Culver's. And played as them. It is the creepiest thing I have ever done.
10. I'm actually obsessed with horror movies. I need to see every new horror movie that's coming out, no matter how bad it probably will be.
11. I never finished reading the Harry Potter series and I probably never will. Ain't nobody got time for that.

M's 11 Questions

1. How long have you been blogging and why did you start?
Oh god, that's a good question. I guess technically maybe 2 years? But I've probably taken a year's worth of hiatuses early on, so I don't know if that counts. Anyway, I started because I was super into all the cool book recommendations I was finding from other blogs. I wanted a place to hold myself accountable for reading more and to participate in challenges.

2. What's your favourite thing about being a book blogger?
Everybody says this, but the community! Meeting bookish people (I have few in my "real life") has made reading significantly more fun and active.

3. Other than reading, what's your favourite hobby?
I have a lot of these. Drinking? Just kidding. Since it's winter right now, knitting.

4. What's your number one food or beverage craving?
Chipotle. Orange soda.

5. What's the one place you want to visit in the world that you haven't been to yet?
New Zealand. Or, honestly, anywhere outside of America. I've been nowhere.

6. Which book made you fall in love with reading?
A Clockwork Orange when I was in middle school. Swamplandia! again a few years ago.

7. What's your favourite TV show or movie?
UGH hard. Movie: Amelie? Maybe? TV show: Game of Thrones. Or Toddlers and Tiaras. Tough choice.

8. What's your dream job?
The closer I get to graduation, the less I feel like I know. I guess visual effects artist, but maybe I just want to work in a bookstore. Who knows?

9. What do you collect (other than books)?
Mounted butterflies and moths. Don't judge, my apartment looks like a beautiful abandoned cottage of a reclusive naturalist/scholar. When it's clean, at least. But also when it's dusty.

10. Do you have any pets?
3 cats! But they're all at home in Minnesota. I miss them so much.

11. What's your favourite band or song?
Uhhhhhh of Montreal or David Bowie (is he a band? let's be real, he's like a universe).

 Shaina's 11 Questions

1. What is the first book you can vividly remember reading?
Probably Strega Nona. I can't remember what it's about other than spaghetti.

2. If you only had time to read one more book in your life, would you want it to be an old favorite or a new one? Why?
I HATE BEING CONFRONTED WITH MY MORTALITY. New ones have too much risk of disappointing you. I'd reread Lord of the Rings 100%.

3. How do you feel about footnotes in books?
They're fun if they're used in interesting ways.

4. Say someone offered to write you an awesome non-fiction book of your choosing. What would the topic be?
The Dyatlov Pass incident! This is one of the spookiest stories ever. Some hikers in the snowy Russian mountains were found to have torn their tents from the inside out to get away from something and they were all found dead with like skull fractures but no outside wounds. And someone was missing her tongue. And some of their clothes were radioactive?? It's a bunch of weird details. I need a book that has all the answers for me.

5. Besides reading, what's your favorite/most time-consuming hobby?
I said knitting earlier, so I'll say video games here?? Honestly, during the winter most of my hobbies fall to the wayside. Reading is like all I have right now.

6. Which book was most uncomfortable for you to read? Did you finish it?
Hmm. It's hard for a book to make me uncomfortable. I guess Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn. That was a dark true crime book that was pretty intense. I did finish it, though. Seeing the mofos arrested was kind of gratifying, but I still mostly felt very unsettled.

7. Can you read in a language besides English? If not, which language would you pick?
I can read in Japanese pretty well. My goal is to read a Murakami book in the original Japanese one day!

8. Is there a genre you've changed your mind about? (Disliking to liking, or vice versa.)
I don't avoid YA altogether now, but it's still not like all aboard the YA train.

9. Do you give or take more book recommendations?
On the internet, take. In real life, give. Constantly giving.

10. In the vein of #8, have you ever changed your mind about a specific book?
Um. Kind of Heart of Darkness. Like I still didn't enjoy reading it, but I appreciate it for what it is.

11. Do you use your public library? Why or why not?
Yes! All the time! I love it. I can't afford to buy new books, so I put holds on things super early. I may or may not have to use my roommate's card to put more books on hold.

My 11 Questions 

1. Do you write in books?
2. What two genres would you say represent your life?
3. How do you feel about ARCs?
4. Would you take your ex back if they asked really really nicely? Can I call them and tell you what you said? JK: What's your least favorite animal?
5. What's the scariest book you've ever read?
6. What song was most recently stuck in your head?
7. Do you listen to podcasts? Which ones?
8. Do you feel a heavy sense of regret settling across all of your life and the choices you've made? KIDDING, who's your ~*~celebrity crush~*~?
9. What was the best part of your day today?
10. What's your favorite thing to do when it's warm out?
11. Since it's pseudo-St. Patrick's Day today, what's your favorite drink? (alcoholic or non-acoholic if you don't live that wasted college student life)

I nominate:

Leaf on the Breeze

Books, The Universe and Everything

Malcolm Avenue Review

Notes on the Shore

Once Upon a Littlefield

Gun in Act One

Bookish Tendencies

Bitsnbooks

Aaaand I'm going to stop here. This is an award that's been around for a while, so I kind of assume everyone's already done it. If you want to use my questions on a post of your own, DO IT! And link back, because I'd love to read them. Especially the answer to #8. If you just want to post your answers in the comments, do that too. Alright, cool.

8 Books by Female Australian Authors to Try

I'm not normally a person who pays attention to awards, but I just found out about the Stella Prize. This is an award for books by female Australian writers of fiction and nonfiction, and it seems SO GREAT. All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld was on the shortlist this past year, so I'm in. And the only reason that isn't on my list is because I'm going to post a review of it within a week!

I don't know what it is about Australia. I don't know that much about it historically or politically, but I'm trying to learn! The atmosphere of books set in Australia really appeals to me. So I went through all the nominees for this award and picked out some of the books that I really really want to check out.
Summaries from the publishers.

The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
"Ruth is widowed, her sons are grown, and she lives in an isolated beach house outside of town. Her routines are few and small. One day a stranger arrives at her door, looking as if she has been blown in from the sea. This woman—Frida—claims to be a care worker sent by the government. Ruth lets her in.
     Now that Frida is in her house, is Ruth right to fear the tiger she hears on the prowl at night, far from its jungle habitat? Why do memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency? How far can she trust this mysterious woman, Frida, who seems to carry with her her own troubled past? And how far can Ruth trust herself?"

Boy, Lost by Kristina Olsson

"Kristina Olsson’s mother lost her infant son, Peter,when he was snatched from her arms as she boarded a train in the hot summer of 1950. She was young and frightened, trying to escape a brutal marriage, but despite the violence and cruelty she’d endured, she was not prepared for this final blow, this breathtaking punishment. Yvonne would not see her son again for nearly 40 years.

Kristina was the first child of her mother’s subsequent, much gentler marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her mother’s sorrow, though Peter’s absence resounded through the family, marking each one. Yvonne dreamt of her son by day and by night, while Peter grew up a thousand miles and a lifetime away, dreaming of his missing mother."

 

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
I know everybody already raved about this two years ago, but this is my first time looking into it! Something about the cover .
"Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard."

 

Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neerven
"In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real.

Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In ‘Heat’, we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ‘Water’, a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ‘Light’, familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging."




 

In My Mother's Hands by Biff Ward
"There are secrets in this family. Before Biff and her younger brother, Mark, there was baby Alison, who drowned in her bath because, it was said, her mother was distracted. Biff too, lives in fear of her mother's irrational behaviour and paranoia, and she is always on guard and fears for the safety of her brother. As Biff grows into teenage hood, there develops a conspiratorial relationship between her and her father, who is a famous and gregarious man, trying to keep his wife's problems a family secret. This was a time when the insane were committed and locked up in Dickensian institutions; whatever his problems her father was desperate to save his wife from that fate. But also to protect his children from the effects of living with a tragically disturbed mother."

The Swan Book by Alexis Wright
This one might be TOO weird for me, but I'm very interested in a story about Aboriginals.
"The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute young woman called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. The Swan Book has all the qualities which made Wright’s previous novel, Carpentaria, a prize-winning best-seller. It offers an intimate awareness of the realities facing Aboriginal people; the energy and humour in her writing finds hope in the bleakest situations; and the remarkable combination of storytelling elements, drawn from myth and legend and fairy tale, has Oblivia Ethylene in the company of amazing characters like Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions, the Harbour Master, Big Red and the Mechanic, a talking monkey called Rigoletto, three genies with doctorates, and throughout, the guiding presence of swans." 

 

This House of Grief by Helen Garner
I'll give true crime another chance for this!
"On the evening of 4 September 2005, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother when his car plunged into a dam. The boys, aged ten, seven, and two, drowned. Was this an act of deliberate revenge or a tragic accident? The court case became Helen Garner's obsession. She was in the courtroom every day of Farquharson's trial and subsequent retrial, along with countless journalists and the families of both the accused and his former wife.

In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the story of a man and his broken life. At its core is a search for truth that takes author and reader through complex psychological terrain. Garner exposes, with great compassion, that truth and justice are as complex as human frailty and morality."

 

The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson
"The Sunlit Zone is a moving elegy of love and loss, admirable for its narrative sweep and the family dynamic that drives it. A risk-taking work of rare, imaginative power. The Sunlit Zone combines the narrative drive of the novel with the perfect pitch of true poetry. A darkly futuristic vision shot through with bolts of light. Brilliant, poignant, disconcerting. - Adrian Hyland, author of Kinglake 350 and Diamond Dove 
This novel in verse, at once magical and irresistible, draws us in to a vivid future. In Lisa Jacobson's telling, the Australian fascination with salt water and sea change is made over anew. Romance holds hands with science and takes to the ocean. - Chris Wallace-Crabbe, author of The Domestic Sublime and By and Large."

What do you think of these Australian books? What sounds good to you?

 

The Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award

Thanks, Casey from Story Notions for nominating me! I'm super honored! I often don't follow through with these/take forever to do them after nomination. But this graphic was so 90s, that I couldn't resist. Also I told myself to drop the anxiety and just DO IT. I like answering questions anyway. Here goes!

Here are the rules for the The Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award:

1. Thank the blogger that nominated you, and link back to their site.
2. Post the award's logo onto your blog.
3. Answer the 10 questions you've been asked.
4. Nominate 10 other bloggers and ask them 10 questions.

My Answers:

1. What are you currently reading? 

I just finished up The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (which was AMAZING) moments ago. Now I'm focusing my attention on The Deep by Nick Cutter! It's pretty creepy, but moving a little too slow for my taste. I just want to be scared already. Or just read some literary fiction, whatever.

2. What book do you remember first reading for fun and enjoying? Or what book really got you into reading (for the first time, or again)?
Throughout high school/the first half of college I kind of only read books occasionally or for school, despite loving them when I was younger. I mean, I enjoyed them, but I just didn't read that much. That changed a few years ago when I got Orlando by Viriginia Woolf. Since then, I haven't stopped going to the library regularly.

3. Who's your favorite author? That you'd want to be best friends with? (I know, hard question).
Oh god. Mark Z. Danielewski or Virginia Woolf or J.R.R. Tolkien or I don't know! To be best friends with? Ugh. Maybe Karin Tidbeck or Miranda July, because I feel like it would be like being friends with Bjork.

4. What's your favorite on going TV show?
Oh no, I don't know the answer to this one either. Game of Thrones? Girls? Dance Moms?

5. Favorite book of last month?
Probably The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin or All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld.

6. Are you a tea drinker? A coffee drinker? Or both/neither?
Like, neither. Especially don't like coffee. I like chai tea, though.

7. Do you need anything special to read? (Certain spot, drink, snack, noise level)
Need? Quiet, kind of. At least no talking or TV going on. I can't help but latch on to words people are saying. Otherwise, I don't need anything. But chai tea and little Dutch waffle cookies certainly make it nicer.

8. If you could be transported into any magical world... which one would you not want to end up in?
Haha oh I don't know. Maybe Area X in the Southern Reach trilogy. That just seems like too much weird to comprehend. I guess I don't read about enough magical worlds.

9. And which one would you want to end up in?
Middle Earth! I love that shit so much.

10. What's your favorite book cover you've seen of a 2015 release?

Probably The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields. But it's too soon to say! Impress me, 2015.

Here are MY questions/demands!

1. What's the weirdest book you've ever read?
2. What's your favorite book cover?
3. Condense the summary of your least favorite book into a haiku.
4. If you've met an author, who was it? If not, who would you like to meet?
5. Tell me your personal ebook feelings.
6. What book do you recommend to people most?
7. How do you feel about open endings?
8. You're Jack in The Shining. What line from a book will you type over and over again to frighten your family?
9. Do you like me? Circle one: Y / N. Just kidding. What's the worst book recommendation you've ever received?
10. What book would you have sent into space to best represent humans?

I nominate:

M from Backlist Books
Shaina from Shaina Reads
Heather from Bitsnbooks
Elizabeth from Forrest of Books
T from Bookpiles & Blanketforts
Lori from An Irreverent Escapade
Leah from Books Speak Volumes

10 is too hard. I already feel anxious asking you seven! (You don't have to do it if you don't want). If you want to do these questions without me tagging you, just do it! Or tell me, and I'll edit this to tag you. It'll be our secret, nobody will ever know. Either way, link to your post so I can read your answers! Or even answer them in the comments if you don't want to dedicate a post to this. Do you.