Happy Monday, book bloggers!

This weekend, I received not one but TWO tags from Rachelle of The Reading Wench to answer some questions. With that much enthusiasm, how could I say no?

My two questionnaires are after the jump, to avoid clogging up your feeds!


First, here's a 20-question "About Me" survey.

1. How tall are you? I want to say 5'4", but the doctor keeps telling me otherwise. 5'3.5"?

2. Do you have a hidden talent? I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie. Oh, and I taste words.

3. What is your biggest blog-related pet peeve? Content for the sake of content. I'm happy to read it all if it's good, but that's not always the case.

4. What is your biggest non-blog-related pet peeve? Drivers who honk their horns frequently and loudly.

5. What's your favorite song? A toss-up between this and this. <3 Freddie Mercury.

6. What's your favorite Etsy shop? I don't frequent Etsy enough to have a favorite, but I do love the Booklovers' candles I got over the holidays.

7. What's your favorite way to spend your free time when you're alone? Reading, working out, catching up on my blog feed, playing video games, singing, and cleaning (it's therapeutic, man). When the weather cooperates (aka six months out of the year), I enjoy roaming aimlessly outside or not so aimlessly to the library.

8. What's your favorite junk food? Pizza. P-I-Z-Z-A.

9. Do you have pets? This is Empress Maude. She's a diva and cat-selfie extraordinaire.

10. What are your favorite fiction and non-fiction books? Check out my 5-star books on my Goodreads "read" shelf. (Read: I can't pick!)

11. What's your favorite beauty product? I recently ordered some lipsticks from ColourPop Cosmetics. Trixie, Punky and Fetch are my jam. On a day-to-day basis, I always have Burt's Bees pomegranate lip balm in my bag.

12. When were you last embarrassed? Does "every day of my life" count? Hmm.... I'm sure something has happened between then and now, but this story takes the cake.

13. If you could drink one beverage for the rest of your life, what would it be? My gut tells me taro bubble tea, but I'd also have a stomach ache for the rest of my life. Probably sparkling water—it hydrates AND it fizzes, which is my favorite part of soft drinks anyway.

14. What's your favorite movie? Definitely The Princess Bride. I'm also very fond of Moulin Rouge!, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Y Tu Mamá También.

15. What were you in high school? Prom queen, nerd, cheerleader, jock, valedictorian, band geek, loner, artist, etc.? Part-nerd, part-misfit. Everyone insisted I was a band geek (who, specifically, played clarinet) because many of my friends were in band, but I never actually joined.

16. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? I wish I had an answer for this, but I don't feel like I've done enough traveling to have a good sense of a specific place I want to be. I do know that I love seasons, but I could do without soul-crushing, six-month winters. I also want trees and mountains. I think I might be describing Oregon?

17. PC or Mac? I'll go with PC, because it lets me play games!

18. Last romantic gesture from a crush, date, boyfriend? Our five-year(!!!) anniversary is on Thursday, and my boyfriend refuses to tell me where he's taking us that evening. I can only assume it's super romantic.

19. Favorite celeb? I have an enormous crush on ScarJo.

20. Which blogger do you secretly want to be best friends with? I'll never tell! ;)


And here's my second tag. Thanks for Liebster Award #2, Rachelle! This award is designed for bloggers with fewer than 200 followers, and I'm supposed to come up with 11 new questions to ask my nominees.

Rachelle's questions for me:

1. What got you into blogging? My "About Me" page tells you all you need to know!
2. What are your Top 5 Stuck on a Desert Island books? Gah, this is tough! Can't I just have Wi-Fi for my Kindle on the island? ;) OK... I'll go with The Complete Works by Michel de Montaigne, The Cider House Rules by John Irving, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, and The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This is a mix of books I adore and books I know would stretch for a while during my lonely island hours.
3. How many bookmarks do you own, and do you have a favorite? Not nearly enough! I have a handful of cheap, free ones from bookstores I've visited over the years, but I've also been known to use receipts, cardstock ads I get in the mail, and my library check-out slips. I've got some savings, so I'm thinking of taking the plunge on one of these.
4. Tea or coffee?  Or, is there another beverage you prefer to drink when you’re reading? Coffee when I first wake up, tea anytime afterward. I also wouldn't say no to a glass of red wine in the evening.
5. What are your essential items, besides books of course, for a great reading experience? Cozy socks and a blanket in the winter, a beverage (see above) and a purring kitty on my lap.
6. Do you listen to music when you read, or do you prefer silence?  If you listen to music, do you make book-themed/inspired playlists? I'm one of those people that can't concentrate with too much background noise. This can be tough, as my boyfriend and I live in a studio apartment, and he very much loves to have things on in the background. I'm getting better at dealing with video game/TV noises, but I cannot abide by music with lyrics.
7. Do you prefer hardcovers, Trade/Mass Market paperbacks, or ebooks? Hardcovers make me feel important, but I rather like the portability and lightness of paperbacks. E-books win the portability contest, for sure, but I do have a soft spot for turning real pages. Paperbacks it is.
8. What is your favorite TV or movie adaptation? This is absolutely cheating because 1) I haven't read the book, and 2) it's a musical, not a movie/TV show, but Les Misérables is one of my favorite theater productions and I'm just going to go ahead and assume it will also be one of my favorite books when I get to it. On a more well-informed note, I love the Harry Potter films, though I always end up heartbroken over the fact that Hogwarts isn't real.
9. What fictional world do you want to live in, or would avoid at all costs? As you might guess from above, I'd love to go to Hogwarts. I also blazed through A Wizard of Earthsea this weekend by Ursula K. Le Guin, so if my owl didn't come, I could always go hang out on Roke Island instead.
10. If you could have any supernatural or magical power/gift, skill, or object, what would it be? Normally I'd say something fun, like invisibility or flight, but right now I want the ability to stop time. I spent a lot of time fretting this weekend, and I wish I could have just paused, worked through my worries, and then resumed my precious weekend hours instead of wasting them.
11. Where or from who do you get most of your book recommendations? Lately it's been from other book bloggers, but I've found some of my favorite books through the Goodreads recommendation engine. It works surprisingly well once you've rated enough books!

My questions:

1. What is the first book you can vividly remember reading?
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?
3. How do you feel about footnotes in books?
4. Say someone offered to write you an awesome non-fiction book of your choosing. What would the topic be?
5. Besides reading, what's your favorite/most time-consuming hobby?
6. Which book was most uncomfortable for you to read? Did you finish it?
7. Can you read in a language besides English? If not, which language would you pick?
8. Is there a genre you've changed your mind about? (Disliking to liking, or vice versa.)
9. Do you give or take more book recommendations?
10. In the vein of #8, have you ever changed your mind about a specific book?
11. Do you use your public library? Why or why not?

As per usual, these things ask me to tag some folks. I normally do an open-ended "if you see this, you're tagged!" kind of thing, but in the spirit of this past weekend's Book Blogger Love-a-thon, I'm going to spread the love a little more directly.

And the awards/questions go to....

Julianne @ Outlandish Lit
Karsyn @ KaKiJoKoJa
Amanda @ The Zen Leaf
Elle @ Erratic Project Junkie
Stefani @ Caught Read Handed

I'm breaking the rules a bit, since I know at least a couple of you have more than 200 followers. If you don't want to devote a blog post to this, I'd love to read your answers in my comments section! :)