Books

Introductions First – Armchair BEA

4 June, 2012

** Design Credit: Nina of Nina Reads **

So, for the past few months I have read BEA being plastered everywhere, which obviously piqued my interest so I looked it up and found out what it was. Book Expo America looks like it’s a big deal for book bloggers, teachers, librarians, publishers and authors alike but it’s located in that far-away country across the ocean, America. Unfortunately, being from the UK meant that there was simply no chance I would be able to afford the trek to NYC and so I simply skip past every post mentioned BEA. 

Then, just as I was casually strolling through my twitter feed, I see the hashtag #armchairBEA pop up quite a few times and I found myself intrigued, what is this? I instantly asked @WeFancyBooks and @ArmchairBEA what it was all about. Upon being told, I looked at the website, found out more about it and knew that it sounded like something fun that I wanted to participate in. It may be impossible for me to be at BEA this year but at least I can still meet new bloggers and enjoy myself at the same time! Yay!

So, for the first daily topic, every one participating is doing an interview of five questions – and then we go around and comment on everyone’s questions! Without further ado, here is my interview!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?
Hi! I’m Faye. Starting with the simple basics, I’m twenty-one (almost twenty-two!) and will be graduating university in one month and 13 days (Scary stuff!). I love to read, I love movies and I also love to write and have been writing almost every single day since I was about seven or eight years old (and I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing! ha.) I would love to one day be a published author, a successful screenwriter or well, anything to do with the book, film or tv industry. 
I have been blogging for almost nine months now and it has been absolutely crazy and wonderful and I wouldn’t have it any other way! I am so glad I started this blog.
The reason I started this blog has been mentioned on here before but since I’ll have some new people reading, I am happy to say it all again. Basically I started this because I wanted to show to potential employers that I can keep up with a commitment – I wanted something that would make my resume (CV) speak to people. I did not realise that it would soon become one of the biggest aspects of my life. (for more on this, feel free to read this post)

What is your favorite feature on your blog (i.e. author interviews, memes, something specific to your blog)?
This answer, if it had been asked a month or so ago would have probably have been In My Mailbox, and while I still love this meme (or well, I use Letterbox Love now – and I love all the other creative innovations that people came up with!) because I love showcasing my books and films and seeing what other people got, I now have a new feature on my blog that I truly enjoy; Behind The Blog. BTB is a meme that was created by Kathe, Melissa and Me (and co-hosted by us) and is a chance for us (and everyone who participates and/or reads!) to get to know the people behind the blog. Each week we come up with a topic and write a post about it. It is so much fun and it is so great to get to know my fellow bloggers that much more!
(If you want to know more about BTB, feel free to look at the page, here)

If you could eat dinner with any author or character, who would it be and why?
I almost always struggle with questions like this because I always think of one character or author that I love and proudly admit that person and then ten minutes later think of someone else and simply have to change my answer. So, to make this simple and to make sure I do not change my mind I am choosing someone who has always been a large influence and major inspiration in my life. She is one of the main reasons I continued to write as I grew up, she is the reason I continued to read far into the adult world and she showed me just what movies can achieve. I am, of course, talking about the wonderfully talented; J. K. Rowling.
There are simply not enough words in the english language to truly describe how much I adore this woman and everything she has done for me and so to have the chance to eat dinner with her? I would simply melt at the chance – unfortunately I feel that I would probably be too shy to even say anything to her though! 

What is your favorite part about the book blogging community? Is there anything that you would like to see change in the coming years?
My favourite part would have to be how friendly everyone is. As a new blogger it is often difficult to get your footing. I remember just starting out and visiting all these blogs with over 300 followers and just feeling completely intimidated. But of all the people I followed, and added on twitter, no one was mean to me or looked down at me for being new. Everyone was welcoming and just happy to meet a new blogger on their travels around the blogosphere and it really helped me to know that this was a great place to be. Since then, I have noticed that people are almost always willing to do something for fellow bloggers and I just find that so amazing and great.
It would be difficult to answer what I would like to see change without adding fire to the already burning frying pan but I would say that it would be nice if there was a little less drama within the community. Generally I try to shy away from it all, I’ve never particularly been fond of drama – especially when I’ve had my fair share of fall-outs over the internet – but sometimes it just becomes impossible to ignore. I just hope that over time it would be possible to become more at peace with every blogger – but then again, as my mum said – we weren’t born to like everyone. *shrugs*

Have your reading tastes changed since you started blogging? How?
This is sort of a double-ended question for me because the answer is yes and the answer is no, all at the same time. Another reason I started blogging about books – aside from the resume reason – was to get me reading more books. When I started uni, – or well, even before that if I’m being completely honest – , while I was reading, I was never reading enough. I ended up reading maybe one book a month, sometimes even every two months and it shocked me when I realised this and I knew I needed to do something to change this. Reading has, and probably always be, something that has helped me get through life.
Before I started blogging, however, I had never heard of the term YA – I had, however read YA books but not for a long time and as far as I was aware, they weren’t called YA back then. So I instantly looked up the term and was opened up to the world of Young Adult books. Thus far my reading tastes have changed because I now read more YA books than Adult books but I have always liked them, I had just stopped reading them altogether.
Aside from this (yes/no answer), I also find myself opening up to more genres because I want to try more, to make my reviews more interesting and to be able to cater to more audiences. This included reading more sci-fi books, a few MG books and I plan to read some chic-lit books too. So, it is very possible that by the end of it all, my tastes will have changed completely. – and I am totally okay with that!

So there you have it. Five interview questions answered – possibly in too much length, sorry! I am now looking forward to reading everyone else’s questions! 

If you’re not participating in Armchair BEA but still want to answer these questions, feel free to put them in the comments – i’d love to read them! :D

Faye


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