The Sunshine Blogger Award | Combining all of your tags in one long post!

New week, new books and new to-do lists! Don’t you just love Mondays? 🙂 Monday and Friday are both my favorite days of the week, because for me they mean a new beginning – either the new working week, or new working weekend 😀 I just love making to-do lists and take every opportunity to write those tasks down. 

I finally sat down and sorted all of the tag, you kindly tagged me at. I’m pretty sure that this is my first book tag of this year. Yay! So I decided to combine your questions in one post and share my answers, especially because some questions were similar. I also found some photos from a while back when we were allowed to go outside and enjoy the sunshine, and it really made me miss those times, but of course, staying inside and follow the rules is more important now.

Sofi @A Book a Thought, Emer @A Little Haze Book Blog, Bailey @The Book Stack and Sarah @Weaving Fiction, thank you so much for tagging me! I’m sorry it took me so long to finally make this post.

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The Rules:

1 – Thank the person who nominated you in a blog post and link back to their blog.
2 – Answer the 11 questions sent by the person who nominated you.
3 – Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.
4 – List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.

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1 – What’s your favorite lesser known book or series and why?

I don’t know why I find questions about my favorite books so difficult to answer. Every year I find more and more new favorites, and I feel like the older ones slowly get forgotten. From lesser known books, I chose this one – «You’re Never Weird on the Internet» by Felicia Day. It’s a nonfiction and I would highly recommend listening to it as audiobook. It’s narrated by Felicia herself and is absolutely hilarious, but also heartwarming and inspiring. She is an incredible woman and I really need to rewatch her web-series «The Guild» for the 50th time.

Watch «the guild»

2 – Would you rather be a character in a whimsical magical tale or an epic space opera?

I want to say epic space opera but I’m pretty sure I’m not badass enough to survive in one. So let’s go with a whimsical (and less dangerous) magical tale. The first that comes to mind is «Furthermore», and I already know all the rules so I’m more than prepared to travel through it!

Here are 20 Things You Should know before venturing into Furthermore!

3 – Why did you start blogging?

Oh, just a couple of days ago I mentioned this in a comment to one of Holly’s posts 😀 I never actually wanted to run a blog. I admired beauty and lifestyle blogs, but never considered myself able to create one of my own. So this blog was made purely for book reviews. I didn’t even think that anyone would be reading it. I just wanted a pretty space on the Internet that I could customize and store all of my book reviews. Lol

4 – Do you have an unpopular opinion? (doesn’t need to be bookish related)

I have two blog posts dedicated solely to my unpopular bookish opinions! 😀

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5 – If you had to read only one genre forever, what would it be?

If you asked me this ten years ago, I would say Thrillers! I was in love with mysteries, crimes, I could read and re-read them over and over again. At the moment, it’s definitely Fantasy. I’ve been reading much more Fantasy than I ever have, and I also feel like because I’ve read man thrillers they often fail to surprise me.

6 – One of your most important goals for this 2020?

To pass the Lawyer’s Bar exam. Now with COVID getting in the way, I don’t really know if the exam will take place this year or the beginning of next, but that’s the most important goal as of right now.

7 – What are your favourite parts of book blogging?

100% all of you! I made so many new friends and met hundreds of like-minded people over the years, and I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I’m so grateful for every single interaction from you, guys! ❤

8 – What makes you want to read a book?

Honestly? Book covers 😀 I know… I know… but the pretty ones just speak to me, I can hear them whispering in my ears and I just can’t resist the pull. 

I think it’s more of a combination of things – book covers or hype around books definitely make me want to check them out, but I do always read blurbs and if they sound like something I might like, I’ll pick it up. 

When choosing from my bookshelves, I mostly see what I’m in a mood for but also bookish trends. Sometimes after years of purchasing a certain book, I suddenly hear someone talking about it and that will make me want to read it.

9 – What were your favourite reads of 2019?

For my 2019 stats and favourite books I have this graphic that I make every single year since 2017. You can find them all here: 2017, 2018, and 2019.

10 – What were your least favourite of 2019?

There were a few books last year that I didn’t like at all. I’ll leave the link to the full post here, but the one that was probably the worse of them all was «The Vegetarian» by Han Kang, my stomach just couldn’t handle it. No better has ever made me physically sick before and I don’t recommend reading it.

11 – What makes the difference between a four-star read and a five-star read?

That is a very good question! A year or so ago, I made a graph [I love making graphs..lol] of how I rate books. I feel like it’s no longer very accurate. There are definitely books that will go through that scheme easily, but there are also some that I might not enjoy but give a higher rating to based on different aspects. I’ve been meaning to try CAWPILE system to see if it works for me. If you use it, let me know what you think about it! 

The 4 from 5 stars rating doesn’t have a big gap for me, and sometimes that line becomes very blurry. There were books I read and gave 5 stars to that later I wanted to lower to 4. And there were also books that I read and absolutely loved but gave 4 stars to.

12 –Do you tend to DNF books or power through until the end?

Depends on the book. If it’s an ARC I’ll try to read as much as possible, and DNF only as the last resort. Last year and this year I’ve been much better about DNFing though, as I don’t want to put myself into a reading slump just because I’m stubborn.

13 –What’s highest on your TBR right now?

I’ve been in a weird reading mood these past few days. I want to read everything, but I also don’t feel like picking up anything. Lol  The books I’ll be prioritizing this week are «Thunderhead» and «Toll» by Neal Schusterman.

14 – Do you give in to the hype you see surrounding trendy reads?

Absolutely! 😀 And I don’t mind it at all.

15 – Which review or post that you’ve written in 2019 are you most proud of?

An excuse for self-promotion 😀 2019 was a very good blogging year for me, so here are some of the blog posts I’m really proud of and hope to do something similar in the future:

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16 – How many books do you like to read at once?

2 or 3, sometimes more. I used to only ever read one book at a time and didn’t understand how people could read multiple books or why would they want to! Nowadays, with so many forms of reading available to us, I feel like it’s easy to have at least 3 books on the go – one physical, one e-book and one audibook. But I also like to pick up two books in the same format but different genres, especially when I can’t decide what it is that I want to read.

17 – What is your perfect reading environment?

I can read anywhere and don’t mind the noise. But ideally, I like to be alone in the room or sit outside, make sure that noone is talking around me and just lose myself in the fictional world.

18 – Short books, or long books & why?

Both? Short books because they are (1) fast to read and (2) I find it fascinating how some authors manage to tell an incredible story with well-developed characters in only 100 or 200 pages. 

Long books because they will give us more of what we love! More world-building, more characters, more character development, more plot, more goodness! ❤

19 – What is your go-to book recommendation that you can’t shut up about?

There were a few books last year that I didn’t like at all. I’ll leave the «The Bear and the Nightingale» by Katherine Arden. It deserves so much more love and attention!

20 – Aside from blogging, tell us three hobbies you love?

Reading? 😀 Playing video games! And puzzles! [that I really need to do more often].

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Phew! That’s a wrap! I’m sorry if this was a little bit too long, but I hope you still enjoyed this post! I won’t be tagging anyone this time around, but feel free to answer any of the above questions in the comments below.

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