This tag does what it says on the tin!
Thank you to Deanna at a novel glimpse for tagging me 🙂 It’s only taken my two months to respond. Sorry!
How do you find out about new books to read?
Mostly through blogging! I usually choose books based on the recommendations of other bloggers. I have become a little skeptical of books which receive a lot of hype so I tend to wait until I see a range of reviews before picking those books up. I add most books to my TBR on a Wednesday thank to WWW Wednesday, a weekly book meme hosted by Sam over at Taking On A World of Words. Please join in!
How has your taste in books changed since you got older?
I don’t think it’s changed much! Early favourite authors included Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton. I remember when I was about twelve working my way through all the books by Diana Wynn Jones our school library had (about 20 I think) and loving them all. Howl’s Moving Castle is still one of my favourite books. I also started reading Terry Pratchett when I was about the same age (Truckers, Diggers and Wings, and Only You Can Save Mankind before the Discworld). However, while sci-fi and fantasy has always been my “thing”, I also remember enjoying detective stories and mysteries like The Three Investigators and Nancy Drew.
How often do you buy books?
Not as often as you might think. I use my library a lot; mostly because we ran out of shelf space for books a long time ago. Maybe, on average, once a month? I tend to buy quite a few at a time rather than one a week 🙂
On this topic, I found this cartoon the other day and it made me think of lots of the lovely bloggers I follow, so I’ll share it here…
This cartoon is by Grace Buchele Mineta. You can check out her cartoons here.
How did you get into book reviewing?
When I started my blog I wasn’t really sure what I wanted it to be about. But I’ve always been a keen reader and often have strong opinions about the things I’ve read. When I lived in Spain I belonged to a book club and it was great fun to meet up and talk about books. Reviewing and blogging about books is the closest “virtual” experience to that.
How do you react when you don’t like the end of a book?
Usually with disappointment/rage. And the level of my feelings will be proportionate to how long I’ve spent reading the rest of the book and just how much I loved it. If I was completely swept-up, loved the characters and plot, only for the ending to ruin my experience, I will be very upset.
However, there are other times I don’t like the ending but can understand why the author made the choices they did. In that case I won’t be as upset.
How often do you sneak peak at the ending to see if there is a happy ending?
Very, very rarely. I can’t remember having done this, but I’m sure I have. A book would have had to give me serious level of anxiety. Such levels that I don’t feel I want to continue reading it unless I can do so with the reassurance that “everything will be ok” (not necessarily “happy”, just “ok”) in the end.
I tag: you! If you would like to tell us more about your reading habits, consider yourself tagged! Make sure you let me know when you publish your post so I can check it out 🙂
Art and Soul 
Hey, no worries about the time! I’m just happy you got to do it if you wanted to! 🙂 Great answers, by the way. And I love the bookcase cartoon!
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Thank you! I love that cartoon too. When I saw it I chuckled because so many people I follow have problems with shelf space 🙂
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It’s something I’ve just begun to run into lately. Most of my books are e-books but I’ve gotten a lot of paperbacks lately. Trying to arrange everything is an interesting task!
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Ooh I really like this book tag idea! Might have to pocket it for a slow writing day!
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Consider yourself nominated! I really liked this one because it was easy to give answers (I find it really hard to come up with random facts about myself!) and I didn’t have to make up any new questions 🙂
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Love the cartoon. “we could give away all our books or…let’s go buy a new shelf,” that’s exactly what I would do lol. The only time I have given away books is whenever we move because it’s just such a pain to take all the books with us. Books that I either read and didn’t like or books that we have not read in 5 or more years. lol 🙂
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I’m always quite envious of those who have spare shelf space! I’ve had to start putting some of my books in my son’s room 🙂
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Great post- I very rarely look ahead too- but I do from time to time when I’m really worried where it was going. I did look at a particular spoiler for the mortal instruments series, cos I would’ve been too grossed out to read on otherwise
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Thank you! I think I may have skipped ahead a couple of pages in The Martian once when I was stressed that he was really going to kill himself with his crazy experiments! Otherwise I just try to read faster to find out what’s going to happen 🙂
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Yeah I’ve had that before in books- mostly I just find I’m reading so much faster to find out what happens
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I love this tag! So many great questions and so many great answers 🙂 I see a lot of myself in them. I haven’t yet read Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s on my to-read list. I guess I should push it up a few notches now 🙂
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Thank you! I like this one too because the answers come quite easily (I’m terrible of thinking up random facts about myself, but I can yak for ages about reading!). Oooo! I’m so jealous that you have yet to read Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s so great and gets better every time I read it. I know it’s supposed to be a “kids book”, but then I always say that if a story is good and well told anyone can enjoy it.
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I love reading books intended for younger audiences because many of them can resonate with an adult audience all the same.
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Exactly! I always say a good, well-written story can be for everyone (content permitting, of course).
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When I was young, choosing books at the Library, I would never take a book out until I had read the Last page to see if I liked the ending. I wouldn’t dream of doing that now but I suppose we do sometimes read books after we have seen the film.
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I can understand it. Particularly if the book is very long. There’s nothing worse than spending weeks of your hard-earned leisure time on a book only to find the ending stinks!
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I’ve never checked the ending but I have counted the pages left. Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton were my early influencers too. Every time I accepted an award those two names got a mention 🙂
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Oh to have an imagination like Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl! I particular envy Blyton’s prolificacy: she wrote hundreds of books and stories. I liked The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, but I was a particular fan of The Magic Faraway Tree 🙂
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And they’re making a film soon 🙂
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AHH! NO ONE ELSE I KNOW EVER READ THE THREE INVESTIGATORS! I picked up the first one in a yard sale when I was ten or something, and then discovered ages later that my school library had a bunch of them. I think by the early 2000s, everyone else thought they were too dated for anyone else, particularly since my school’s copies looked like they’d been in the library for a good twenty years or so by that point.
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I think the first one I read was on the shelf at home because my mum found it in a charity shop. I enjoyed it so much I tried to read them all and luckily our town library was big and would order in children’s books from other libraries free of charge. By the age of twelve I was already a completist: if I found an author I liked, I had to read all their books. And if there was a series, I had to finish it! Thinking about it, I’m amazed I had any friends 🙂
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Oh, wow, your library sounds amazing. Being stuck in Australia and far away from most suppliers made it more difficult for ours.
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I LOVE to buy books, in fact I have money from Christmas specifically for books. But ugh, I have so many unread books I need to STOP buying until I finish majority! Great post!:)
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Thank you! That’s my ongoing problem. I keep wishing everyone would just stop publishing books for a year so I could catch up with the books I already have! 🙂
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What a great idea! Let’s email the publishers. 🙂
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That cartoon is probably about me. *blush* Except that I’m out of space for bookshelves, so I’ve resorted to banker’s boxes. I hate to get rid of books once I’ve bought them. But I do try to use my library a lot. That way I don’t end up with a book that I don’t like or am only going to read once. Most of the books I buy, I’ve read – and most of them I’ve read more than once or want to read more than once, which makes getting through new books harder.
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Don’t worry, I think it’s about everyone I follow! 🙂 And it would be about me too if the local library weren’t so good and I hadn’t got in the hang of buying ebooks.
I only buy physical copies of books I’ve either read already from the library or in electronic, or those I’m pretty sure I’m going to like. Like you, I find it hard to part with books.
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