The Mystery Blogger Award

Hello everyone and Happy Friday! I’m so excited to announce that I was nominated for The Mystery Blogger Award by the lovely Bookworm Blogger 🙂 Lucy is a wonderful friend and I actually owe my own blogging adventures to her as she inspired me to start Meg Readz at the beginning of this year. Now, as a fellow blogger, I want to say that Lucy puts so much work into her blog, writing reviews, taking part in blog tours and always joining in with some super creative book tags and challenges. Her enthusiasm, dedication and prolific posting never fail to inspire me – go check her out!

The Mystery Blogger Award by Okoto Enigma

A bit of context for those of you who aren’t aware of the award (that was me!):

“Mystery Blogger Award” is an award for amazing bloggers with ingenious posts. Their blog not only captivates; it inspires and motivates. They are one of the best out there, and they deserve every recognition they get. This award is also for bloggers who find fun and inspiration in blogging; and they do it with so much love and passion.
– Okoto Enigma

RULES

• Put the award logo on your blog
• Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog
• Mention the creator of the award. The creator of this award is Okoto Enigma
• Answer the five questions you were asked
• Tell the readers three things about yourself
• Nominate ten to twenty bloggers
• Notify the bloggers that you nominated them by commenting on one of their posts
• Ask your nominees five questions with one weird or funny one
• Share a link to your best posts

Here are my answers to the five questions I was asked by Bookworm Blogger:

1. What is your ultimate comfort food? My ultimate comfort food would have to be peanut butter and banana on toast – A favourite I share with book characters Tilly from the first Pages and Co, and Isadora Moon (although they are really missing out on the banana addition!).

2. Which book format do you prefer to read (physical, eBoook, audio etc) or do you like to mix it up? If you had to choose one format which would you go for? I still do prefer a physical book to anything else – although I certainly feel that eBooks and audiobooks have their place, and I read all formats. When I was younger I used to stress my family out if we were going on holiday as I would bring a huge amount of physical book copies! If we were going somewhere new than I would need to pack one or two of my favourite books as comfort reading… If we were going somewhere that a book I had read was set, then I would also pack that… If we were away for more than a few days I would need to pack enough new material to keep me going all holiday… And of course, if we visited a bookshop at all while we were away then I would purchase a number of new volumes to add to my collection… You can see how this may have caused some stress to my parents while trying to pack the car…! Getting my kindle saved more than just me 😉 That being said, my first foray into Austen was through Audio, which sparked a lifelong passion for her and her work.

3. Name a book or books that have had a big impact on you or changed your views? Narrowing that list down is so hard! I like to read anything if it is eye-opening, shows a new perspective on life, or teaches me something new. Many of Michael Morpurgo’s books have impacted me growing up – in particular Out Of The Ashes which was about the devastation of foot and mouth disease across the farming community the year I was born, and An Elephant in the Garden which told the story of a German family during the Second World War, and the British bombing raid on their home city of Berlin. I found this particularly eye-opening and have since read a number of amazing books from the point of view of the opposing side during the war.

4. What was a TV show or film that you loved as a child? This would have to be the 1994 Little Women starring Winona Ryder as Jo March and Christian Bale as Laurie (who I may have had a small crush on!). Myself, my mum and my little sister (all die-hard fans of the book which we read together first), used to snuggle up on the sofa and watch this together on a regular basis. Sometimes we would stop halfway through to finish on a happier note if we needed more of a pick-me-up – no spoilers but the second half is more emotional than the first! We originally had it as a VHS cassette and used to watch it on our old 14inch Combi TV/VCR…! Now we have had to replace it with a DVD, but the nostalgia of the event lingers on.

5. What are your favourite type of blogs to do? I especially love to create my monthly Feminist Friday posts – choosing the book to read, and then exploring more about it’s author, history, context etc. to enable me to write my post. I was nervous to use the description Feminist in the title of these posts due to the stereotypes that surround it. But in the end I took the plunge and decided to use it to convey what a Feminist means to me. At the start of these posts is a description of what I look for in my Feminist Friday book choices before going on to explore why I feel the book meets my theme. Doing these posts has made me read some amazing books and discover some incredible women.

They were some great questions and I thoroughly enjoyed answering them!

Now, three things about myself…

1. Peppermint tea is my go-to beverage and I drink copious amounts of it.

2. I work as a bookseller at my local Waterstones, which I love 🙂

3. I discovered swing dancing a couple of years ago (Jive & Lindy) and am now addicted…!

The bloggers I nominate for The Mystery Blogger Award are:

The Book Place

The Literary Addict

Stuck In The Book

What Em’s Reading

Another Austen Addict

All these bloggers write some really engaging and imaginative posts – check them out!

Also, I would love to expand my blogging community, so please do comment on this post and answer one of the following questions for me to follow you 🙂

My five questions for my nominees:

1. Have you ever read a book you were compelled to finish but didn’t like? What was it and why?

2. If you could choose a character from a book to have a conversation with, who would it be and why?

3. What do you enjoy doing when you aren’t reading/blogging?

4. What is your favourite condiment to have on toast?

5. What character from a book, TV show or film do you most identify with?

Can’t wait to read your answers!

My Best Posts (in the end I chose them by how much I enjoyed the book!):

Feminist Friday: The Life & Loves of E. Nesbit

Red Letter Days

Feminist Friday: I Found My Tribe

Thank you once again to Lucy at Bookworm Blogger for nominating me, I have loved answering your questions and taking part in this award and cannot wait to read the answers of my nominees and comments of other bloggers!

Meg Readz xx