You seem to read a wide variety of genres! If you could only pick one genre to read the rest of your life (let’s say a Kindle glitch while you’re on a space station/desert island type scenario), which would it be?
Oh, God! What kind of cruel and unusual punishment is this? I want to read it all!!?
I’ll be honest with you, I read so many different genres because I realised a couple of years ago that I don’t actually know what I like in terms of literature. I don’t have favourite tropes, I don’t even have a favourite book. So I want to try everything. And every once in a while I find something I love, but I still haven’t been able to see a pattern in my likes, though I found some things I particularly disliked.
So I will take a stand here that will probably be very unpopular with book nerds. If I could only read one genre for the rest of my life, I would choose fan fiction. Is that a cop out?
Hear me out. Fanfic is the one thing I read not necessarily for the quality (though there are some superbly written fics out there), but for the pure joy I feel from reading all the different scenarios in which the same 2 idiots can fall in love with each other over and over again. Fanfic is what taught me to read in English (not my native language) when I was a teen. It’s been such an important part of my life over the past 20+ years – I’ve moved fandoms, and pairings, and my threshold for what I’ll read, but regardless nothing feels quite as good as sitting down and laughing or crying with a good fic. Give me unlimited access to AO3 and I’ll happily survive.
What’s the first book you recommend to new friends?
Here’s the thing, I don’t normally recommend books to people. I am honestly terrible at reading people, and I rarely get it right for them. It seems even the books I pick for my book club are a flop, so instead of recommending I spend my time writing about my experiences and ranting about books here. What I will do sometimes is gift people I know very well with books if I want them to read them but without putting any pressure, so I guess I’ll go with that.
The last 2 books I gifted friends with were:
But I would never recommend each of these books to the other person. Does that make sense?
Were you a reader from childhood, or did you grow into it?
I present to you pictures of me, under 2 years old, laying down by the pool “reading” comic books aloud. Clearly wanting to be just like my big sister.
I had a subscription to the “Turma da Mônica” comics when I was young (they’re these amazing stories about a group of 6-year-olds and their everyday lives and adventures – it’s SO good and kid friendly and I still love them with all my heart), and I made my mum re-read every single one of them to me so many times I knew them all by heart. I could recite them as if I was reading long before I ever learned how to read. Ever since then I’ve loved books.
Over time I’ve had phases of reading a lot and phases of reading very little, as I think we all do, but I guess that comes with being human. I tend to read more when I’m living abroad and read more when I have a longer commute (God bless audiobooks). I tend to have periods when I’ll only read fanfic, and periods when I’ll only read books, but I’m always reading something.
Who’s your all-time favourite book character?
Oh wow, I really suck at these questions – do I even have a favourite character?
I recently proclaimed Murderbot was my favourite character in a review comment, but this might just be because I’m currently reading it. I guess this means I’m not a character-driven reader. Huh! I just discovered something about myself – I must rather enjoy a focus on plot development, because that’s what I remember about the books I read. There you go – you learn something new every day.
What was the last show you binged?
Well, you should know I am a serial TV show binger. Yesterday I finished Coroner (the Canadian one), I watched the 3 seasons over the past week so I think that counts. In parallel, I am almost done with my 5th re-watch of White Collar, and started my 2nd re-watch of The Good Place. These last 2 I watch because they make me happy. Oh, and I’m also binging all of The Great British Bake Off (and all of its spin-offs) as it becomes available on my TV.
