It’s Independent Booksellers’ Week this week and I’m going to celebrating with a tag, and a bookshop tour vlog later in the week (look forward to that)!
Questions:
1. What book(s) are currently in your bag?
As I don’t carry a big bag with me anymore (to carry books) – the only answer I can give you is my phone, which I’m currently reading Arcadia by Iain Pears on. Or listening to a very long history lecture ‘Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History’ by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius. 4 hours to go!
2. What’s the last great book you read?
I absolutely adored Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, a powerful novel tackling religious beliefs and the degradation of society. If you love dystopian novels with a strong, complex woman at the front – this is a wonderful novel to sink your teeth into.
3. What book have you gifted the most?
I’ve gifted quite a few novels, but never the same one twice. I personally would love to discuss The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne with more people, a very strange and surreal piece of fiction. So if given the chance, I would like to gift that novel.
4. What’s your favourite independent bookshop?
Paperchain, a bookstore in Canberra. Which I will be visiting in my vlog this week.
5. What’s been your favourite book recommended by a bookseller (or fellow Booktuber)?
The Tenant of Wildfall Hall by Anne Bronte. It did the round on Booktube awhile back and I’m so glad I read it, it might actually be my favorite Bronte novel. A toss up between it and Jane Eyre.
6. What’s your favourite bookshop memory?
My bookclub does a meetup once a year (we discuss online via google hangouts) and one of my favorite activities with them is our annual book scavenger hunt. We are given 20 prompts and then have to find a book for each prompt, take a picture and upload it to Twitter under a specific hashtag. It’s super fun.
7. What do bookshops mean to you? What do you love about them?
Although the majority of the books I get are online via place like the Book Depository and Kindle, I do love bookshops. It’s a very pleasant, calm experience browsing through the shelves, even if you don’t manage to find any book you want or can take, online cannot match the physical experience.
8. What are the books that made you? Which books have most affected or influenced you?
I think each and every book I’ve read has influenced me in some way, but I’ll note two books. The first is the one that got me into Fantasy – Magician by Raymond E Feist. The second is the one that made me fall in love with the Chinese culture and history – Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah.
9. What book do you recommend readers gift for Father’s Day?
My dad is not a reader, at all. He had problems as a child that couldn’t be helped as he was constantly moving from one place to another, one school to another. But he loves a good story, one full of heart and action. So I would recommend for him and other dads ‘Old Man’s War’ by John Scalzi.
10. What book is currently at the top of your TBR pile?
I really want to read The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley. I love essay collections and musings about geek culture. This totally sounds like the book for me.
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