Book Blogger Hop (8)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy for Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:
What is your favorite Halloween costume? Even if you don't celebrate, what kinds of costumes do you like?

I do not celebrate Halloween. It's not that I mind the tradition of Halloween - in America - but I don't live in America and Halloween has never been a part of Swedish culture. We have another type of tradition around that same time that sort of derives from the same roots, All Hallows Eve. But instead of dressing up we go to the churchyard and light candles to remember our dead. I love this tradition, I think it's very beautiful.

The more americanized Halloween has excises in Sweden for about ten years, no more, and brought here by store owners wanting to make money. Thus I boycott it. I might imagine celebrating it if I ever was in the US at the time of Halloween, though. And I'm sure I would've loved it if I actually was American.

In my part of the country though, we have a tradition of children dressing up on January 13 and going around "dancing the Christmas out". I once dressed up as a Christmas tree and it was a huge success, so I guess I'll go with a tree.

Book Blogger Hop (7)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy for Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:
What are you most looking forward to this fall/autumn season? - A particular book release? Halloween? The leaves changing color? Cooler temperatures? A vacation?

The thing I look most forward to this fall is moving in to our new (but old) house. This summer, me and my husband bought an old school house in the Swedish countryside. It was built in the 1860's but renovations have been made since and there are running water and electricity. However, it still needs some updating to the 21st century regarding wallpaper and such, so we've been working hard evenings and weekends on with what will be the master bedroom.

Beside that I also always love the air in the fall, so I also look forward to long walks on countryside roads beside forests of yellow and red.

Book Blogger Hop (6)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy for Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:
Non-book-related this week. Do you have pets?

I do not have any pets. The main reason is that I am allergic to furred animals, as are my sisters. We did have two leopard geckos for a couple of years though, back when I was around 13-14 years old. 

Lizards were not all that having pets was cracked up to be. It's not like you could take them out and cuddle them; they'd just run away and hide in the sofa. Once they escaped the terrarium during the night and it took us two days and much lizard poop later to find them again (among the cables behind the TV where it was nice and warm). And the live crickets that they had for a diet wasn't all that pleasant either. When we sold our house and moved to an apartment we gave them away. 

In the future, me and my husband are looking into maybe getting fish.

Book Blogger Hop (5)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy-For-Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:

Let's talk crazy book titles! Highlight one or two (or as many as you like!) titles in your personal collection that have the most interesting titles! If you can't find any, feel free to find one on the Internet!

I've always been very interesting is looking at and comparing translations of original book titles. It was almost as hobby of mine when I was little, comparing the original English title with the Swedish translation and trying to understand what went through their minds when translating. There were some crazy translations. And there might not be many doing it the other way around, translating from Swedish to English, but there is one very current example of this, namely the English translations of Stieg Larsson's triolgy about Lisbeth Salander. Except for number two, the translated titles have practically no connection with the original ones what so ever. So here they go:

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (original: Män som hatar kvinnor - Men who hate women)

The Girl Who Played With Fire (original: Flickan som lekte med elden - The Girl Who Played With Fire)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (original: Luftslottet som sprängdes - The Air Castle Which Got Blown Up)

Another title that I really like because it tells me exactly what kind of book I'm holding is Ali McNamara's From Notting Hill with Love... Actually. Loving both of those movies, I just knew I had to have this book! 

Book Blogger Hop (4)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy-For-Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:
What is the once ARC you would love to get your hands on right now?


That's an easy one! I just finished Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson and I adored it! I just read that she will release a new book in June next year (Second chance summer) and I would love to get my hands on that ASAP. If it's even half as good as her first novel it's gonna rock!

Book Blogger Hop (3)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy-For-Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:
What's the ONE genre that you wish you could get into, but just can't?

Tough one this week. Although it might seem like I only read YA here on the blog, I do read other genres from time to time and I have only been reading YA for about a year (after Twilight opened my eyes to a whole new world of fiction that I previously though I was too old for). 

The one genre, which really isn't my cup of tea is poetry. I might appreciate a poem here and there sure, but whole poetry anthologies, not really. When I studied English at the university and took English literature, "Turner" by David Dabydeen was a compulsory read. For those of you who don't know it, it's a long narrative poem inspired by J.M.W. Turner's painting The Slave Ship, which in turn was inspired by, among other things, the mass-killing of African slaves known as the Zong Massacre. The poem was just a drag for me, but when I late looked up the history of the Zong that really gripped me. Without the poem I'd probably never learned about the Zong at all, so it was a good thing that we read it.

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Update: I now see that I'm a week too late with this answer (you miss a lot when you're abroad), but I'll let is stay here anyway.

Book Blogger Hop (2)

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy-For-Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:
How/where do you get your books? Do you buy them or go to the library? Is there a certain website you use like paperbackswap?

Hmmm... well I usually buy my books. I'm very materialist when it comes to books. I want to own them. I want to look at them. I want to caress them.

However, to cut down on my book buying, I would like to check out more books from my local library but that would entail them buying more newly published books in English. The English section of my local library is laughably small, a few Harry Potter books and some Penguin Easy Readers (simplified and abridged versions of classics or movies, of about 60 pages), so in order for me to get YA books from the library, first they have to be translated into Swedish -and let me tell you what a considerably small percentage of books are, although it's getting much better than when I was a teen. So books that are a few years old or just very popular (such as Twilight and The Hunger Games) can sometimes be found in a translated version. I understand that they don't have as wide a selection of English books as let's say an American, Australian or English library, for natural reasons, because most people in Sweden actually want to read in their mother tongue. Personally, however, I like reading the original, so when I pick up a Swedish translation in the library instead of buying the original English version it's because I'm poor. Or cheap. Or both.

Discovering The Bookdepository has largely increased the number of books bought, because of their fab prizes and free shipping. Buying English books in Swedish bookstores is usually rather expensive (again because the market for it is rather small) and the selection limited to very popular book series. So The Bookdepository is a blessing as well as a curse. Wide selection + cheap books + free shipping = larger orders = spending a lot of money. I'm just not as selective in my book buying nowadays. But then again, I love my books.

Book Blogger Hop

The Book Blogger Hop is a place for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  Hosted by Crazy-For-Books,  this weekly meme is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, get to know someone new and basically just share our love of books! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list! 

This week's question:

What keeps you reading beyond the first pages of a book, and what makes you want to stop reading a book and put it back on the shelf?

This is my first Book Blogger Hop and I think it's staring with an excellent question. I guess what keeps me reading is a really strong start. Whenever I get a new book, the first thing I do is read the first sentence. I even read them out to my fiancé, who doesn't share my passion for books. So bottom lime, a strong start is what captures my interest and especially when it's a very "in medias res" kind of start. You know, where you are thrown right into the plot. No long explanations, nothing. Just boom - right in.

What makes me stop reading a book is if it's too slow, if nothing really happens, if it's just a a lot of talking and really nothing happening. Or if I don't care about the characters. When I think about it, that's probably the nail in the coffin for a book for me - if I don't care what happens to them. However, I usually do finish the book anyway. Only very rarely do I put it done until it's finished, although I should probably do it more often. Why waste time on a book I don't like..?