Armchair BEA 2013 Day One : Introductions

Design credit: Nina of Nina Reads

Welcome to the first day of ArmchairBEA 2013.  I loved being part of ArmchairBEA last year so am back again for the challenge.  So without more ado, please continue to read and I answer a couple of questions about myself.  I look forward to meeting many of you throughout the week :-)

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? 

My name is Nikk.  I am an Aussie blogger who reads mostly YA/NA and some adult predominantly in the

Paranormal/Urban Fantasy/ Fantasy/Supernatural persuasion.  Though i do pick up romances and/or contemporary novels, if I like the look of them.  I first started blogging just over 2 years ago but have only really taken it seriously for the past 14-15 months after the birth of my daughter in 2012.  Middle of the night feeds are the perfect time for reading it seems :-)

I got into blogging as I have always been an avid reader and would love discussing what I was reading with other people who have read it though often i had different reading tastes from some of my friends and I loved the thought of getting reads particularly for authors I really like early as I don't have a lot of patience and hate waiting for the next instalment in a series.  I also read pretty quickly so it was a way to ensure i always had a lot of books ready to read.

2. Have you previously participated in Armchair BEA? What brought you back for another year? If you have not previously participated, what drew you to the event? 

I participated in Armchair BEA last year (2012) and really enjoyed it.  Unfortunately it before I understood about scheduling posts so was desperately trying to write each days post on the day it was due to go up and with a nearly 3 month old baby I lasted about 3 days before I fell behind.

Part of the reason I came back was so I could be more organised this year and get a jump on my posts as soon as the topics came out.  Of course that hasn't exactly happened as I have spent the last couple of days interviewing for jobs and generally doing things other than blogging so I am frantically trying to get this post up on the day it is due but I am determined to last the whole week no matter what happens :-P

The main reason I came back is also the same reason I enjoyed it so much last year.  I love just being part of the blogging world, talking to other bloggers and participating in discussion and learning new things.  Being part of Armchair BEA ticks all these boxes.  As bloggers, often we are off doing our own things, reviewing the books we want to read and spending a lot of time drumming up folloowers and readers for our own blogs  so it's nice to do something as a community as well and share that love for books that brought us all to blogging in the first place.

3. What are you currently reading, or what is your favorite book you have read so far in 2013? 

I am just about the finish The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross (have about 3-4 pages left) then I will start on The Girl in the Clockwork Collar and then The Girl with the Iron Touch (both also by Kady Cross- books 1 & 2).

I read Dare You To by Katie McGarry here last week and absolutely loved it!  You can find the review here.  Along with Boundless by Cynthia Hand, they are probably my favourite reads of 2013 so far :-)


4. What literary location would you most like to visit? Why? 

I have always wanted to visit Wales, particularly the Isle of Mon and King's Men Stones.  These locations are written about in my favourite book of all time, The Ancient Future by Traci Harding.  The ancient Future is a book about time travel, magic, soul mates and creating your own reality and I just want to visit these places to somehow experience this magic for myself.  :-)

There is something magic about locations you have read in books especially if you have an imagination. As a child, my athletics club had their meets in a place called Trumper park  and I had read a book called Riddle of the Trumpalar by Judy Bernard-Waite  about two kids that when trying to save a tree called the Trumper Tree accidentally got absorbed into the tree and ended up back in the days of the convicts. This tree actually existed in Trumper Park and my best friend and I would often play by the tree and try to hug it and go back in time ourselves.  If anything it definitely fired our imaginations  :-)

5. What is your favorite part about the book blogging community?  

My favourite part of the blogging community is taking part in events where we get to share our posts and meet new people, whether it be memes like In My Mailbox or Teaser Tuesday or bigger events such as Armchair BEA and Bloggiesta.  There are always new people to meet and new blogs to discover and new things to learn and it is thorough sharing and visiting other blogs that we really come together as a community.