Follow Friday!

I'm a sucker for finding new blogs, and I've been wanting to participate in a blog hop (doesn't it sound cute?). Sometimes I can be shy, but now, I forge ahead!




There is an obligatory question to get the party started, so I'll share:

Q. What are you doing to prepare for an upcoming zombie apocalypse and/or the return of Mel Gibson to the silver screen? (Both of which could be terrifying.)

My husband is pretty into zombie-lore (loves the books World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide, and his favorite movie is Zombieland), so I am happy to say we have a survival plan, including a short-term get-out-of-the-house plan to long-term survival tactics. I am not happy to say I am not allowed to carry the shotgun. Apparently, my trigger finger is too quick and reckless as evidenced by many gaming blitzes in Borderlands & Fallout. As if I would have such large quantities of ammo to waste in real life... sheesh!

The rest of this post, I just wanted to say a little about how awesome the book blogging world is. I'm a long-time blogger, going back to... oh my gosh, it's been ten years by my calculations. I used LiveJournal for a long time and mainly wrote about daily activities, and I read the blogs of my friends. It wasn't until more recently I discovered the wealth of writing, publishing and book review blogs. I have to give you all credit - the book community is incredible! I've found so much support for writing, I am wondering why people even pay to get an MFA (that was a joke). The enthusiasm I see for books on these blogs is also encouraging.

I joined Goodreads and set a goal of 25 books to read this year. I changed it to 30 and may up it to 40 at the rate I'm going. My To-Read list is a mile long thanks to giveaways and my frequent trips to Anderson's Books to see authors and of course, buy more books. In addition to that, my library card is wearing thin from all the audio books I've checked out this year. (On that note I'm trying out an MP3 book via Overdrive from the library. I downloaded it to my phone! We'll see how this works out).

So, this post is a shout-out to you all: the bloggers, the twitter-ers, the book reviewers. Thank you for your instruction, inspiration and sharing. I appreciate all of you and have learned so much!

After the jump is the list of participating blogs. Happy reading!

Links List!

I troll through a lot of information every week. Here are a few items I plucked from the weeds:

Two great posts over the past month on the rise in popularity of Young Adult fiction (in case you find yourself having to explain to non-YA readers why you read books about teenagers):
Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire
Glass Cases

PCMag.com has a litte blurb about Lock-In with e-readers, which is my main struggle in deciding which e-reader to buy. I'm going to check out the new Nook releasing next week before I decide on this one vs. the Kindle.

And just for fun (if consider it a good time to torture yourself with misused punctuation) is the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations

Diary Days

This is where I review an old diary entry (thus, the blog name) and reflect. Sometimes there isn't much to reflect on, but at least it's funny. In 1994, I decided it was time to document things I hated. I listed them using the aptly titled, Things I Hate:

1. Noisy eating habits - Still one of my top pet peeves.
2. A mouthful of excuses - Clever!
3. Lima beans, beef stroganoff, meatloaf - Yup, still true.
4. Posers (with the note: the act of doing, not the people) - Clearly an adolescent thing.
5. School, everything related (except friends) - I always remembered liking school...
6. Baywatch bikini girls - Who doesn't?!
7. Cloudy, moody days - I live in the Midwest, we practically manufacture these.
8. People watching me sunbathe - OMG, ew. I think this was a kid from school talking to a neighbor in the next backyard. I don't remember if he actually stared or if I was only paranoid of it happening. 
9. Sandy everything from being at the beach - Fact: sand teleports. 
10. Music by Phil Collins, ZZ Top, Rush, Meatloaf - A good hate list, for sure.
11. Hoochies - I cannot make this stuff up.
12. Jet lag, readjustment - And airplane food, right? I mean, gross!
13. Annoying bugs! - Right on!

The only addition I have is when a person talks through a yawn. When the urge to yawn arises, just stop talking and get it out. You're not fooling anyone by pushing through it, as if no one will notice the weird way words sound as a mouth shapes around the yawn.

Did you just yawn?

What do you think? Do you have anything you remember hating that has carried over from childhood to adulthood?