Thank you very much to Amanda at ChocolatePages for nominating me for a Liebster Award – and sorry it’s taken me so long to post this. I’d never heard of them before – so I had to have a google to find out about more. There appear to be a few variants of the rules, but the rules I was nominated under are:
1. Thank and link back to the blogger who nominated you.
2. Write 11 random facts about yourself.
3. Answer the 11 questions you have been asked from the blogger who nominated you.
4. Nominate 11 bloggers with under 200 followers and set them 11 questions to answer.
So here are your random facts about me:
1. I’m a journalist in my day job
2. I really don’t like violent films or horror movies – The Boy had to stop Pulp Fiction half way through because I was so upset. This surprises people because as part of the aforementioned day (and sometimes night) job I sometimes have to watch really horrible videos.
3. I have a large collection of Chalet School books – old paperbacks and new reprinted (unedited) ones from Girls Gone By. They were one of my favourite series when I was younger – and I’m still working to complete my set!
4. My first job was a bell-ringer at church weddings – £5 per wedding (back in the late 90s) was much better than the hourly rate in a shop at the time!
5. I’m a massive theatre fan and write about it here – although I don’t post on that as often as I do over here, books being somewhat cheaper than the theatre!
6. I lived in France for a year when I was at university – I was at university in Tours
7. As a child I had an obsession with Queen Victoria. I used to play pretend games where I was her. Or her daughter Victoria. This means I (still) know some really random stuff about her and the royal family. Like the fact that Edward VIII’s name was actually Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David and that he was always known as David.
8. My Granny loved Mills and Boon books. When I was about 12 I had a phase of borrowing them and reading them. I thought they were like Sweet Valley High, but with sex.
9. My favourite movie – ever – is Pillow Talk. Although this trailer does it no justice at all.
10. I’m a massive motorsports fan – Sunday afternoons during the season will find me camped on the sofa watching Formula One or MotoGP.
11. I don’t really have a claim to fame – I’m very jealous of people who do. The best I have is that my Grandad stood as a candidate to become an MP in the 1960s. He didn’t win.
And my 11 answers:
1. Sweet or savoury? Savoury – especially anything involving cheese
2. What made you start blogging? A need for more than my twitter account to express myself?! Seriously though, Verity Reads Books came about as part of a concerted effort to reduce the to-read pile – I thought if I was telling the world about it, I’d be less likely to ignore the backlog. It hasn’t always worked.
3. Cats or dogs? Cats
4. Who is your favourite author? This is really tough for me, because there are so many people that I love reading. I think either Dorothy L Sayers or Terry Pratchett – because I have one or other of their books as an audiobook on my headphones almost all the time and that’s got to mean something right?! Apart from that, I buy everything that Katie Fforde, Trisha Ashley, Laurie Graham and Christina Jones publish.
5. Tell me one interesting fact about you? I used to be a breakfast sidekick on a local radio station. I started off as the newsreader, and ended up spending the whole show in the studio chattering away.
6. Who would be your 3 ideal dinner guests, (dead, alive, famous or not)? Doris Day, Freddie Mercury and Cecil Beaton. Who knows if they’d get on or not…
7. What would you serve them? My speciality (and the one dish I’ve never messed up so far) is Mary Berry’s Chicken Taleggio – originally from her book Cook Up A Feast but now widely available on the web. Here for example. So that, then a crumble and a cheese board probably – because I’d hate to do something that didn’t turn out right!
8. What’s your all time favourite tv show? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Particularly the High School seasons. Every time I watch an episode I remember how much of my vocabulary comes from there – and how it shaped my teenage years. I used to try and wear my hair like Buffy’s (style not colour) was during Becoming Part II *all the time*. I can still quote BTVS extensively…
9. What’s your ideal date? A night out at the theatre with a nice meal beforehand – something My Boy has got the hang of now – usually arrange the theatre – he buys the dinner! A Dream date would be going to see some Formula One or MotoGP – The Boy took me to the MotoGP at Silverstone last year and it was amazing.
10. Who is your celebrity crush? Oooh. Tough. Patrick Dempsey maybe – not only is he hot and in one of my favourite shows, but he’s a racing driver in his spare time. I also like Benedict Cumberbatch – the various series of Cabin Pressure are also on frequent rotation on my mp3) and I still have a massive soft spot for David Boreanz and James Marsters from Buffy.
11. Tell me 2 of your favourite bloggers? The first blog I ever encountered is still one of my favourites – and that’s Dooce. I’ve been reading her since just after Leta was born (and she’s 10 now) – which is longer than I’ve known some of my best friends! I also love The mighty mighty Monkseal whose blogs on various reality shows are so funny they’ll make you cry. I nearly put him as one of my 11 – but he’s not a well-kept enough secret to be under 200 followers!
Here are my 11 questions to be answered:
1. What was your first job?
2. What’s your claim to fame?
3. What was your favourite book when you were a child?
4. What’s your favourite film?
5. Who was your teenage crush?
6. What’s your embarrassing childhood secret?
7. What’s your favourite TV show?
8. What was your first pet
9. Have you ever lived abroad (aka not the country you come from) if so – where
10. Favourite Sweet?
11. And is there one book you think everyone should read?
And my bloggers and this is where I had problems – so it’s not the full 11 I’m afraid. I didn’t want to use anyone who I don’t actually read – and I found a lot of the blogs I read didn’t fit the criteria. In fact it’s a shameful three – but I’ve had this post sitting in draft form all ready to go bar the bloggers for nearly three weeks. So as it was starting to look rude, I thought I ought to swallow my pride, admit my failings and post as is so to speak.
1. Nutley One
2. A Small Mind at the Theatre
3. The Lovely Emma Louise from EmmaLouBookBlog (I apologise if you’ve done this before and I couldn’t spot it)
So there you go. I promise I’ll try and do better in future.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 