Meme Spotlight: Follow Friday & Blogger Hop

Woohoo! It's Friday!

Ready for my recap of the week? No? Too bad, look anyway!

Memes/Features:

Mine- Book Lust Syndrome (3) Part II (Ft. Releases Between Jan. 7-22)
Not Mine- Top Ten Tuesday (Top Ten Bookish/Bloggish Resolutions) & "Waiting on..." Wednesday (7 picks)

Interviews:
Jackie Morse Kessler (Hunger)- Character Interview: The Pale Rider
Saundra Mitchell (The Vespertine)- Author Chat-Chit

Reviews:
Unearthly by Cynthia Hand received a rating average of ☺☺☺☺ 1/2

Latest Reads:
The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell
Unearthly by Cynthia Hand
The Iron Queen by Julie Kagawa

Upcoming:
Reviews- Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson, Annexed by Sharon Dogar, Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson, Firelight by Sophie Jordan, and Solid by Shelley Workinger

Memes/Features- Mine: BLOGOSPHERE BREAKDOWN CANCELLED (postponed 'til further notice...it's simply not ready yet *sigh*) Not Mine: In My Mailbox post

Guest Stops/Interviews- Guest Post from Shelley Workinger (Jan. 18)

ANYWAY...

Last week, I began participating in Follow Friday, which you can see my post here. Its hosted by the wonderful Parajunkee's View (http://www.parajunkee.com/), and what happens is every Friday a blogger guest posts on Parajunkee's blog to talk about themselves and their blog (like Annette@ The More You Read, The More You Will Know!). Then, there's this super cool part where a question gets asked like this one:

What makes up your non-human family??

And this week I'm going to answer with a bit of show-n-tell!

Meet Sam! 

And Josh says "... -___-"!  

Watch them sleep...

 ...because you know you want to...

 
There's also my cousin Abby, a pampered, spoiled Bichon Frise who likes to wear cute little girly dresses and play with empty water bottles, and is easily scared by balloons or her mother (my aunt). Alas, I've not been given release to display her photo on the internet.

And that concludes this week's Follow Friday!

Want to participate?

"To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host {Parajunkee.com} and any one else you want to follow on the list
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers - http://stalkingthebookshelves.blogspot.com/
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If your new to the follow friday hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!"

Last but not least, I have my entry for Book Blogger Hop!

"  In the spirit of the Twitter Friday Follow, the Book Blogger Hop is a place just for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word! This weekly BOOK PARTY is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, make new friends, support each other, and generally just share our love of books! It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs to read! 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 below!!

The Hop lasts Friday-Monday every week, so if you don't have time to Hop today, come back later and join the fun! This is a weekly event! And stop back throughout the weekend to see all the new blogs that are added!"   Go visit Crazy-for-Books to see more»»

This week's featured blogger (Sugarbeat's Books) wanted to know, "Why do you read the genre that you do? What draws you to it?"

So, I'm going to explain myself to her.

Young Adult novels hold an immense amount of appeal for me because I can easily connect with the adolescents starring in these novels. Their thought process, their emotions, their circumstances, even the drama. Teens are still impressionable as far as who they become as people, as adults out in the world, and I think that's meaningful. Teenagers are so interesting to read about mainly because they've got so much growing up to do, and The Reader gets to see this development take place, witness this change in the characters.  And I think what will keep me returning to this genre again and again, no matter which aspect of it (romantic comedy, paranormal romance/fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, etc...), will always be the characters.

Thanks Sugarbeat's Books for slapping me in the face with such a wonderful question!

Be sure to smack me with your thoughts!