Book Blog Newbie Tag - Saint & Marigold

Welcome to the Saint & Marigold blog! To get us started, I thought I would do the Book Blog Newbie Tag. I’m not completely sure where these questions came from (definitely not me), other than I think they came from BookTube originally, and were adapted for book blogs. But I hope this will give you a sense of who I am and what this blog will be!

1. Why did you start this blog?

First of all, I may have a bit of a book addiction…

Also, I was originally thinking I should start a blog about a specific topic, like green living or making art or something, but the problem is that I am one of those people whose topic interests tends to shift completely every few months. You can almost see these cycles fossilized in my (gigantic) Amazon wish list, which I use to keep track of books I’m interested in.

Then one day I had a light bulb moment: the one constant I never seem to lose interest in is books themselves. For me, whatever I’m talking about, I seem to always be recommending a book to someone for that topic. The idea of a book blog was officially born!

2. What are some fun and unique things you can bring to this book blog?

I love to synthesize things, i.e., pull elements from totally different areas and bring them together to create something that’s new and richly textured. So that’s part of the plan for this blog—of course I will be talking about books, but I will also pull in art, music, poems, articles, and the like. To me, everything I read fits somewhere into a large network of ideas and thoughts, and I hope to share some of that with you!

3. What are you most excited for about this new blog?

I’m mainly excited about two things:

Concretely shaping the ideas that are currently floating around my head, and seeing them develop into a living, growing blog.
Creating a community around this site, so that I can meet new people and learn from others.

4. Why do you love reading?

I love reading because I’m naturally a very curious person, so especially for non-fiction, I love to learn new things about various topics. For me, it’s the process of learning that I enjoy so much. When it comes to fiction, I typically enjoy being transported into a different world or someone’s life for a short period of time.

5. What book or series got you into reading?

The first author that I can remember really loving was Roald Dahl. When I was 9-10 years old, I read a fair number of his books. My favourite was Matilda, and I still have that copy of the book!

6. What questions would you ask your favourite book bloggers?

I probably have a boring answer to this. Likely most of my pressing questions would be technical, like customizing pages, dealing with plug-ins, how not to throw your computer out the window when things inevitably go wrong, etc. (We used to have a coffee mug at our house that said, “To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer.” Never had a truer coffee mug!)

Beyond that, I always love a good story about how things began, so I would want to hear their stories about how and why they started their blogs.

7. What challenges in starting a book blog do you think will be the hardest to overcome?

It’s hard to guess what the challenges will be, though I’m sure I will find out in very short order! (I am very prone to Murphy’s Law, for anyone who doesn’t know me well.) But since I tend to be extremely good at dreaming up all kinds of grand ideas, I suspect that one of the challenges will be to avoid getting discouraged when my “real” blog doesn’t measure up to my totally amazing “vision” blog… or at least, not at first until I have a chance to build it up and add to it, bit by bit!

8. When did you start reading?

I learned to read at home when I was about 4, but I don’t think I appreciated reading that much until later, maybe age 9 or so.

I have vivid memories of having to write book reports on picture books when I was in grade 1, and hating it with a passion! Boy would my grade 1 teacher be surprised to see me with a book blog now…!

9. Where do you read?

I mostly read at home, sitting on my bed. Sometimes I will sit at a desk if I need to concentrate or take good margin notes. I tend not to have luck with reading books while travelling on vacation. Which is just as well, because I am very good—too good—at buying books whenever I’m travelling, which can make for some not-so-fun packing and weightlifting exercises as I try to haul them home in my luggage.

10. What kind of books do you like to read?

I read quite a wide variety of books, and typically a solid mix of fiction and non-fiction of a variety of genres and subjects. That said, I tend not to read horror or thrillers, since I have way too active an imagination and I like sleeping at night.

So that’s it for this tag, and my introductory blog post here! What would you answer to these questions?