Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is…do you have an Instagram account?  And since the answer is no, that wouldn’t be much of a response!  So, I thought I’d answer a question I missed from earlier in June: You have just won a $100.00 Visa gift card. Will you spend the entire amount on a rare collector’s edition you have always wanted, or buy several newly-published books? Explain your choice.

Kind of…neither?  I don’t think I could come up with several newly-published books I’m interested in buying (well, until a few friends who are working on their next books come out with them!)  Also, new books usually turn up at the library.  I would probably look through the books I’ve read in the last couple of years (also from the library) and buy several of my favorites.  I’ve done that periodically.  I also might fill out a few collections that currently have gaps, and since they’re mostly very old kids books I would buy used, I could spin $100 into…probably eight or ten books, easily.

As to a rare collector’s edition–well, this will probably say something about my socioeconomic status, but…$100 isn’t going to get me a rare collector’s edition.  Off the top of my head, the ones I’ve been tempted by:

• $4000 copy of A Fighting Man of Mars, previously owned by the author’s daughter and personally inscribed
• $3000 copy of Winnie the Pooh, signed by the author (I looked at that in-person at an antiquarian book fair, and felt like I was handling a museum piece by touching it)
• Anything signed by L. M. Montgomery, can’t recall costs but undoubtedly in the thousands
• $300 signed copy of Auld Licht Idylls by J. M. Barrie, signed by the author, the only actual possibility and one I wish I’d bought!

So…with $500 to spend on books, I’d hunt up something signed by Barrie.  But $100 would get divvied up into favorites I haven’t added to my collection yet.  What would you do with $100 to spend on books?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: For all of you worker bees out there! How do you balance having a day job/career and managing your blog at night? Is it hard or easy to do, and what do people in your work life think of your blogs?

Well, I suppose it’s appropriate that a post about balancing my life is going up late…because things aren’t very balanced just now!!  Although it’s more because I moved into a new house a week ago, and we don’t have working internet at home yet.

I generally fit blogging in on evenings and weekends–a book review some time on the weekend to go up Monday, and the Friday post some evening during the week.  I do a lot of my fiction writing on my lunch break, a pause in the middle of my work day.  I’m happy to report on that front that revisions are still moving along at a pretty good pace, by the way, despite the craziness of moving.

Would this all be easier without a 40-hour a week job?  Yeah, I think so!!  (Ask me if I’m impressed that Stephen King writes every day.  Spoiler: No.)  But it’s kind of what I’m used to by this point.

My coworkers know about my fiction-writing, which they mostly think is pretty cool.  I’m not sure if any have read my blog.  In some ways I prefer to keep my life more compartmentalized than that.

Fellow bloggers, do you have full-time jobs?  How is balance working out for you?

Okay, back to revising–I have nine minutes left on my lunch break!

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: What were your worst movies based off of books?

Most people have probably already heard this rant, but…Ella Enchanted.  Book by Gail Carson Levine, movie by I don’t even know.  I don’t love it when movies change plot points or character arcs, but this one ruined the whole concept.  Ella Enchanted is a wonderful, magical but practical retelling of Cinderella, and I love that combination–magic, with a practical, logical, real-world bent.  The movie was some sort of confused, hyped-up absurdity, not true to the spirit of the book at all.

It seems only fair to give the opposite side, worst book I ever read after watching a movie it was based on.  African Queen, book by C. S. Forester, movie starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.  Everything good in the movie was not in the book, and there was nothing else good to compensate for it, with an ending that made the entire rest of the book utterly pointless and devalued.  Badly done.

What was the worst movie you saw based on a book?  And just for fun, what was the worst book you read that somehow had a good movie based on it?

I am–somewhat back!  Life has been and continues to be a rather frenetic affair (besides getting married, I’m also moving), but I wanted to start dipping back into this blog at least a bit.  I may not be up to my usual schedule of blogging quite yet, but I’ll at least be popping back in some.  So today, here’s a blog hop…but not actually this week’s question, because I liked one from last month better.  So I thought I’d answer it!Last month’s Book Blogger Hop question was: Do you remember the first book you read by yourself?

According to family lore, the first book I ever read myself was The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree.  An earlier target-age than most Berenstain Bears books, it only has one or two brief sentences to a page.  Before I could actually read, I memorized the book and would “read” it to myself, turning pages and “reading” quite accurately.

I don’t know if I ever had a copy–it may have been a strictly library book–but I know I didn’t wind up keeping a copy.  So I bought it myself sometime around college, and was surprised to learn that all the dramatic reading my parents did (which I still remember, despite not exactly remembering being read it) was all invented, not based in italics or funny fonts or anything.  It’s strange to read a book you know well for the first time!

I don’t know what the first book I really read was.  Probably some early reader in school.  And I don’t know what the first book I chose to read was.  But the first book I “read” was The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree, and I’m happy to say that it holds up over time–with dramatic reading included, of course.

Do you remember the first book you ever read?  Or “read”?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you ever feel like you have emerged better for reading a book?

Hmm, an intriguing topic.  I think reading the Tortall series at formative years made me better, or perhaps at least more confident.  Brene Brown is very influential for me and I think made me better able to navigate relationships.  And I hope my spiritual reading on the whole makes me better.  Thich Nhat Hanh comes to mind fastest in that category, with his emphasis on peacefulness and tranquility.

And now the news!  I mentioned some months ago that I was engaged.  Well, the wedding is fast approaching–May 12th, so just over a week away!  As you might imagine, life is just a little bit hectic for me right now.  So for the first time in the life of my blog, I’m going on hiatus–I should be back on here before the end of the month, but for now I’m suspending regular programming.  I have a few other things to do… 🙂 ❤

See you soon!