[Armchair BEA] Introduction & Classics

Button designed by Emily of Emily's Reading Room

For those of you who don't know yet, ArmchairBEA is a way for those book bloggers who cannot attend Book Expo America in Person to get together and meet great people. Below, you can find my introduction and my quick thoughts on classics.

Introduction

Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?

Hi, I’m Kathrin, 29, and the blogger here at Stacked’n’Painted. You can use many labels to describe me – sister, daughter, soon-to-be mommy, reader, makeup addict, student… I don’t think you would get a clear picture of me though. I am just me, quite a bit nerdy with a habit of spending too much time each morning getting ready because I play around with makeup and need a lot of time to wake up – I’m so not a morning person! I love good movies and TV shows (my labeling, not others’), naturally, books are a must in every situation. I cannot imagine leaving the house without a book one way or another (usually, even if I have my phone or my iTouch, I’m good to read).
I have been blogging since about 2001, so I started way, way back. At first, my blog was mostly my very own journal, albeit online, where I would keep track of what I read and what I liked and disliked about the books. The “reviews” (and I’m using this term very loosely here!) were short and always somewhat confusing to others. I believe I still have access to that old, old journal of mine, but I haven’t read anything in a while. Maybe I should check back and see what my writing was like back then?

Where in the world are you blogging from? Tell a random fact or something special about your current location. Feel free to share pictures.

I am blogging in Germany, but the exact location changes depending on where I’m at. Right now, I’m on a computer at university, but I also blog at our apartment or at my parents’ house (the latter two will soon be the same GPS coordinates, as we will move there in about a month in order to offer kiddo a nicer surrounding and better child care once I go back to university and work. If I were not at university right now, I would take some pictures for you, so that you can see what my blogging area looks like. I may just do that tomorrow.

Name your favorite blog(s) and explain why they are your favorite(s).

Naming my favorite blogs is difficult task. I read many blogs for different reasons and about different topics. But since this is ArmchairBEA, let me name some of my favorite blogs with ook-related content:
Jill Shalvis’ blog is an author blog, but the lady is as funny on her blog as in her books. You should check it out if you like to laugh a lot, want to hear about her I Love Lucy Real-life episodes and see some eye candy!
Two blogs I have been reading for quite some time now are Team Tynga’s Reviews and The Book Cellar. Both blogs changed a bit over time, if you ask me, but I still like them a lot. They offer reviews I read and enjoy and give me an idea whether I might like a book or not (and my taste does not necessarily match theirs 100%!).
And finally, two blogs I have recently discovered are Reading Angels and Pretty Nifty (YA) Reader, and the bloggers there are wonderful people I enjoy talking to and their book recommendations are fun!

If you could eat dinner with any author or character, who would it be and why?

For an author, I would pick Jill Shalvis because she seems to be hilarious and I love to have funny, interesting People around me. If I could have dinner with her, I would certainly grill her about future books and other mischief she has planned. And I would maybe give her some suggestions as to how to Keep track of her phone (She keeps losing it!).

What is your favorite part about the book blogging community?

I love that the book blogging community offers not only a resource for great new reading material, but that I can also find people who read similar books as I do. Most of my friends may read one genre or one subgenre just like I do, but it can be hard to find people to talk about what I just read. The book blogging community fills that void and I have met some wonderful people through this.

Are you participating in Armchair BEA or did you go to BEA in New York City? Is there any other question you would have loved to see me answer?

Classics

I’ve always had a fairly ambiguous relationship with classics. I usually hated assigned reading in school, which made life real hard back in school and even now at university. On the other hand, the classics I picked up because I wanted to read them have led me to wonderful reading experiences. I remember reading Jane Eyre way back in the late 1990s. This book still holds a special place in my reading heart! Then I was introduced to Jane Austen by a former colleague and I have quite some of her books left to read for the very first time, but I have a feeling I will enjoy most of them.
I keep wondering if it would not maybe help students if they had to read a certain number of classics off a longer list instead of assigning specific books. I’m thinking this would probably have helped me enjoy those books more when they are assigned.

What do you think about classics? Are you a voracious classics reader or do you avoid them? Do you think there could be a better way of teaching classics in school? What are your thoughts on this? And what classics would you recommend?