We've Won a Versatile Blog Award - Yay!!

Feed Your Reading Habit has just won our first ever Versatile Blogger Award (actually it's our first blog award full stop....but there's no need to quibble). A big thanks to The Book Bee for bestowing us with this wonderful honour. The best thing about this award is that it exposes all of us in the wide world of blogging to new and previously undiscovered book blog treasures. The award requires the recipient to: thank and link back to the blog that granted you the award; share 7 interesting things about yourself; bequeath the award to another 15 deserved blogger's; and contact the award recipients to let them know of their achievement. Quite frankly it's just one big self-promotion masquerading as a warm and fuzzy moment, but I love it!! So here are 7 interesting things about me. You'll recognise I've stuck with the booky theme.

1. I don't own an e-reader and don't want to, but I secretly want to try one out just so I can report how trully despicable they are from a well informed point of view.
2. My favourite place to read is in the bath with a glass of wine and as my current bathroom renovation is denying me this pleasure I am suffering a reading drought.
3. My secondhand bookstore is breeding Reader's Digest Condensed Books that no-one wants (even for 50 cents) so I am planning on making a coffee table out of them.
4. My husband congratulated himself on buying me an early edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for our 'Paper' wedding anniversary. I don't have the heart to tell him that his $150 investment is only Volume 1 of the set.
5. My struggle with the Russian surnames in Anna Karenina have resulted in me trying to read this classic novel 5 times with no success. I am planning the next assault in a month or two.
6. The book that I never fail to recommend to everyone is We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It'll blow you away!!
7. Last but not least I confess to being a book vandal. Shock, horror, gasp of disbelief!! I dog-ear them, fill them with notes and inscriptions, spill coffee over them, shove them carelessly in my bag, bend the spines back, and use them as coasters. As far as I'm concerned a book absorbs part of the reader and I make sure I leave my mark and give every one a character injection of my own.

Now that you know a little bit more about my reading quirks, here are a couple of blogs I am awarding my Versatile Blog Awards to (in no particular order). Check them out!!

1. Suz's Space Blog
2. Stuck In a Book
3. The True Book Addict
4. Miss Snark, the literary agent - (Miss Snark no longer posts, but it's still a great blog!!)
5. LiteraryMinded
6. Fly the Falcon
7. BookHounds
8. Bibliophile Bullpen
9. The Book Bee
10. for.theloveofbooks.com
11. Terra On the Bookshelf
12. The Book Buff
13. The Mumpsimus
14. LibraryThing
15. BOOKSURFER

Enjoy perusing our award winners!!

Rescue Me from My Reading Drought

It seems like only yesterday that I was reading the latest edition of Good Reading (GR) magazine and scoffing at the editor's column which revealed the editor was going through a reading drought. I couldn't believe that the editor of such a magazine had stopped reading. Surely reading was a requirement of her job. Hypocritically, I now find myself in a similar situation. I'm surrounded by books all day, but I'm seriously struggling to pick one up. The only difference I claim between myself and the GR editor is that I have genuine reasons - my bath tub is gone and it's freezing!!

Reading in the bath tub every second night of the week is my guilty pleasure. One month ago my precious, though dowdy, bath tub was ripped from its resting place and deposited on the nature strip of my home as a result of a much needed bathroom renovation. Said bathroom renovation is still underway and shows no sign of being completed within the next 3 months. Meanwhile, my new bath is hibernating in plastic teasing me every time I glance its way. Frustrating!!

But it's the bathroom renovation's partner in crime - winter - that has really fuelled my reading drought. By now most of you are familiar with my reading and walking habit. A habit that thrives in the summer months but seems a distant memory in the colder ones. It's just too damn cold to go walking and though I've tried hard to read in bed or on the couch, it just doesn't feel right. Does anyone else suffer as I do? Can anyone remedy my reading woes?

Walking & Reading - At the Same Time Mind You!

Is it weird that I walk and read at the same time? I love reading, but I run my own business and have quite a hectic lifestyle. Finding time to keep physically active and feed my reading habit is a struggle. So I’ve learnt how to read and walk simultaneously. You would think this skill would take some time to develop, but I have to say that I mastered the art pretty quickly. Sure, there’s been the odd stumble complete with the frantic glance around to make sure nobody saw it happen, but all in all I’m a pro.

This odd reading style has made me something of a local celebrity. I often combine walking and reading with a trip to the corner shops to pick up some groceries. My sojourns always include friendly, and often humorous, comments from locals the most common of which is ‘Must be a good book’. To my delight these off-hand comments sometimes lead to an in-depth conversation about the book I’m reading or books in general.

What has become most clear from the comments I receive is that most people are astonished that I can actually achieve this feat. Is there anyone else out there like me or am I really a reading and walking freak?