She Be Bloggin'

My Kick-Ass Mascot #1

So whilst I read my current book, I'm going to also be documenting my journey into the bloggin' world. 



I'll explain the process so far, which will explain my intriguing picture (above).

1. When you make a blog, you have to come up with a cool name. My friend Ty suggested Paperback Princess, to which I burst into tears because it was so perfect, but alas was already taken.
           There are many sites to help you find your name. Some I liked (that are currently blogs) are "That's What She Read," "Me, My Shelf, And I" and "My Friends Are Fiction."  Punny bastards!

• First you have to brainstorm about what you want your blog to BE. Then you brainstorm words about YOURSELF. Then you pray to the thesaurus gods that something will come of both lists.
• So Spinning Jenny? Isn't it obvious? Well, if I need to hold your hand through the process: Jenny is a name that I never let people call me, but then my husband and sister started to, and I liked it, and my dad used to call me Jenny Penny. (Technically Jenny Penny Ola Bola. Why? It will forever remain a mystery.) So the THESAURUS said that jennys are female donkeys/ mules. And I was all: I'm TOTALLY a donkey! Super stubborn, awkwardly cute? Check and check! THEN the thesaurus taught me that a SPINNING JENNY is a machine that makes yarn, and I was all:I LOVE yarn! And my target audience are historians obsessed with the Industrial Revolution, so, score!

2. You have to take a basic blog format, make it look semi-basic and Bob's your uncle! But! I said to myself, Jennifer. You need to have some sort of kick-ass donkey mascot thing for your site. So I picture an outline of a donkey, and it's filled with all the books that I have loved over the years. Books that have changed my way of seeing the world. Books that have changed my preconceptions of what a book could be. Books that made me read until 4 in the morning because they were impossibly brilliant (and/or had great sex scenes). So I:

• go ask Google for some free donkey images
• Print some off
• Choose one that's not too cutesy, fill it with my favourite books including the first one I remember (Hi, All You Rabbits, FYI), colour it, and VOILA! I have the PERFECT assignment for a grade 5 Language Arts teacher that needs a filler lesson because she's hung over and doesn't really give a f*ck. (By the way, I think my donkey would get a 9/10. But I was schooled in the Catholic school system, so who knows what that's worth in the real world. Ohhh! Catholic school BURN!)

So I'm putting this goddamn donkey on here anyway, as it took me a while, and although I enjoyed putting my pencil crayons and colouring lessons from my cousin Andrea to work (the secret is outlining what you're colouring by pressing a little harder in that same colour - learned at age 6? And I've never looked back, suckers.), I don't feel that I quite reached my epic donkey-ness.

3. I've taken a book out on Blogging for Dummies from the library to make this blog easier to navigate. You may think that colouring a picture of a donkey all afternoon would be procrastination against reading such fascinating material, but to that I would say, neigh. (Get it? NEIGH instead of NAY? I am definitely what the internet needed. Thank god I finally got here!!)

I will list the books on the ass (also apropos because I am frequently an ass. For evidence, see the word choice "apropos") if you are interested. I only put one book per author*, as there would be NO ROOM for everything. I'd have to have donkeys dedicated to specific authors alone! A Guy Gavriel Kay donkey. An R.L. Stine donkey. You get the picture. I also only listed the 1st in a series as otherwise I'd have to have series donkeys (serial donkeys?) dedicated to the Kate Daniels series, The Babysitter's Club, Nancy Drew... it could get a little crowded.

In no particular order, these are my most favouritist , bad-ass books. Of life.

• The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
• Green Grass, Running Water (Tomas King)
• Dune (Frank Herbert)
• The Diviners (Libba Bray)
• Under Heaven (Guy Gavriel Kay)
• Beloved (Toni Morrison)
• The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
• The Passage (Justin Cronin)
• A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
• Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Waterson)
• The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
• The Golden Compass (Phillip Pullman)
• Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
• [The Adventures of] Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N. K. Jemisin)
• Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding)
• A Little Princess* (Frances Hodgeson Burnett)
• Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Patterson)
• Animalia (Graeme Base)
• Magic Bites [Kate Daniels #1] (Ilona Andrews)
• Matilda (Roald Dahl)
• Fall on Your Knees (Anne-Marie MacDonald)
• A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle)
• Cinder (Marissa Meyer)
• Saga [graphic novel series] (Brian K. Vaughan)
• Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
• Romeo and Juliet (W. Shakespeare)
• Maze Runner (James Dashner)
• Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
• The Secret Garden* (Frances Hodgeson Burnett)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
• All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)
• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
• Hi, All You Rabbits (Carl Memling)
• Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)
• The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
• Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)
• 419 (Will Ferguson)
• Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin)
• The Princess Bride (William Goldman)

P.S. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could click on any of those titles and be directed to, like Goodreads or something? I agree! I'll get back to you after I read that chapter in the Dummies book.

P.P.S. My OCD is telling me to annotate each book to tell you why they are so wonderfully awesome, but my life (i.e. the thing away from this computer) is telling me to chill. (Many of the new releases I have reviewed on www.goodreads.com if you're interested at all!)

* Hahaha! I lied.

What do you think of my list? Do you agree or disagree with any of my choices?