Here, self-important, up-one’s-self, and all the other adjectives you can think of for self-serving behaviour, is an interview with myself. I know I don’t cover much on my “about” page, so hopefully this will suffice.

Describing my literary background:

I’ve been reading all my life but as a child I rarely finished books, becoming bored easily and picking up a different one too many times to count. I remember times where I had 10 on the go at once, and I’d never finish any because of the workload I’d given myself.

I stopped reading as much as I got older, and although I look back and think I could have reduced my wish list by hundreds by now, I think it was the right decision. Not focusing on it so much caused it to be fresh and new again and when I chose to take the plunge and give myself a goal for the first time last year, I wasn’t just intent to finish it but looked forward to it too. I do find myself checking page numbers sometimes, but I’m still enjoying myself and feel better for it.

With almost every book I complete I have a reason to research something or other, and I love that. My writing has improved as well. It definitely helps to read when you’re a writer, of any kind of writing, and that’s what I wasn’t doing previously.

Why I chose to blog on books:

There are very few things I can remember being said word-for-word to me when I was a child, but one of them was “you can never have too many books”. Although my mother may regret that now, she instilled in me my love of reading.

I know that my opinions on books are often strong, in fact I really dislike finding a book average because I’m not able to go all out one way or the other, and because of the strength I felt the need to discuss them. My friends and family don’t want to hear me talk about books all the time, but I knew there would be people who would be interested, ones who gave their own opinions on their own blogs. I wanted to be part of that. I also wanted a way to gain recommendations from reviewers who weren’t pressured by newspaper affiliations, and of course the community aspect was incredibly appealing. I love Twitter!

I’m up for reading all genres, but about my favourites…:

I absolutely adore history. Ever since my parents gifted me, at eight years old, a small and basic book on the royal dynasties of England, I’ve been a slave to studying the past. I remember copying a couple of the drawings in the book, those of Henry II and Jane Seymour, and sticking them on my wall. They stayed there a long time, long after I’d realised that I was a terrible artist. Reading is as near to the real thing as I’m going to get, nearer than any theatre productions or castle visits are going to get me to the court of Henry VIII. I love to get absorbed into the world, to imagine the buildings, the streets, the clothes, the simpler way of life (one can definitely be a web designer and still be awed by limited technology!) and I admit that there is something incredibly sexy about relationships in those days. It was only the other day I told my boyfriend he needed to be more gallant. A knight in shining armour would suit this part of my personality well.

But there is only so much history I can take, and that’s where the lighter, chick-lit comes in. I do enjoy chick-lit and I’m not ashamed of it. It was when I discovered chick-lit, at about age 18, that I finally felt I’d moved on to adult books because the book I chose had a completely domestic cover. It wasn’t quite Austen, but it was right for me. Fantasy is the last of my most favourite of favourites and, similarly to history, I love being able to get lost in another world.

And thus ends a very egotistical “interview”.