tag! you're it!

Greetings and salutations, everyone! :) This is a post written many moons ago, but only now am I getting around to posting it (shame on me): the long-awaited post for the Liebster Tag Award Thingy, which Rae very kindly tagged me in ages ago. I like this kind of thing because the questions are unique and let you know a little about the person who asked them! This should be fun-here we go!

First, the Rules of the Game:
1.) Link back to the person who tagged you. (see above for that, but here's the link again just in case. :) Go check out Rae's blog-its name is based on a quote from The Sound of Music, so you can know just from that that it's going to be great.)
2.) Answer the eleven questions.
3.) Tag 11 bloggers, and let them know you tagged them. (do I even know eleven bloggers? Oh Help and Bother . . . we shall see when we get to the end of this post if I've been able to come up with eleven!)
4.) Ask your tagged bloggers eleven questions.

So here we go, with Rae's lovely questions and a few photographs by me! I'm trying to become a little better at photography and to practice my compositions, so any tips are appreciated. I know several readers of this blog are photographers, so I'd love to hear all your best tricks for getting nice photos. :)

1.) What are your favourite books? (I know it's hard to choose a favourite so you can list as many "favourites" as you have. :)

AAAAAH! As soon as I saw this, I knew it would be difficult. I have lots of favorites, and I'm sure I can't list all of them because I'll forget some and then feel terrible for leaving them out. Thus the following list is more of a listing of the first things that came to my mind when I thought about books I like. Here we go, in no particular order! Pretty much everything by C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, Lloyd Alexandar, Elizabeth George Speare, Louisa May Alcott (as you can probably tell from the blog title), JRR Tolkien, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. And of course the Jane Austen the Great and Powerful is also one of my dearly beloved authors (oh dear; this is turning into an author listing instead of a book listing!). Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne), Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling), North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell), A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens), Rose Daughter (Robin McKinley), Beauty (Robin McKinley), The Scarlet Pimpernel (Emmuska Orczy), Peter Pan (JM Barrie), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Kate Douglas Wiggin), A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L'Engle), A Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett), The Two Princesses of Bamarre (Gail Carson Levine), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne), Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbit), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), Matilda (Roald Dahl), The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum), The Goose Girl (Shannon Hale). . .well, I'd better stop now before this list becomes the entire post! Haha :) but I will always be happy to ramble about books for ever and ever. If you want some book talk, I'm your girl!

2.) What type of music do you like best? 

I love showtunes, instrumental music, and classical music (and in this case by classical music, I mean the umbrella term for "old" music! ;) to be more specific, I especially music from the Romantic period.) I also really like music from movie soundtracks-I've been listening to the North and South soundtrack quite a bit because it's absolutely gorgeous. And choral music. Oh, and I don't know what genre this is, but I like quite a lot of music by Sara Barielles and Mindy Gledhill. . . whatever that style is.

3.) Do you like Jane Austen? How many of her books have you read and which is your favourite?

I love Jane Austen! But I actually haven't read all of her books yet (although I've read my favorites multiple times, if that counts!). I'm actually reading Mansfield Park right now, and I want to finish Northanger Abbey before the end of the summer, but I've read all of her other well-known works. As for Lady Susan and Love & Friendship, I'd like to read those too someday. As for picking a favorite, that's so hard! I love all of them in different ways. I guess my favorite today is good old Pride and Prejudice, but if you ask me again next week, I might have a different answer! :)

(picture of Emma because sadly, I don't have a pretty copy of p&p to take a picture with)

4.) Do you have a favorite actor/actress? Who?
I'm not sure about this one. Maybe Emma Thompson? She's in a lot of movie I like-Sense and Sensibility, Much Ado About Nothing, Saving Mr. Banks.

5.) What's your favorite flower? 
I love bright-colored flowers, so probably either black-eyed Susans, daylilies, sunflowers, or poppies.

6.) How many books have you read in the last week? Is there one in particular you want to share? 
Actually, last week was a bit different in terms of reading for me because of SEMINARY GRADUATION! I believe I've talked about this a bit in previous posts, but my church has a class before school every morning for high-school-age teens where we come in early and study a different book of scripture each year. We call it seminary, and this year we focused on the Old Testament. Our assigned readings didn't encompass the entire book, but I set a personal goal to finish the whole Old Testament within the school year. I got a little behind right at the end, so I spent all of my time reading that to finish in time. (I did finish it by graduation, and I'm so so glad I did. It was a challenge to read it so quickly, but so rewarding!) I guess that only counts as one, but it was a very long (although amazing) "one".

7.) If you could choose between meeting your favourite actor/actress and acting in your favourite movie, which would it be? 

Acting in the movie, no contest! Of course, for me to do that I'd have to first determine a favorite, which would be a very difficult process . . .

8.) Do you play any instruments? What?

I play the piano and trumpet!

The trumpet is not exactly of a shape to lend itself to artsy pictures, and I already used a piano photo . . . so this will have to do. 

9.) What hobbies do you enjoy?

Drawing is one of my favorite things, as you can probably tell. I also love reading, making music in any way, spending time with my family, riding my bike, working in our garden, and learning all kinds of new things!

10.) If you could make any book into a movie, what book would it be and do you have any ideas for the cast? 

I would actually love to see a short film made out of The Gift of the Magi. It's such a beautiful little Christmas story and it deserves a lovely movie to do justice to it. I'm not sure who I would want as the cast, though, since I'm not very skilled at this type of thing.

11.) Who's your favourite literary hero?

This is another terribly hard question. I guess I'll go with Gilbert Blythe:) I love that he's Anne's equal and perfect match-he always works hard and aims for the best, and he pushes Anne to do the same. He tries to do the right thing, and although he's not perfect, he's not ashamed to apologize and start over when he's in the wrong.  Also, I love that he's well-read and can throw literary references and quotes back and forth with Anne. That's a must for any husband, in my opinion :)

And now for my questions:

1.) Tell us four names (if you don't know the answer to any, just tell the ones you do know): one that your parents would have given you if you were the opposite gender, one they considered once they knew your gender, one you would choose if you got to choose your own name, and one you would NOT like to have.
2.) If you were to adapt one of your favorite stories, what story would it be and how would you tell it? (movie, musical, webseries, play, book, etc?)
3.) Tell us four of your favorite words.
4.) What is a life lesson you have learned in the past year?
5.) Who is your favorite secondary character in a book you've read recently?
6.) What are five of the books on your TBR list right now?
7.) Tell us one talent/skill you have, and one you'd like to develop.
8.) What's the best joke you've heard recently? (Awful puns are highly acceptable!)
9.) Share a quote from the book you're currently reading.
10.) What song is stuck in your head right now? (Or just share one that's been bouncing around recently if you don't have one right now.)
11.) What do you want your life to be like when you're a little old lady?

And here are my tag-ees (I am sure there's got to be a better term for that, and I am equally sure that I will fail to think of it until long after this post has been up for so long that there's no longer any point in changing it. Bother.) Drumroll, please:

Nina, Olivia, Momo, and Lydia. I honestly can't think of any more. Aaaah! I need more bloggy friends, so it would seem. Well, that's all, folks! Thank you so much for the tag, Rae-it was a lot of fun! :)