tagged: mystery blogger award

I was tagged by the marvelous Clo @ BookDragons247 and you can read her answers right here. Thank you so much for thinking of me! ♥ The rules for the Mystery Blogger Award are thus:

• Put the award logo/image on your blog.
• List the rules.
• Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well. (Okoto Enigma)
• Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.
• You have to nominate 10 – 20 people.
• Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog.
• Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice; with one weird or funny question (specify).
• Share a link to your best post(s)

THREE FACTS ABOUT ME

1) My Hogwarts house is Slytherin and even though I have little covert signs of house pride in my bedroom like a massive pennant by the door and scarf draped near my dresser, I felt too self-conscious to add it to my Twitter bio?!

2) I prefer fruit pies to icebox pies. My favorite of all time is peach pie; sorry Georgia, but Texas has the best peaches.

3) I'm an oceanographer who focused on sharks for my graduate school research. Although my job takes a much more general look at marine science, sharks always have been and always will be my first science-love ♥

CLO'S QUESTIONS

1) Pick a genre, it can be any genre, within that genre what do you think is missing and/or needs improving? This is fresh on my mind from a recent ARC. In the mystery/thriller genre I want to see fewer female characters that exist only to be murdered/raped/assaulted and spur a male loved one into action. Reverse the gender roles or, even better, give victims more to do than...well, being victimized. Writing is such a time-consuming and emotional exercise, so why waste any of your effort on paper thin characters?

2) Thoughts on movie adaptations vs TV series adaptations? Which do you prefer (if any)? I'm slightly partial to TV adaptations, although it depends entirely on which book you're talking about. Turning His Dark Materials into a limited series (c'mon BBC, we're counting on you!) is the only way you can do justice to the complexity of the source material, but one movie per book is more than enough for the Maze Runner trilogy.

3) Your zodiac sign and the Chinese New Year animal you are? My zodiac sign is Aries and I was born in the Year of the (Metal) Horse!

4) Three things that are on your bucket list? I would love to live in Scotland for a few months, renting out a little cottage in the Highlands, rarely seeing anyone and spending all my time reading/writing/watching classic movies. I also want to visit Germany since that's where my ancestors come from and the genealogy my family has might even be detailed enough to learn about the branches that stayed in Europe. Since I'm on a travel theme here, I'll say I also want to visit Africa! The whole continent is so beautiful I don't think I could even narrow down the countries I want to see.

5) Favorite dinosaur/prehistoric creature? A whorl-toothed shark genus called Helicoprion. They emerged during the explosion of diversity in the Permian Period almost 300 million years ago, and scientists are still refining their ideas about the tooth spiral's placement and function. When I was a kid, one theory was that they might even use it like a whip! This shows the progression of research on the genus very nicely, if you also like to nerd out over long-dead fish.

BEST FAVORITE POSTS

Between Daemons: New Year, Old Favorites: My first discussion post. I was thrilled to see so many people respond!
Book Review: La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust #1): My favorite book of the year so far!
Dust Motes: January: A new monthly series I'm trying out, with mini film reviews that I didn't have the time to cover in-depth.

NOMINEES

Evelina @ AvalinahsBooks, Marie @ LotsofLivres, Katie @ ANovelIdea, Ash @ TheBookBakery17, Tiffany @ ReadByTiffany, Matilda @ MatildasLibrary, Erica @ EricaRobynReads, Michelle @ CassandraAllegra, Greg @ GregsBookHaven, and Amber @ AmberryBooks! (You're under no obligation if you don't want to, or were already tagged!)

QUESTIONS

1) If you could recommend one book to your 12 year-old self, what would it be and why? (It can be something published after you were that age- we're just pretending!)

2) You have the power to bring one fictional character to life: who do you choose and why?

3) What would you cook to impress a friend/date/relative the first time they visit your home? And will you share the recipe?

4) Knowing that they would have to sit through every episode, what TV series would you tell your worst enemy to watch?

5) Should they start putting feathers on the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park movies, or does the thought of it make your nose wrinkle in distaste? (My silly-ish contribution, inspired by Clo's last question!)

Thank you so much again to Clo for nominating me! If you post this challenge please be sure to @ me on Twitter so that I can read your answers and learn more about the wonderful bloggers in our community :)