Virtual Walking Tour: Sally and BethF

This week I headed off to visit with two bloggers:

Sally from Books and Musings from Downunder
and
BethF from BethFish Reads

 

Sally

Explain the title of your blog: Well I live in Australia hence the Downunder - and my original blog is just about books and my thoughts on those books.   After a while I decided I wanted to do other blogging things - so kept my books and musings true to just my book reviews and added MORE!!!! My challenges to a Reading Challenge blog called 'My reading challenges', my memes and weekly activities such as Monday Musings and Friday Fill-ins to my 'Book and other games' blog.  Of course being obsessive I have just started a series list blog called 'Sally's list of series' - where I aim to keep track of the series I am following - or want to follow.

I have a couple of others as well - that are not book related - once for my recipes, wines I enjoy and the last, though by no means least is to do with my Christian Faith.

How did you get into blogging? To help my ailing memory as to what I have read and what I haven't - also we had a major computer crash and the word document I kept track of my readings on disappeared.  The blog was to counteract that and I set it up at the end of 2006 - I also use Google documents to upload my excel spreadsheet to that I keep the list of read books on my computer database.  i also have it saved on the work computer.  I am prepared for any future crashes.

What do you like best about blogging? My online friends!!!!  I have made many friends through blogging.  It was originally for my own use - then i discovered that people made comments about my book reviews - so I went to their sites and left my remarks - soon correspondence was set up.  it was so cool!!!!  It is such a comfort to know there are other book obsessed people out there and I am actually NORMAL!!!!!

What are the five books you would recommend to anyone?
Oh dear - only 5!!!

The little White Horse by Elizabeth Gouge
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The complete Laura Ingells Wilder series
Anything by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi
The Harry Potter Series

 

 

Beth Fish

Explain the title of your blog: My blog is called Beth Fish Reads. As many book bloggers know, Beth Fish is not my real name. I made it up! The "fish" part is a nod to my husband who has been a flyfisherman for most of his life.

How did you get into blogging? I started blogging for a number of reason. I've always been a voracious reader, and I've used different methods for keeping track of my reading (databases, journals, Word files), but I was never really happy with any of my methods. At the same time, I had been reading blogs in general and the major book blogs in particular and thought that blogging looked fun. It all came together when I discovered Wendy's (from CaribousMom) Yahoo! group and blog A Novel Challenge. I knew then that I had to join challenges and I had to blog. So ultimate thanks goes to Wendy.

At first I thought I'd blog about a variety of things, but I really focus just on books.

What do you like best about blogging? It's difficult to pick just one thing. I like that blogging forces me to be a more critical reader and a better writer, but the most fun is the community and the friends I have made. I love the challenges and events, I love getting and leaving comments, I love talking about books on Twitter. The very best was getting the chance to meet so many bloggers at BEA in May 2009. I hope I have many more chances to spend time with my blogging friends.

What are the five books that you would recommend to anyone?
Boy this a hard question. I'm going to answer it by listing five books I gave top ratings to this year:

Every Last Cuckoo
Wintergirls
Thirteen Reasons Why
Wicked Lovely
The Lincoln Lawyer

 

Thanks for letting me visit with you!