Hello lovely people and welcome to Love-a-thon 2017, hosted by these lovely ladies: Alexa @ Alexa Loves Books, Cee @ The Novel Hermit, Kristin @ Super Space Chick, and Mel @ The Daily Prophecy. This is a two day weekend event that I also took part in this event last year and I’m SO excited to be doing it again this year! There’s so many awesome posts planned over the next couple days with some Twitter chats and blog hopping involved.

If you don’t know what Love-a-thon is, it’s a way to show love to all of the awesome people in the book community! So whether you have a blog, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube channel, it’s about spreading the love and sharing some positivity to those in this awesome community.

So without further ado, here’s the questionnaire for this first post of the event!

An Introduction to You and Your Blog

1. What’s your name? Where in the world are you blogging from?
   • Hey, I’m Rayna and I’m blogging from Massachusetts in the United States!
2. Tell us your history with reading. Were you always a reader? Were you a reluctant reader? Was there a book that convinced you to become a reader?
   • I’ve always been a reader, actually. Not when it came to books I was required to read in school, though, because I never found any of them to be interesting (except for one, which was A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb). I’d always want to get books, even if I never read them, because let’s be honest, my book hoarding tendencies started when I was a smol child. I think the book that really made me become a reader was the Twilight saga by Stephenine Meyer. I know it was a series that was kind of the pinnacle of reading for many people, but it really got me wanting to read more and more books. I didn’t really do so until 2014 when I joined the book community, though.
3. How did you get involved in the online book community?
   • I had been watching a lot of Booktubers for months at the point that I joined. So I decided, “Hey, I can do this, too,” and I made my YouTube channel (which seems to have since been abandoned… I prefer writing than speaking. Maybe I’ll revamp it one day.). My first blog post was my review for the Divergent series. No introduction, no “this is what I want to do with this blog,” just me jumping straight into a book review. It’s cringey to think about it now, but I’m so glad I took the leap to join this awesome community.
4. How did you choose your primary platform (blog, Instagram, YouTube, etc)? How did you come up with your blog name?
   • I’m so creative… I’m like, “Omg, how am I going to come up with a name?” And so I was thinking and thinking of clever names, but the only one that stuck in my mind was “Reader Rayna.” Look at that alliteration. #original
5. What’s your favorite thing about the online book community?
   • Everyone’s very open and so willing to make friends. I think a lot of us feel isolated in our personal lives because it’s very hard to find like minded people – readers (active readers, mind you) – to talk about books and fandoms and squee over characters about. I love that about this community and that we strive to be better every day when it comes to topics and what we read and how we read it.
6. What sort of posts can readers expect from you?
   • I do a little bit of everything, really. I do tags, reviews, discussions, wraps ups. I even include writing posts (because I’m a writer, too) as well as occasional posts about my hobbies other than reading.
7. What book genres do you talk about most?
   • Have you heard of this epic genre called fantasy? Yeah, that’s my favorite genre to read. I love magic and I love anything that’s not the real world, because let’s be honest, this world is scary. Not that fantasy worlds aren’t scary… hell, more often than not they’re scarier. …you know what I mean.

Favorites

1. Favorite food? Beverage?
   • Favorite food: mac and cheese foreverrrrrrrrr!
   • Favorite beverage: probably milk or apple juice.
2. Favorite color?
   • Pink~ I like almost any shade, but my favorite is baby pink and a blush pink.
3. Favorite things to do apart from reading?
   • Hey, didn’t I just mention my Hobby Corner posts? But to put it simply: play video games (OBSESSED with FFXV), drawing, writing, listening to music. I love to be creative, pretty much.
4. Favorite tv shows?
   • YURI!!! on Ice, Haikyuu!!, Your Lie in April, Oremonogatari!
   • Non-anime related: Arrow, Flash, Penny Dreadful, Agents of SHIELD.
5. Favorite movies?
   • The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Moana, Inside Out, all things Disney (pretty much), Harry Potter series, Pirates of the Caribbean series.
6. Favorite musical artists?
   • HAMILTON. I know it’s not a musical artist, but WHERE ARE THE REST OF MY HAMILTRASH OUT THERE!?
   • Otherwise: Owl City, Lindsey Stirling, BTS, Girls’ Generation, Disney songs for daaaaaays.
7. Favorite places to shop?
   • Barnes & Noble. Duh. I also like maurices. As for independent bookstore: Brookline Booksmith.

Book Talk

1. Favorite childhood books?
   • Stellaluna, fairy tales (not Grimm, I’m not sure what kind it was, but it was based off of Grim brothers), science books (they were kid friendly kind). [No, Harry Potter is not on this list because I haven’t finished the series yet for the first time– I KNOW. I’m working on it.]
2. Favorite books read in the last five years?
   • Um. Well. That list would be ginormous. Here’s a few: Illuminae, Fangirl, Throne of Glass series, ACOMAF, Starbound trilogy, Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, The Raven Boys saga, An Ember in the Ashes.
3. Favorite genres?
   • FANTASY~ YA or otherwise. I also enjoy urban fantasy, historical fiction, romance, contemporary, science fiction.
4. Underrated book, series or author you love?
   • I don’t know if it’s underrated, but the Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa was my favorite series at the pinnacle of my faerie obsession stage in life. I haven’t finished the last book, The Iron Queen, but I need to reread the trilogy and see if I still love it.
5. A book you want to see made into a film or tv show?
   • ^See above. Also, I’d love to see Fangirl be made into a film. It would be so cute!
6. Book boyfriend/girlfriend? Book BFF? Book family?
   • Oooh, the fun questions are coming out! Okay, book boyfriends: Aeduan from Truthwitch and Kaden from The Remnant Chronicles. (How am I not thinking of more, I don’t know.) Book girlfriends: Helene from An Ember in the Ashes.
   • Book BFF: Karou and Zuzana, who are also BFFs in the books and I need them to be my BFFs IRL.
   • Book family: The Weasley’s because who wouldn’t want to be part of their family?
7. Books you want to read in 2017?
   • All of them.
   • …seriously.

Alright, that’s it for this first post! I hope to see a lot of you in this super fun and awesome event and I can’t wait to go blog/channel/insta/twitter hopping! Have fun!

Let’s Chat! ≧◡≦

Are you excited for this event? What are you most looking forward to? Also, what’s your favorite independent bookstore? Have you ever been to one? Who’s your book boy/girlfriend? Tell me all the things!