Keep It Fresh Award

I have happily been nominated/tagged for the Keep It Fresh Award by the lovely Katherine Viti at Mapping Souls With Words (check her out, she’s a lovely writer).

I was excited to be nominated for this because it is a really unique idea and sounds like a lot of fun! This is a long post, brace yourselves.

RULES:

• Post the rules before starting and link back to this post as a reference for other bloggers.
• Part A: Answer each of the fruit questions (each fruit corresponds to a book!) & add pictures plus why you thought that particular book deserves that particular fruit if possible.
• Part B: Choose your favorite fruit (even if it is one of the fruits in part A). Come up with a question that we didn’t ask and answer it.
• Part C: Create your own smoothie from the fruits in Part A (imagine a Lemon-Tomato-Apple smoothie ~ yuck), and find a book that would correlate to your smoothie!
• Nominate as many and anyone that you think are deserving of this award but it would be nice if you nominated a minimum of 5!
• Notify your nominees of the nomination (nom nom nom ~ :D)
• The most important rules? HAVE FUN and of course, KEEP IT FRESH!

PART A: FRUIT QUESTIONS

1. Strawberries: Name the sweetest book you’ve read. (e.g. sweet in terms of the characters or if the story takes place in a sweet world… etc.)
2. Coconut: What is a book that you would bring on vacation with you to a tropical destination? (Or if you’re just relaxing at the beach…)
3. Pineapple: What is a book that you didn’t think you would like by judging its cover/summary/the first few pages but started to grow on you?
4. Orange: What’s the juiciest book you’ve read? (e.g. A book with tons of action, romance… etc.)
5. Watermelon: A watery book (e.g. There wasn’t tons of substance to the book/the details were just too watery…etc. Don’t get us wrong though, we love watermelons!)
6. Dragonfruit: What’s the most unique book you’ve read? (e.g. Unique in writing style, characters, plot… etc.)
7. Lemons: Name a book that made you feel sour. (e.g. The emotions were just sour, you just felt sour reading the book, or the book includes sour characters… etc.)
8. Tomato: What is a wonderful book that you think should be more widely known? Or a fantastic author whom you think deserves more recognition? (Since some may not know that tomatoes are actually fruits!)
9. Apple: Name a really stereotypical book of a certain genre just like apples which are typical fruits. In the end was that book good or not? (e.g. A very typical contemporary/fantasy book… etc.)
10. Blueberries: Name a book that made you feel blue. (Any sad, depressing books that you’ve read?)
11. Grapefruit: Any bitter books? (e.g. a book that was blue but MORE… do you have any bitter resentments towards characters from a book? Any sour turned bitter emotions? Any uber hateful villains?)
12. Jackfruit: Name the most physically heavy book that you’ve ever read. (Because jackfruits are pretty heavy fruits!)
13. Limes: Name a funny book that you’ve read because limes add flavour and so does humour with every book.

(All links go to Goodreads)

Strawberries: A Sweet Book

I went with a book for the sweet tooth … I mean it has cupcake in the name! I guess I’m using sweet and cute interchangeably here, since Meet Me At The Cupcake Cafe by Jenny Colgan is a very cute and sweet story. Plus, it has recipes inside!

Coconut: A Beach Read

I absolutely love Just Listen. I’ve read it a few different times now. I’m not sure if it really counts as a beach read, but since it’s so easy for me to fall into, it’s a book that I can see myself reading while basking in the sun.

Pineapple: A Surprisingly Good Read

I remember walking into Borders (when it was still around) and heading to the young adult and sci-fi/fantasy section and stumbling across The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint. The cover threw me off and almost didn’t pick it up. I was a quiet and reserved teen (kind of still am actually, though no longer a teen), and the girl on the front seemed well, no quit and reserved. But I am so glad I read this because it introduced me to Charles de Lint, an amazing writer that I love.

Orange: A Juicy Read

In this series, Mercy Thompson tends to attract trouble. She’s trained in a couple different martial arts and it’s well written in the book, even though I have no knowledge of martial arts. There is always some kind of action going on and Night Broken (by Patricia Briggs) is no different.

Watermelon: A Watery Book

I really thought that The Perfect Witness by Iris Johansen was going to be a good one, but it fell short for me. I didn’t get a good sense of who the main characters were and they were never in a place long enough to get a sense of the surroundings.

Dragonfruit: A Unique Read

If you’ve read some of my previous posts, then you know that House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski has come up a couple times. It’s definitely one of the more unique reads I’ve read.

Lemons: A Sour Read

This one was a little hard for me, maybe because I try to avoid books that would leave a sour taste in my mouth. But when I turned my mind towards possible sour characters, I immediately thought of The First Bad Man by Miranda July. Several of the characters go back and forth between being annoying and sour, though tends to stay in the sour category.

Tomato: A Read That Should Be Read More Widely

Umm … I have no idea. This is hard because everyone has different tastes and I think my reading history will show that I don’t read many obscure novels or indie books. I kind of wish I did, but as far as I know I don’t. So, in order to just put a book in this category, I’m going to put Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I know plenty of people have read it, but I think more people tend to know 1984 more, even though they have many differences.

Apple: A Stereotypical Read

The first book to come to mind is Crazy Little Thing by Tracy Brogan. It was a stereotypical Chick-lit, Contemporary romance story for me. Still enjoyable though.

Blueberries: A Sad Book

Pack Up the Moon made me cry, so if that doesn’t make it a sad book, I don’t what will. It’s not all sad, but it definitely has a lot of sad undertones throughout the book.

Grapefruit: A Bitter Read

This was another hard one to think of at first, but then I looked up the different synonyms and what not for bitter and A Clockwork Orange immediately came to mind.

Jackfruit: A Physically Heavy Book

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin is a little over a 1000 pages. I believe this is the longest and most dense book I’ve read so far.

Limes: A Funny Read

Any of the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich. I absolutely love this series and never fails to make me laugh. One For the Money is the first in the series.

PART B: FAVORITE FRUIT

Choose your favourite fruit and then choose a book that would correspond the best and if your fruit is already taken on our list, make up your own question and answer it.

Hmm, I have several favorite fruits, but the one that never goes out of style for me is strawberries.

Since I’m finding myself slightly obsessed over different kinds of book covers right now, I went with a book that has a sweet book cover. Plus it’s red! I’m going with my current read Velvet Undercover by Teri Brown.

PART C: FRUIT SMOOTHIES

Finally, choose a book that was a mix of some of these fruits to make your own smoothie. (e.g. A strawberry blueberry lemon smoothie would correlate to a sweet and sad but sour book.)

I decided on a Strawberry Grapefruit Dragonfruit and Lime smoothie. Eww. The smoothie may not sound in any way delicious, but the book that corresponds sure does.

I was browsing my bookshelf a couple nights and found a couple books i forgot I had read years ago, but remember thoroughly enjoying them. Fated by S. G. Browne was one of those books. It was a book I randomly found while browsing the independent bookstore near my college campus (Lord, that seems likes too many years ago!) and man was it good! It was such an interesting premise. The strawberry and grapefruit signifies that it’s on the bittersweet side. The Dragonfruit signifies the uniqueness of the story and the lime is for the humor this books gives. I think it might be time to reread this book and do a review.

Man, this turned out way longer than I thought it would, but it is was fun. Kind of made me think outside of the box. Now for my nominees:

Stephanie at Adventures of a Bibliophile

Ashley at Socially Awkward Bookworm

Maria at Marhwal Reads

Heather at Bits & Books

Yvo at It’s All About Books

Their blogs are great, so don’t forget to check them out!
Sorry if you’ve done this before! And absolutely no pressure to do this! Either way, happy reading! 🙂

XO Nicole