TGIF (5) and Follow Friday (4)

Happy Friday, all!  As a heads up, I'm participating in the awesome Katelyn's Love-A-Thon tomorrow, so be prepared for some lovey-dovey, praisey, I adore you posts, and make sure you follow me on Twitter, too!  Which is also a warning that there will be lots of tweets and probably more than the average number of posts!

TGIF is hosted by the amazing Ginger at GReads!  Today's topic is:

Book Blogger Pride.

What do you take pride in when it comes to blogging?

Because I'm a new-ish blog (finishing up my 7th week!), I'm still tweaking this blog to be something I can be really, truly proud of - not that I'm not already!  I'm still trying to figure out my blogging voice, get a rhythm going, and I'm definitely starting to hit the scheduling snags and those horrible reading slumps that make you questions how to handle them when you run a book blog! (Tips would be welcome!)

That said though, I am proud of two things:
1) That this blog exists at all. I've been a personal blogger for 6+ years, but running a specific niche blog is so much more difficult! It's a lot of dedication and anticipation and scheduling. Being a book blogger is also tough work: reading is time-consuming, especially when most of us have jobs and school and other commitments.  Plus, acquiring books can be pretty difficult! I've got a crazy strict schedule on my library books as well as caps on book purchases since I'm [unfortunately] not made of money, and things get really complicated.  Every book blogger knows how much behind-the-scenes work goes into producing such a small corner of the web, and I'm pretty proud that I'm making it work.

2) That I'm entering this amazing community. I started my blog because I wanted to reach out to others who shared my taste and discuss books we loved/hated/can't make up our minds about.  But it's turned into this brilliant, beautiful lifeline. Book bloggers have to be some of the most generous, open-minded and friendly people I've ever had the pleasure to e-meet. In a world where virtual relationships are notoriously warned against and vilified, I've loved discovering that humanity is innately good.

What are you proud of? Leave me your link and I'll swing by!

Follow Friday is hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee's View, meant to spotlight two blogs and allows bloggers to link up and meet other fabulous bookish friends and share the Following love!

This week's spotlight blogs are: Le Grande Codex and BeefcakeandBabes!

And the question of the week is:
I like unique names for characters and am looking forward to coming up with some when I start writing. What's the most unique character name you've come across?

What a fun question!  I loved the name Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird, it was such a fun, adventurous name.  I think Katniss is pretty unique and nothing I'd heard before (and now that the movie is coming out, I wonder if we'll get a flux of babies named Katniss, Prim and Gale!).  I also loved the name Elodie from Before I Fall, it's so pretty and nothing completely out there, but still original enough to remember.  I also adored the witch from The Golden Compass, her entire name was so fitting: Serafina Pekkala.

Apparently I remember/like girls names mostly, ha! I love the name Etienne, I've known a few in my life and was thrilled to read about him in Lola and Anna (Etienne St. Clair - is that not one of the most flowingly sexy names ever?).  Sticking with The Golden Compass/His Dark Materials series, I also loved the name (+title) Lord Asriel, I thought it conveyed such a wonderful characterisation for his entire role. I also liked Lee Scoresby, because it just felt like a pilot/adventurer name!

What names did you find to be unique? Leave your link in the comments and I'll come visit - and if you follow, make sure you let me know and I'll swing by to happily return the follow!