I’ve received two awards recently and I’m ready to pass them on. The first is the Happy 101 Award from Helen’s Book Blog – thanks! Here are the rules:

List 10 things that make you happy and then give this award to 10 book blogs that brighten your day.

1. Reading
2. Blogging
3. My family
4. Summer
5. Music
6. Animals
7. Traveling
8. Chocolate
9. Weekends
10. Writing

I’m giving this award to:

1. English Major’s Junk Food
2. Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before
3. The Ladybug Reads
4. Jenny Loves To Read
5. Diary of an Eccentric
6. The Book Resort
7. The True Book Addict
8. Alaine – Queen of Happy Endings
9. Mindful Musings
10. The Bibliophilic Book Blog

The Honest Scrap Award was received from Ash at English Major’s Junk Food and also from Ann at All Write With Coffee… Thanks, Ash and Ann! The rules for this award are:

1. The Honest Scrap Blogger Award must be shared.
2. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows.
3. The recipient has to pass on the award to 7 more bloggers.
4. Those 7 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them.

Here are my 10 things…not very interesting, but I’ve tried to make most of them book-related.

1. When I was younger I was a big fan of Enid Blyton. She wrote over 600 books for children and I think I must have read most of them! I loved her Malory Towers and St Clare’s school books, as well as The Famous Five series and The Five Find-Outers series, but my all-time favourite was The Valley of Adventure.
2. Although I love discovering new books, I also love re-reads. I like the feeling of revisiting old friends and familiar places, and even though I know what’s going to happen, I still laugh and cry in all the right places!
3. One of my first jobs was a Christmas job in a book shop – I was happy there but left before Christmas when I was offered a permanent job somewhere else.
4. A few years ago I took a proofreading course but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought to actually get to proofread any books – it did help me to get a job though (not my current job, but a previous one).
5. When I was a teenager I had a huge collection of Sweet Valley High and Babysitter’s Club books, but I sold most of them on eBay. Sometimes I regret it, but I just didn’t have room for them all.
6. I have a lot of very nice bookmarks that I’ve never used but I always find myself using the same ancient ones that I’ve been using for years.
7. Despite my love of books, I didn’t really enjoy English at school and I didn’t like most of the books we were made to read. My favourite school subject was History.
8. I’ve only been to the library once in the past year. I used to go almost every week – sometimes more than once a week – but recently I’ve been buying books instead of borrowing them. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to use the library more often this year.
9. On the subject of libraries, I used to volunteer in our school library, helping to shelve and catalogue books.
10. Although I only started this blog in October, I used to keep a record of all the books I read in a notebook. It’s interesting to look at and remind myself of some of the books I read before I began blogging.

I’m passing this award on to:

1. Brianne’s Book Blog
2. [Insert suitably snappy title here…]
3. What Book Is That?
4. Helen’s Book Blog
5. Debbie’s World of Books
6. Laura’s Reviews
7. A Book Blog of One’s Own

If any of you have already received these awards, I’m sorry! I tried to give them to people who haven’t had them before.