15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day One

This is hosted at Good Books And Good Wine:

Here we go, 15 book related confessions!

1. I would rather read a book than socialize, 99% of the time. I really do love staying in on a Friday or Saturday night curled up on the couch with a book. Not that I don’t like my friends, but I get a lot of anxiety when it comes to people and social situations. And also, books are the best.
2. When I was younger, my absolute favourite books were the Baby-sitters Club books. I loved all the girls, but my favourites were Mary-Ann (because we were both shy) and Claudia (because she was so funky and always had junk food around). I had very strong feelings when I heard that there were brand new characters, even after I thought I’d outgrown the series. Original BSC rules! I would love to go back and reread those books!
3. I once read a Choose Your Own Adventure book that gave me nightmares. It was about a group of people searching for some sort of treasure in a cave or temple or something, and one of the endings I got was accompanied by a drawing of the female character turned into a skeleton, with hair and a crown. For whatever reason, that image has stayed with me all these years later, and try as I might to figure out just which book that was, I’ve never been able to.
4. I very rarely cry when I read. As sad as some books can be, and as emotionally invested and attached I am to a story and characters, I’m very very rarely moved to the point of tears. When I read about tearjerker books and see other bloggers and readers talking about bawling their eyes out and having FEELINGS while reading something that just didn’t have that effect on me, I sometimes worry that I’m not doing something right. Did I miss something? Did I like the book any less than everyone else just because I didn’t cry? Am I a robot? Of course, most of the time I know there’s nothing wrong with me for not crying, and it doesn’t mean I don’t feel sad. I do. I just don’t cry. I have loved an awful lot of books without shedding tears over them, but every now and then I worry about this stuff.
5. I am not a romance fan. And I don’t mean romance novels. I mean when I read an otherwise interesting, compelling book that has a romance aspect or subplot, it makes me feel like things just screech to a halt. I find myself rolling my eyes at what I think are cliches, waiting for the love scenes to be over so that I can get back to the good stuff. I don’t hate romance in real life. I mean, I really really love my husband and I love when he’s romantic, but when I read a book, romance just doesn’t interest me. I think that’s why I stayed away from contemporary YA for so long, because it just seemed to be all about romance and love and making out. Of course, I know that’s not the case, and some of my new favourite books are contemporary YA and definitely involve romance (hello, Anna and the French Kiss!). But I just don’t get a lot of enjoyment or entertainment out of romantic scenes.
6. I blogged for over two years before I started interacting with other book bloggers. I was partly super unaware that there was such a big book blogging community, and partly way too shy and anxious to reach out to other people. I’m really happy I did though! I’ve met some awesome people, online and in real life.
7. In grade ten, my English class had to read Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and for whatever reason, I just didn’t. I somehow got through the quizzes/assignments okay.
8. I was way late to reading the Harry Potter series. I didn’t read the first book until well after the final one had come out. I was in my ‘serious reading’ phase, reading only what I thought were classic and Important Books, and wasn’t interested in Harry. I did see the first two movies in theatres, though, with my younger sister, who loved HP. I felt so confused at the time but I eventually borrowed the books from my sister and read them and, of course, fell totally in love with those books. Now that I have the e-books, I”m planning on reading them all again. I never saw the rest of the movies, but I really want to!
9. Aside from Harry Potter, above, the Twilight series marked my foray into the realm of YA fiction. Again, the entire series had been published before I picked up the first book, but that series led me to the Gemma Doyle series, after which I was totally in love with YA.
10. I am, and always have been, a very fast reader. In high school, someone asked if I’d taken a speed reading course and I jokingly said yes (I have never taken a speed reading course; I just read very quickly). People believed me, and I couldn’t convince them that I’d been joking and that that was just how fast I’d always read.
11. My parents and both my sisters are big readers, too. I love that I come from a reading family. It’s something that we all have a passion for, even if we don’t necessarily read the same books. Some of my favourite memories are of my mom reading to us before bed time. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up in a house without books, or where reading wasn’t a part of our lives. My grandpa is infamous (in my family at least, haha) for his library, and growing up, I always wanted to have a whole room in my house devoted just to books! My apartment is too small for that now, but when Mr. Pingwing and I eventually move into a house of our own, I am definitely going to try and build my own library in it!
12. I am a major convert to ereading. I bought the first Kobo that came out (although I’ve since upgraded!) and I love the portability of it. However, I love seeing all of my books lined up and jumbled up on my bookshelf. Sometimes I just like to stand in front of my bookshelf  and look at it, and all my books. It makes me happy.
13. I really wish I could walk and read at the same time. I actually just mentioned this yesterday to my husband. We don’t have a car, so I walk everywhere: to work, to the grocery store, to the mall, to Chapters…just think how much more reading I could fit into my day if I was able to read while doing all that walking! And I know some people can listen to audio books while walking, but they aren’t for me.
14. I love the tv show Supernatural so much that, when I went over our bandwidth limit trying to watch the whole series on Netflix in like one month, I bought some of the ebooks to get my Winchester fix! And I love them! They’re the only tie-in novels I’ve ever read, and for some reason, I have no desire to read tie-in novels for the other shows I love (although I did try the Buffy season 8 comic). There’s just something about that show and those characters that I can’t get enough of!
15. My TBR list is huge. I have so many books on my shelf and on my ereader that I have not read yet. I don’t know where the idea originated, but I’ve seen other bloggers post pictures of their TBR jar, with the idea being that you write down your books still to be read and put them in a jar, and when you’re ready to read your next book (or just not sure what to read next), you draw one out. Well, I put my own TBR jar together on Friday and here it is, with a can of pop next to it for scale:

I can’t help myself when it comes to books! Whenever I get a Chapters or Kobo gift card (which is pretty much every birthday and Christmas – my friends and family know me so well!), I go nuts and buy a whole bunch of books. I try to put myself on a book buying ban, and I managed to save my birthday gift cards for a couple of months before breaking down and using them to buy more books, but I just want to buy and read All The Books!

Phew! There you have it, 15 book confessions!