All month long I'm celebrating my 7th year of book blogging with the help of my bookish friends. To learn more about the event, please visit my introduction post I've linked just below. There, you can also enter to win a book by one of the fabulous authors who will be joining me this month to celebrate, as well.
It's an honor to have one of MY favorite authors on the blog today to celebrate my own blogoversary. Tiffany Schmidt has written some fabulous books (my personal fave: BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE) and a 2018 release that I am so eager to read (BOOKISH BOYFRIENDS). She's been so kind to always support me and my love for reading. I adore the way she took the theme of "reading inspirations" for this celebration and shared some of her own personal reading influences. Please welcome Tiffany to the blog (& don't forget to enter the giveaway to win one of her books!!)...
***
The best present my parents ever gave me was an older sister. Or, since she came first, maybe I was the world’s best gift to her? (I say with complete humbleness).
Heather is two years, two weeks older than me, but because our birthdays straddle the August/ September divide, there were three grades between us. Growing up she was the person who taught me how to blow bubbles with soap and chewing gum. How to wrangle Barbie, Ken, and Skipper in and out of tiny outfits (though I never actually got be Skipper, that was always her job). She helped me find lost earring backings, showed me how to scale the countertops to get to the candy cabinet over the stove. How to hook my first training bra. After our parents separated us into different bedrooms we developed a secret code comprised of knocks on the wall. We were always shocked when we got caught—it never occurred us that those knocks could also be heard down the hall. When her bedtime got changed to later than mine, Heather would stop in my room on the way to bed and recount the plots of Full House or Family Matters in whispers. On one memorable trip to the drive-in (when we were totally supposed to be sleeping in the back seat) she explained to me that Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman was someone who got paid to love people. I may have told my grandparents the next day that I wanted to be a hooker when I grew up. Her fault, but I got the time out.
Another thing that Heather passed down to me was books. Sometimes by choice, other times by stealth. I used to smuggle Christopher Pike books off her bookshelf—then, when I couldn’t sleep after reading them—I’d ask if I could spend the night on her floor. There was the time she left her copy of Lord of the Flies next to our computer while writing a paper—I returned it the next morning, high traumatized, and wanted to talk about Piggy over bowls of Kix. The gilt-paged copy of Little Women that currently sits on my bookshelf is one I commandeered way back when. I’m fairly certain the same is true for my Anne of Green Gables. And no one tell her, but I lost her Jane Austen anthology somewhere at college.
Little did she know—little did I know, that when I was being that pesty little sister who wouldn’t stay out of her room, I was preparing for my future career. My next series is a little bit Austen. A little bit Shakespeare. A little bit Green Gables. A little bit Little Women.
Bookish Boyfriends comes out May 1, 2018 and it is chock full of all the stories I stole from her bookshelves. (I still haven’t figured out way to work Christopher Pike or Lord of the Flies into a series about girls dating modern versions of classic romance heroes—but give me some time).
And, hey, Heather, it could’ve been worse. It could’ve been your favorite clothes or earrings I stole and kept? Oh, wait... I did that too.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hello Readers! Once you've typed up that comment that I oh so appreciate, please click "notify me" in the bottom right corner so that you don't miss my reply! Thanks, xo.