Answering Your Questions About Me! | 800 Followers Special

I reached 800 blog (including email) followers a few days ago, so I asked on Twitter and Instagram for some questions for an “AMA” post to commemorate the milestone. Thank you so much to everyone who supports this blog!

The Questions:

1) What made you want to start book blogging?

Long story short: coronavirus quarantine in March 2020.

Long story long: I’ve always loved to read, I’ve always loved to write, and I’ve always been very talkative around people I know. I’m also very opinionated and can go off on extraordinarily long monologues to anyone who will listen– which, understandably, is not most people. So, I started this blog to give me a place to write about my thoughts as much as I want and to have a way to do something new and “productive” with my love for reading.

2) How did you come up with your blog name?

Basically– before I started this blog, at the beginning of March 2020, I had been attempting to found a quarantine book club with my IRL friends, and I called it “Frappuccinos & Fiction” for the alliteration and because I, like most of said IRL friends, am addicted to coffee.

Our book club kind of unceremoniously disbanded once we realized that the “two weeks of no school” was going to be a lot longer than that and we wouldn’t be able to easily get copies of the books for everyone in the group. And, since it was my original name, I took “Frappuccinos & Fiction” and used it as my blog name.

Then I realized “Frappuccino” is a word that is copyrighted by Starbucks, so I changed it to “Frappes & Fiction” which is shorter and cleaner anyway. And now we’re here. (At that point, I never read nonfiction, but nowadays my blog name is a little ironic)

3) What’s your favorite book that you had to read in high school?

Ah, the high school reading question. I have really liked probably about half of the books I had to read in high school and suffered through the rest, but my favorite book I had to read in high school would have to be 1984 by George Orwell, which I read, actually, almost exactly two years ago. So it’s been a while since I read it, but I thought that book was absolutely brilliant and it remains one of my favorite books that I’m kind of scared to re-read in case I stop liking them.

1984 was extremely unsettling to me in more ways than one (I have a fear of rats now #iykyk) and I loved contemplating the philosophical/political questions that it raised. I was struck by the idea of reality being literally controlled by a political party and a government bent on acquiring power simply for its own sake, “the Party is always right”, “in the face of pain there are no heroes”– I can quote the book off the top of my head still.

I made fun of 1984 being for paranoid libertarians in my classic book stereotypes post, but I really, really love that book. I should probably do a re-read and review at some point.

4) What’s your overall favorite book that you weren’t necessarily required to read for school?

You’ve done it. You’ve asked my least favorite question. Why????

I struggle very much with choice. And picking a favorite book is obviously the most high-stakes choice you could ever make. I guess I will just cheat on this question and name the best book I read in 2021, which was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. (Read my best (fiction) books of 2021 post to see my other favorites!)

5) What is your favorite post written by you?

Ah, another difficult question. I’m proud of a lot of my posts (oh that sounded narcissistic)

I’m just going to have to go with the post where I used an AI to generate text based off my book reviews

6) What do you look for in a blog?

I try to find bloggers who have a similar taste in books to me, at least with one category– for example, I love reading Booksophobia and Lattes & Literature because they read a lot of historical fiction like I do. I also love bloggers who have a distinctive and entertaining blogging voice.

7) What do you love and what do you hate about the country you live in?

Okay. This is such a good question and I actually have a lot to say about it

(I am American)

What I love about the United States is well, that we have a Constitution that protects our civil liberties and a general philosophy of freedom. I’m also grateful that I live somewhere with a stable government and a good economy, where I do not (usually) fear for my safety and have plenty of opportunities. I also love that, where I live at least, this country is extremely diverse. I definitely think that the “melting-pot” analogy holds true.

What I hate about America, however, is the current political climate. Right now, there is a lot of animosity between the two political parties and between the political “right” and “left” in general. This extends to social issues as well, and it often seems like no one can have a rational discussion about anything. Social media makes this worse. It is truly disturbing.

Actually, I have written a post on this (about how combative the political statements are in books, and how the political right is very often demonized but you rarely see it going the other way around, which I thought was predictable but interesting)

8) What animal do you relate to the most and why?

Hmmmmm… well, my favorite animal is a horse, as you could probably guess from all of my spoof horse newspaper articles. But do I necessarily relate to horses? I mean…

9) What do you enjoy most about blogging?

I love being able to sit down and type whatever is on my mind, or go through all of my thoughts after reading a book. I’ve been getting way more out of books now that I’ve been prioritizing writing reviews and essentially being “forced” to reflect on what I read.

Blogging also pushed me out of my YA contemporary/historical fiction comfort zone that I’d been staying in from age 13-15, and I think I’ve finally figured out the kind of books I’m interested in. I’ve actually written an entire post on why blogging changed my life.

Well, those are all of the questions I am doing today. What is your favorite part about blogging? Let me know in the comments!

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