Book Blogger Blind Date

The Idea:

Book Blogger Blind Date is a feature hosted by Jillian over at Rant and Rave about Books. The basic concept is pretty simple. Jill got a bunch of people to sign up and then she paired us up to get to know each other and post about each other! Done!

The Blog:

My blind date is with Cindy at My Book File. Cindy does book reviews and has a cute feature called Double Reviews, where she and Anne from Inked Brownies review a book together. I LOVE THIS IDEA and if I ever got my shit together enough to coordinate schedules with a whole other person, I would totally steal it!

So, Cindy and I decided to exchange brief little blurbs about ourselves and then do questions and answers. Here's Cindy's intro:

I like books (fantasy and historical fiction are my favorite genres), history (not 20th century history, though), writing, photography and medieval languages (Germanic languages mostly). Dutch is my mother language. I speak English, German and have some knowledge of French, Spanish and Norwegian.

Since some time ago, I stopped doing sports, but I really want to try something new in the future, the last 12 years I did horseback riding. 

I'm really addicted to coffee [WELL, WHO ISN’T, CINDY!?] and chocolate, olives with garlic are really close to the top as well :')

Cindy lives in the Netherlands which I'm pretty sure, that for the majority of my life, I thought was where Peter Pan lived. But lookie here, it's an actual place!! She lives where the red thingy is. She's about half my age (ahem) and is an English student. 

We were only going to ask a certain number of questions but each of the questions I wrote was like a bunch all in one, so I failed the first task of the whole assignment!! During the little intro, I learned that Cindy has pets which is pretty much all you need to know about a person.

 

Anyway, here’s
The Interview:

Kenya: “Basic Question: What sort of work do you do and what do you do for fun besides reading?”

Cindy: Okay, well… at the moment I’m at the point of switching jobs actually :’) At this very moment I’m an allround employee at an hotel and by the first of September I’ll be working in retail. So there’s that, I’m really looking forward to my new job though ^_^ Oh yeah! And because it’s summer holiday at the moment, I’m also cleaning the houses of the elderly J Great people, awesome stories.

Besides reading I like to write (I just never tend to finish anything, haha) and I like to hunt for books. When I have time, and funds :’). I like to travel as well, just see old things and listen to stories.

At this point, I had to ask Cindy a follow-up question: what the heck is an allround employee! Do other people already know this!? It basically means that she can float between departments/ tasks and can do whatever is needed… Do we have a word for that in the US?

Kenya: “I already know that you are a student studying English language and culture. What made you want to study that? How do you think it affects your pleasure- reading?” [I thought I was pretty smart with this question!]

Cindy: Okay, here comes a big story. I’ve tried two other studies before trying English. First was commercial economics (it sucked… I should have known because I’m not that into math and stuff, but it seemed a logical choice at the time). Then I tried to become a history teacher, figuring that I liked history and since I had a job in the culture section at the time, I thought that it would be a good fit. It didn’t really… unfortunately, I discovered that kids and I don’t get along that well when I’m the one in front of the classroom. So it was then that I seriously had to find out what I wanted to do with my life. Not teaching that was for sure, but I still love history and language. Some people that I know also study English and so I started to ask around. After attending some activities that were organised, so that new students can figure out if this is what they want to do, I was sold and from that point on I was an English student. 

I don’t think that it affects my pleasure reading. Some things that I learn during my classes can be applied to my reviews or other things, and to be honest; most things that I have to read, I would’ve read anyway :’)

Kenya: “What degree will you have when you finish and what do you hope to do when you’re done?”

Cindy: When I finish after two years I’ll have a BA. I really want to do an MA afterwards (probably something like Medieval Studies) and then it’s into the wide unknown and find a job. I do hope to go into translation, but when it gets to that I’d prefer to translate old text rather than modern texts.

Kenya: “You love history and historical fiction by not 20^th century history? What’s wrong with the 20^th century, huh!?”

Cindy: Hahaha! Nothing is really wrong with the 20^th century. The problem for me is just high school. There was an overload on information about the 20^th century at the time. It’s because of that overload that I don’t really fancy reading 20^th century historical fiction, though sometimes there is a gem.

Obviously, we will need to find out more about which are the "gems," amIright?! 

Kenya: “What’s your favorite book? I know this is one of the hardest questions, so: What is the first book that pops into your mind when someone asks you that? And then, what is the one that you come up with after you’ve thought about it for a few minutes?”

Cindy: I don’t have one really. There is a series that I really like though. I started reading it when I was about 10 years old, and I started rereading it last year (or something like that). It’s called The Warlord Chronicles, and it’s written by Bernard Cornwell (truly love that guy’s writing).

Even after thinking about it, I think I’ll stick with my first idea. I like a lot of books, but that series has always impressed me.

I had just read the first book in the Warlord Chronicles just earlier this year and thus at this point in the “date,” Cindy and I became BFFs!!

Kenya: “You speak 3 languages fluently and kind of know 3 more. How does something like that happen?! [I would insert a gif of a mind boggling if I had one… or knew what that would look like.] Have there ever been times when you were having a conversation and had to use two or more languages kind of at the same time!?”

Cindy: It’s not really that I need to use two or more languages at the time, sometimes but that’s very rare. I learned to speak English in primary school I believe, maybe even before that since my parents always showed me the Disney movies in English. Haha. Then we moved to Norway for a year and so I had to learn Norwegian (I’ve forgotten a lot of the language, but I figure that when I go back someday I’ll pick it up pretty quickly). After a year, we moved back and when I went to high school, I had to take  German and French classes. I could choose between the two in my third year and so I picked German. My French is horrible really. Hahaha. My understanding is kinda okay sometimes, I just haven’t done anything with it the past 6 years. So German it was, now it’s kinda rusty but I’m going to pick it up again really soon! A German friend of mine is going to help me with that. Then, two years ago, I followed a course that was Spanish for beginners, so there’s that.

I hope to know some Irish by the end of next school year and I really do want to work on my Spanish, maybe I’ll even take a course Swedish or Danish. ^_^ 

So, clearly there are some followup questions I have! Like... translations!? WHUUU!!??

This was a super fun blind date. Cindy is the real gem in all this and I'm glad that we got paired together for this!