Friday Hope Treize

Q: Many readers/bloggers are also big music fans. Tell us about a few of your favorite bands/singers that we should listen to in 2012.

Just as my reading is eclectic, so is my music. I'm a fan of music from some select musicals (my favourite is The Sound of Music), yet I am just as comfortable with Paolo Nutini, Gaga, Florence and the Machine, Adele, Mumford and Sons and many others. I don't pigeon hold myself as liking only one genre; provided I like the music, I will get it. And if an artist I like makes something I don't like, I won't get it. Just how people try to read books they want and avoid depression after a bad book, I try not to let stereotypes or expectations dictate my music.

I also tend to have phases. I'm in what I think of as 'My Dad's Music' phase at the moment. He's as eclectic as me, and used to listen to TLC, Black Eyed Peas and others. Growing up with them, they're subliminally ingrained in me!

Also, friends of friends played this song at New Years and I've fallen in love with it. I just can't stop singing or listening to it! I actually listened again as I posted this.

2012 Must Reads: Which books are at the top of your list to be read this year (new or old releases)?

NEW: I really want to read the sequels to many of last year's great debuts, such as Insurgent (Divergent), Outpost (Enclave) and A Million Suns (Across the Universe). There are other sequels I'm excited for such as The Rise of Nine (Lorien Legacies/I am Number Four) and there are bound to be things I'll hear about as they come out and think "Of course! How could I forget?!" 


OLD: (I'm classing this as anything that has already been published) I've decided that Nicholas Nickleby is going to be my next Dickens read so I've got that ready for when I decide to read it, but I'm also excited about the prospect of my next Austen novel. I was thinking Sense and Sensibility.

I'd also like to read George R. R. Martin's series since I now have all the books. The same for the Lord of the Rings. Legend, Anna Dressed in Blood, Girl of Fire and Thorns are among those which are only really a month or so old but they are also something I'm hoping and looking forward to reading when I finally sit down with them.

I also have ends of series to read. throughout Autumn and December, I feel like I started the first books of many series, and now I have all the sequels to read. I have the few I've mentioned above, as well Chronicles of the Necromancer, Runelight, The Dead Tossed Waves and others I can't be bothered trying to find on my (recently tidied) shelf. I feel like I have too much.

It was a good hop, but I feel overwhelmed with how much I'm going to have to read this year! I'll leave you with this thought, which occurred to me when I read TGIF question.

Surely all so-called old books remain new books until you've read them? Just like all old news is new until you've heard it. (Courtesy of David Eddings)