In the Spotlight ~ Characterized

On Wednesday's, Forever Book Lover hosts a feature, "In the Spotlight".  It introduces bloggers, we get to learn about their reading genres, what they do when they aren't blogging.  It has been a blast and today's featured blog is no exception.  Characterized is a team of three friends, Anastasia, Demitra, & Persephone, who partnered up to share their love of books. This is a quote from their blog, so you can see that these three are BFF's.

We have known each other since 1st grade. We're city girls from New York. Our parents like to think of us as inseparable. As they say, "Our parents couldn't handle us as sisters, so they settled for best friends."

Welcome, Anastasia, Demitra, & Persephone!!!

 
When and how did you all decide to become create a blog?
We decided to start the blog in the beginning of our sophomore year in high school. Yeah that's right, we're teenagers. Before actually considering making a blog, we sold about half of our joint YA libraries at home. Then we decided, "Hey, we should find a way, to write all our thoughts about every book we read down." Eventually we heard about this website, called Goodreads, and started following a lot of people's reviews, and each time we did it would say “for more reviews click here” with a link to their blog, so we decided why don't we make a blog? (Oh boy, was it way harder than it seemed.) I guess this takes us into the next question, doesn't it?

So far, what’s the hardest part of being a book blogger?
Well, for starters, writing a review for every book we read is kind of hard. Before we started our blog, we would just read a book and move onto the next one, but now we have to express our thoughts in a review of one to four paragraphs. We find this kind of a hard habit to adopt, but we're getting there (: . In addition, most bloggers have one to two posts a week but since we are still in high school, we're not able to post as frequently as most bloggers (but we are still dedicated of course). 

What do you do when you are not blogging?
When we are not blogging, we are doing homework, studying for tests, joining any extracurricular activities that we can, and of course, planning the next meeting for our Book Club at school. We are also on the school varsity soccer, and volleyball teams together. (You'd be surprised how hard height deficient teenagers can hit/ kick a ball.) We all seem to be defective in whatever growth hormone controls height. All 5"1 inches of us, but if at first you don't succeed ... stand on your tippy-toes, right? Since we had a smidge of extra money left in the school budget, we decided to make a book club. Our book club came right after the blog. We just asked are principal, and he says "Good idea, ladies!" And just like that our meetings of 3, became meetings of 45 teenagers. Whoop, Whoop! Right now we're reading Envy by Gregg Olsen altogether. Then we'll write a collective review, as a club together. Wow. We really do like reading ... Pretty strange for a teenager, isn’t it?

How many followers do you have? How often do you post to your blog? How can people follow you? Okay so write now we have 101 beautiful followers, and the number keep growing! Which totally just blows our minds. As previously stated we are often occupied with schoolwork, but in a good week, maybe twice, and thrice? People can follow us via Linky, Shelfari, Goodreads; we're considering making a Facebook page, and GFC, of course.

Tell us about how the name of your blog "Characterized". What does it mean and how did you all come up with it? 

Characterized? Okay wow, we really like this question. Characterized is supposed to be a YA book blog, but also a self preserving, and encouraging blog, in which we may post a few quotes, talk what they mean to us, and hope they touch or reach someone out there. When we came up with the name we were thinking something along the lines of be-yourself, but also relating to books. You'd be surprised, with the crazy names we came up with. (We're all smiling as we're answering this question, because it took us about 3 hours to think of a name.) We wanted the sub-heading to definitely be “Building Libraries and Character”. Which if you look, it still is. Then we all start yelling out random names, "Read now," "Stop, drop, and read," "This is a no name blog," "Untitled," "Characterization," and "Characterized." Silence, and then we started squealing, because we knew we just found our new name. It had a deeper meaning to us, after we made it, though. Character meaning the character, and personality everyone has, and Character, as in the characters in a book, get it? Pretty corny we know, but imagine us being called "Untitled"?

Who are your three favorite authors?

This is hard, okay. We would say the typical answer, too hard, can't choose, but we're going to be different. The first 3 authors that come to mind as candidates would be ... Ellen Schreiber, Raine Thomas, and Wendy Higgins.

Which author would you most like to meet (dead or alive)? Tell us more..

An author we would like to meet, definitely Dr. Seuss. Ugh, we love him so much. We know we have a YA blog, but come on, Dr.Seuss is the father of all storylines. Ask anyone about a line from his book, and we bet they could recite it off the back. " I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am." (Yes, we're still kids, in the inside.)

How big is your TBR pile? How many books do you read/review in a month?
Our TBR pile is about 200 books that we have on our shelves, and e-readers, but just can't seem to get to them. We are determined to read until our TBR is up to 25 or less. Impossible goal to reach? We think not.

Finally, if someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be? 

Title of our bio: Can You Spot What is Wrong With This Picture?

On A Personal Note:

Please provide some personal bio information on each of you or whatever you want me to share with my readers. 

Anastasia: My name is Anastasia Brito, and I'm 16 years young. I am a sophomore that is currently attending Jefferson High in NYC. I am a city girl that loves to shop, hang out with friends, plan parties, decorate, and read! (Can you spot what's wrong with this picture?) So, yes ... I do LOVE to read. You'll usually find me reading classics, and all genres in the Young Adult realm. I like getting to know people, because I feel more of a connection to them. Even if we don't talk much, I just like the fact that they know i'm there if they need someone to talk to. I also enjoy taking classes on architecture and tech. I hope to one day pursue a career that allows me the freedom to create my own designs, as well as, follow through with the construction of them. I attend an amazing high school, with 2 amazingly stubborn best friends-- Demitra & Persephone (; I play basketball, and soccer; basketball being my better sport. Kicking does't seem to be my forte, but apparently i'm good enough to be on a soccer team. Yes ... we're all on the same soccer team, GOOO Jaguars! Honestly, we're new to blogging, but we'll catch up quickly! Promise.

Demitra: My name is Demitra Cruise, and I am 16 years old. I'm fun, spontaneous, and passionate about anything I set my mind to. I absolutely love reading with my best friends Anastasia & Persephone (<3). My other hobbies include playing soccer (Whoop whoop!) and tennis, hanging out with friends, and drawing. I love art classes of any kind, especially sketching and painting. I love meeting new people and getting to know other cultures better. My dream is to travel the world, and learn 2 other languages. What can I say? Big hearts, and big thinkers, have big dreams, right?

Persephone: My name is Persephone Cox and I’m sixteen years old. I’m a sophomore, and I attend Jefferson High School in New York City with two of my best friends Anastasia Brito and Demitra Cruise. I love to play volleyball and tennis (though I don’t always hit the ball – yes I’m a shortie ;/ ) and sometimes go for a walk when the weather is nice. In addition, I also like to go shopping, hang out with friends, and of course R E A D ( : My favorite genre in general is realistic fiction with romance but I’ll read anything as long as it’s good! I love my friends to death and sometimes they call me a part-time therapist because I’m a good listener <3 . My favorite quote is “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” (Dr. Seuss). I like this quote because it shows that life goes on and just because something good ended doesn’t mean something new won’t start again. Keep on Reading! Xoxo


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