#ask emma

- @americasrealhero

3. favourite flower?

how is this a hard question? i guess i don't really spend enough time thinking about flowers to have a favourite one. but there's a ton of daisies around my building right now and seeing them always makes me really happy, so let's say that!

7. are you currently wearing anything blue?

well. funnily enough. the shirt i am currently wearing has a big blue flower on it

36. favourite potato chip flavour?

sour cream & onion. but also actually this is relevant to you 🫵 specifically -- have you tried the new redhead ones? they're soooo good and the plain one (which apparently has ?? four different kinds of salt ??) is also incredible

39. top 5 desserts

suddenly forgets every single dessert i've ever had. ok. warm brownie with vanilla ice cream. honestly any high-quality cake, but especially carrot or red velvet. fresh finnish strawberries with whipped cream. my grandma's pulla. and this dessert we used to make for parties when i was growing up called blueberry bonanza which was basically a layer of cheesecake and then a layer of homemade blueberry jam and then whipped cream and crushed up digestives on top

6. what books have you read in the last month?

ooh boy! i'll list them starting from the most recent. i decided to only read queer books in june, so they're all queer. i'll do italics for audiobooks and bold for books i really recommend!

[currently reading] middlesex, jeffrey eugenides

[currently reading] apparently, sir cameron needs to die, greer stothers

god's children are little broken things, arinze ifeakandu

how queer bookshops changed the world, aj west

cash delgado is living the dream, tehlor mejia

sorcery and small magics, maiga doocy

death in the spires, kj charles

something wild and wonderful, anita kelly

the keeper of lonely spirits, e.m. anderson

that's what she said, eleanor pilcher

woodworking, emily st. james

the pairing, casey mcquiston

bolla, pajtim statovci

accidental boyfriend acquisition, lee pini

strangers to husbands, lee pini

fall for him, andie burke

the fiancée farce, alexandria bellefleur

feast while you can, onjuli datta & mikaella clements

to the moon and back, eliana ramage

the dramatic life of jonah penrose, robyn green

anderson in bloom, jennifer dugan

the broposal, sonido reyes

unhallowed, jordan l. hawk

semi-well-adjusted despite literally everything, alyson stoner

the names, florence knapp

truly, madly, deeply, alexandria bellefleur

18. do you like historical books? which time period?

yes! admittedly i have mostly read historical romance but i am not unintrigued by the concept of historical non-romance.

most of the books i've read so far have been 18th/19th century, but i'm also really intrigued by early/mid 20th century and would love to read more books set in that period!

9. when do you tend to read most?

i mean. always? lol but the actual answer is i listen to audiobooks while commuting/traveling, when working out (on land)(as in not while swimming)(and at the gym only while warming up/cooling down bc i read the news between sets so that would fuck it up), while driving (when i do, which is not often)

and then i always read a physical or digital book before bed, and often 'before bed' starts like... as soon as i get home from / log off work, or at least a couple of hours before i fall asleep if i'm doing other stuff first

19. most disliked popular books?

oof. i mean, define popular? i know that's a copout but i am drawing a huge blank on this.

well i know a lot of people like night sky with exit wounds by ocean vuong and i found it kind of meh. definitely niche popular, but people reccing hockey romance often suggest wake up, nat & darcy and i didn't like that one. also niche popular, but before i read the fall (also hockey) i saw people praising it to the moon and back and saying it changed their lives, and i thought it was deeply mid (even when adjusting for hockey romance rating scales)(look i had an extensive hockey romance phase for several months there so when i look at my storygraph it's just wall to wall hockey)

okay i scrolled back far enough. some actually popular books that i went in expecting to love based on hype/reviews and also found kinda mid: piranesi (they would kill me for this on book twitter), the starving saints, my brilliant friend, bury my bones in the midnight soil, great big beautiful life. (those last two really hurt because i had high expectations of the authors)

I would like to amend/add to this question with: have you taken notes in a book and if so what was your most recent book?

just answered this here! but for the second part, the most recent one was the hour of the star by clarice lispector, here are some things i underlined:

4. what sections of a bookstore do you browse?

unfortunately i am sort of limited in that the english sections of our bookstores aren't always super expansive (although! this is improving all the time!) but when there are options, i like to start with new releases to see if there's anything interesting i haven't heard of, then always fiction, sff, romance (if it's a separate section), and memoir/biography

11. what non-fiction books do you like if any?

answered here! but to add some more, we breed lions by rick westhead (essential reading if you're into hockey at all, especially north american hockey), careless people by sarah wynn-williams (facebook is evil), character limit by kate conger and ryan mac (twitter is evil)

14. do you ever mark/dog ear books you own?

yes, frequently, i don't really care about Book As Physical Object. like unless it's like a rare/old/first edition etc, but i don't really handle those so it's not a consideration. if it's a paperback that i bought to read then i don't care if it looks like it has been read, i'll dogear that sucker and highlight or underline things i like if i feel like it

1. book you've read the most times?

regrettably for me it is definitely the redacted wizard books 😭 closest after that is probably red white and royal blue, which was a real comfort book for me at one point

7. is there a series/book that got you into reading?

hmm it's kind of hard to say which one was really the catalyst but i think maybe the famous five ?? starting from when i was around six, my mom would keep a bag of books in her closet that i wasn't supposed to know about because they were supposed to be on hand so i could get them one at a time as rewards for doing well on a spelling test or whatever but at some point i definitely found out and ended up hiding in the closet to read the next book

11. what non-fiction books do you like if any?

i love a nonfiction book! i especially like memoirs/autobiographies and narrative historical nonfiction, but i love to Learn Things so i'll try almost anything.

some of my favourite memoirs: naomi klein's doppelganger, billie jean king's all in, and hua hsu's stay true

recently enjoyed other nonfiction: how queer bookshops changed the world by aj west, this vast enterprise by craig fehrman, my life in sea creatures by sabrina imbler

Between you and me, from 1-10, how much do you hate your job?