Thank goodness for Litlove’s meme because blogging has been hard for me this week. It’s not that I don’t want to blog or visit, but lately work has been super busy so that’s left me with less free time and energy. Plus, I’m starting to freak out as I’ve got family coming in town next week and then I’m on vacation. I can’t wait for vacation but I still have to prepare for it. It’s going to be crazy at Casa Bookgirl.

Anyway, this weekend I plan to choose my books for the reading challenges I’m joining so hopefully I’ll be sharing those soon. Have a wonderful weekend and on to the meme:

List some of your favourite words: clandestine, azure, moxie, bohemian, hullabaloo

What’s your favourite maxim or proverb? In Mexico we use proverbs a lot so I have several I like but this is my favorite as my mom is always saying it to me because I’m so much like my dad.
De tal palo, tal astilla (a chip off the old block)

What’s your favourite quotation? The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. ~ Henry Miller

What’s your favourite first line of a novel? We came on the winds of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hotplate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter. From Chocolat by Joanne Harris (I know that’s two lines but I couldn’t resist adding the second).

Give an example of a piece of description that’s really pleased you in your reading lately: I really liked how Anita Brookner describes the Hotel Du Lac. It’s not just a description of the building but what the hotel signifies. “The Hotel du Lac (Famille Huber) was a stolid and dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons of an earlier era of tourism…. In this way the hotel was known as a place which was unlikely to attract unfavourable attention, a place guaranteed to provide a restorative sojourn for those whom life had mistreated or merely fatigued.”

Which five writers do you particularly admire for their use of language? Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, and Sandra Cisneros

And are there writers whose style you really dislike? Cormac McCarthy, Martin Amis, and Alice Walker

What’s the key to really fine writing, in your opinion? Creating believable characters