Two Lovely Awards

I love passing around awards as much as I love receiving them. So here goes:

The wonderful Priya Parmar whose delightful blog The Plum Bean Project is a must-read on my blog list gave me the Premio Dardos award.Vaishnavi whose blog The Dust Jacket is an elegant, great read also passed this award to me. I'm honoured to receive this award from both of you :)

"The Prêmio Dardos is a way to acknowledge the importance of bloggers committed with spreading cultural, ethical, literary and personal values, showing their thoughts are alive through their letters and words."

I need to pass this award to 15 blogs. Here are the brilliant blogs I can think of right now to pass the award:

1. Alyce at At Home With Books

2. Rebecca Schinsky at The Book Lady's Blog

3. JoAnn at Lakeside Musing

4. Priya at Uniquely Priya

5. Jen at The Introverted Reader 

6. Becky at Becky's Book Reviews

7. Velvet at vvb32reads

8. Claire at Paperback Reader

Kate at Kate's Library, whose blog is one of the best new blogs I'm following, made my day today by passing the Versatile Blogger award to me. Thank you Kate! :)

I have to share seven things about myself as part of receiving this award:

1. I love musicals. My favourite musicals are Sound of Music, My Fair Lady and recently, Enchanted.

2. Playing scrabble is one of my favourite pastimes.

3. I wrote embarrassingly lame poems when I was young. Especially one written in a birthday card to my Dad, in which I seem to have assumed I need to rhyme every single word possible. 

4. Green is my favourite colour. One of the reasons I love this award image!

5. Tea is love. Iced tea, lemon tea, peach flavoured tea are especially great.

6. According to this Jane Austen Heroine quiz, I'm Elizabeth Bennet.

7. I spend most of my pocket money on books.

I'm passing this award to the following versatile blogs that I've newly discovered and loved :)

1. Jillian at Random Ramblings

2. Birdie at Birdie's Nest

3. Lady Scribbles at Lady Scribbles' Book Lounge

4. Stella at Ex Libris 

Great Blog Neighbor Award

The Great Blog Neighbor Award is a new award created by Felicia at Geeky Blogger's Book Blog. 

Says Felicia:

"I thought I would create an award to give away and pass along to book bloggers!  I, personally, have so many great blog neighbors that I adore.  They really make my day with their comments and their posts.  We don't all read the same things but we do share a love of books!"

I think this is a great idea for an award and the award image is so pretty! Thanks to Whitney of  She Is Too Fond Of Books for giving this award to me and it's now my turn to pass this award to 5 bloggers who are lovely neighbours.

JoAnn of Lakeside Musing

Priya Parmar of The Plum Bean Project

The Book Mole

Whitney of She Is Too Fond Of Books

Vaishnavi of Dust Jacket

Awards Galore!

I have received some lovely awards from blogger friends for which I'm very thankful! It's nice to be appreciated. Especially when it comes from bloggers who have excellent blogs themselves. It's even nicer to pass on these awards to some of you!

Christy at Readin' and Dreamin' gave me the Prolific Blogger Award. Thank you, Christy!

From the description: 'A Prolific Blogger is one who is intellectually productive… keeping up an active blog that is filled with enjoyable content.'

1. Every winner of the Prolific Blogger Award has to pass on this award to at least seven other deserving prolific bloggers. Spread some love!

2. Each Prolific Blogger must link to the blog from which he/she has received the award.

3. Every Prolific Blogger must link back to this post, which explains the origins and motivation for the award.

4. Every Prolific Blogger must visit this post and add his/her name in the Mr. Linky, so that we all can get to know the other winners. (Click here for the Mr. Linky page.)

I'm passing it on to 7 bloggers:

Shweta at ShwetasBookJournal

Mrs. B at The Literary Stew

JoAnn at Lakeside Musing

Claire at Paperback Reader

Alyce at At Home With Books

Sherrie at Just Books

Meredith at Austenesque Reviews

Velvet at vvb32reads gave me the Dragon's Loyalty Award. I'm passing this on to 3 loyal fans:

Veens at Giving Reading A Chance

Vaishnavi at Dust Jacket

Kim at Queen Bee

Booksync gave me the Honest Scrap award. 

For this award I have to tell 10 honest things about myself and pass the award to 10 bloggers:

1. I have a fear of escalators. Yep.

2. My worst subject at school was Math. Numbers intimidate me.

3. I love history and politics. Always have. Always will. ( Which is the reason you find me reading so much non-fiction and biographies )

4. When I was 11 or 12, I memorized and could recite by heart the entire of Jawaharlal Nehru's epic Tryst With Destiny speech. I still remember most of it.

5. I love taking long walks alone.

6. It's one of my dreams to visit Bath and take a Jane Austen tour.

7. I can play the Veena.

8. I'm addicted to all kinds of mint.

9. Swades is one of my favourite Indian films ever. It makes me cry. Every. Single. Time.

10. I love fancy bookmarks.

Heather at Gofita's Pages gave me the Beautiful Blogger award. I love the banner for this! 

I'm passing both of these awards to:

Veens at Giving Reading A Chance

Vaishnavi at Dust Jacket

Kim at Queen Bee

Whitney at She Is Too Fond Of Books

Priya at Uniquely Priya

The Book Mole

Jeannie at Pine Cottage Books

Booksync

Hannah Stoneham

Velvet at vvb32 reads

Heather also gave me the Amazing Follower award.

 I'm passing this to all of my followers! I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy posting it. 

Awards Updates

Christy at Readin' and Dreamin' gave me the very pretty Ohh La La! award some time back. Thanks so much for the award Christy!

As part of my  obligations in receiving this award, I need to answer these questions:


Where is your favorite place to read a book?
In bed or snuggling in my couch with cushions.

Do you snack while reading?
Not really. Except for the lone Coke or Coffee.

Are you a book borrower or book collector? 
Book Borrower. I read far too many books and I can't afford to collect/buy them all.

What is the best book you've read recently?
Fiction: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri and The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa - fabulous books! Must-reads definitely.
Non-fiction: Diplomatic Divide: Crossborder Talks by Dr. Humayun Khan and G.Parthasarathy. An excellent book  on a very important subject.

Here are some blogs I want to pass this award to, blogs I think are Ohh La La!

JoAnn at Lakeside Musing

Veens at Giving Reading A Chance

Shona at Shona's Book Shelves

Nishita at Nishita's Rants and Raves

Nishita also gave me a wonderful award, the Happy 101 Award, which asks that you make a list of ten things that make you happy. Here is my list:

1. A good book. I know that's stating the obvious, but it's a lovely feeling to read a thoroughly enjoyable, moving book!

2.  A weekend off with my friends and family. Just spending time with people I love and giggling over the silliest of things.

3.  A long walk on a windy night, gazing at the stars. It just relaxes me beyond words. Plus, I've always had a fascination for stars and constellations.

4.  Studying history and visiting historic monuments/ruins. There's just such a lot of romance, charm in history. It's a beautiful thing to know about our past and learn from it :)

5. Ice cream. Remember the time I had chocolate icecream that had a hint of mocha, garnished with gorgeous nuts, while watching Lost in Austen? It was an unforgettably good experience!

6.  Indian food. Granted, I have it everyday. It's still special and extremely delicious.

7.  Music. I'm a total sucker for melodies and patriotic songs. The latter almost always brings me to tears - A.R.Rahman's magnificent Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera or Bharat Humko, for instance. I especially love Indian Hindustani, classical, sufi music and of course Bollywood songs!

8.  Receiving comments on my blog and seeing new followers! Thank you all :)

9.  Rain. The sight of raindrops, the smell of the earth wet after a drizzle, the breeze that follows a spell of rain...it can make anyone poetic!

10. Learning an obscure general knowledge fact. LOL. It makes my day to find trivia that will stump everyone :D

Here are are a few of the several blogs that make me happy: some are blogs that I've started following very recently, while others are blogs I've loved for a long time now! I'm passing this award to:

Claire at Paperback Reader

Mrs. B at The Literary Stew

Velvet at vvb32reads

Whitney at She Is Too Fond Of Books and Wuthering Pride

Christa at Mental Foodie

Jeannie at Pine Cottage Books


P.S. Everyone's been very generous with giving me some great awards. Thanks again so much! I'll post about some other awards I received and pass them on to others soon :)

An Award!

Kim at Chapter Chit Chat  has passed on this wonderful One Lovely Blog award to me. Thanks so much for that Kim!

Rules:

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link
2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.
3) Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award. 


I'm passing this award on to 12 book blogs that I love. I've started following more book blogs than ever and though it means a LOT of reading and catching up for me, it's definitely worth it because the blogs are quite amazing. The blogs I'm listing for this award are some of the ones that I thoroughly enjoy reading and would certainly recommend for people to follow. Some of these blogs might have already got this award, but I'd pass it on to them anyway because I've had a lot of fun following them. 

1. Paperback Reader

2. Joann at Lakeside Musing

3. Shona at Shona's Bookshelves

4. Shweta at Shweta's Bookjournal

5. Nishita at Nishita's Rants and Raves

6. Veens at Giving Reading A Chance

7. Alyce at At Home With Books

8. Colette at A Buckeye Girl Reads

9. Heather at Gofita's Pages

10. Velvet at vvb32reads

11. The Literary Stew

12. Simon at Savidge Reads 

I'm looking forward to discovering new book blogs through the challenges I am hosting or participating in this year! :)