The Unique Blogger Award

I was nominated by my wonderful friend Rachel of pace, amore, libri for this award. Thank you Rachel! It’s been an honour to undertake the book blogging journey with you!

The Rules

• Share the link of the blogger who has shown love to you by nominating you.
• Answer the questions.
• In the spirit of sharing love and solidarity with our blogging family, nominate 8-13 people for the same award.
• Ask them 3 questions.

Rachel’s Questions

1.Who’s your favorite actor/actress and what’s your favorite performance that they’ve ever done?  It can be something you’ve seen on stage, or in a film/television show/etc.

As Rachel guessed, this is difficult to narrow down, so I’m completely cheating and I have a few answers:

One has to be English theatre actor David Thaxton. There are no other actors who I have literally crossed an ocean to see, and although there have been other reasons, seeing him perform was a huge impetus to take these trips to London. My favourite performance that I’ve seen live has to be his turn as student leader Enjolras in the 2008/09 West End cast of Les Miserables. His strong baritone, natural charisma on stage, and camaraderie with his fellow actors was really captivating. I didn’t have the chance to see it live, but the recording of his Olivier award (basically the UK-Tonys) winning performance as Giorgio in Passion at the Donmar (which you can watch by booking an appointment to visit the V&A Museum’s archives) was stunning and made me cry just from a video.

The second is Canadian baritone Andrew Love. I first spotted Love playing the Bishop and other roles in the Toronto cast of Les Miserables and even in brief scenes his voice blew me away, so naturally when I heard he was understudying the role of Javert and would go on one Saturday in November, I dashed to the theatre to buy a last minute ticket and it was beyond even my high hopes. His voice is superb, but his acting is every bit its equal and his take on the role was thoughtful and very human. He was also fabulous recently in Against the Grain Theatre’s modern English-language take on La Boheme. I’ll definitely be following his career for the rest of my life.

Finally, as far as film actors go I think Oscar Isaac is ridiculously talented and has the ability to transform into each role he takes on. My favourite is definitely Poe in the new Star Wars movie (namesake for my pet), but I also loved his work in A Most Violent Year. And I’m currently working my way through Toby Stephens’ (Maggie Smith’s son!) filmography. My favourite role of his is, obviously, Captain Flint in Black Sails. His monologue’s rival Bryan Cranston’s in Breaking Bad and he’s played a fabulous arc with this character.

2.Which book would you most like to see adapted into a film and why?

I’m kind of already getting this, because the book I think would be best suited to an adaptation is Marvel’s Runaways comics, which are being turned into a Hulu show. The snappy pop culture dialogue, diversity of the teenage protagonists (which include a Japanese-American girl, a Jewish overweight girl, a vegan lesbian, and an African-American prodigy), and great backstory (everything thinks their parents are evil at somepoint, but what if you found out your parents were actually supervillains?) were really ahead of their time and I can see the show working really well as long as it’s cast smartly and well-written.

3.Talk about and share a picture of your pet(s)!

I have a pet cockatiel named Poe (after the Star Wars character) and she’s a laugh a minute. She’s very affectionate to the point of being clingy (she flies after me when I leave the room), enjoys headscratches and eating broccoli and other people food, and can’t be trusted around computers or books (she tries to eat them). Like most cockatiels, she’s curious and needs to be kept busy with toys to chew on and explore. She also loves having baths, but hates the being wet part, so she has a blast splashing water around, but when she’s done she runs around in irritation until her feathers dry off. Here’s what she looks like wet!

I Nominate

• Darque Dreamer Reads
• Readers Rule
• The Bookish Actress
• Read With Chris

My Questions

1. Talk about and share a few of your favourite book covers.
2. How do you organize your bookshelves? (by author, by genre, by colour, etc.)
3. Besides books, do you collect anything? If so, what do you collect?

As always, feel free to skip this, especially if you’ve already been tagged by someone else!