Armchair BEA, Day 1: Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a (wo)man of wealth and taste...

I'm sort of just realising that I've just called myself the devil... Hmm, not the best introduction ever, but oh well, it's too late to change it now! (It's clearly not. But I like it!) Ahem, anyway! Here's what I look like sometimes:

And sometimes I find stuff funny and it looks like this:

And sometimes it's Christmas, and I look like this:

Annnd, sometimes I post three pictures of myself on my blog all at once, which is more than the total of pictures of myself there've been on here in the entire history of Devouring Texts. Go figure! Also, all of those pictures were taken at least a year ago, and I'm sorely in need if a haircut right now, so... you can probably just ignore them.

ANYWAY! There are questions that need to be answered, and dammit, I'm going to answer them. So here goes:

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?

Who am I? Please see above, I think that'll tell you everything you need to know! Also there's my About Me page which was excruciating to write, but which I did write so I never have to write one of these again. So there's that!

I've been blogging for about a year and a half now (WOAH) and I basically started it because the job situation after university didn't look good and, to be honest, I was pretty depressed and I needed something to do. And, since I'd already discovered book blogs about a year before, I wanted in! 

2. What are you currently reading, or what is your favourite book you've read so far in 2012?

OR?! Really? But seriously, at the moment I'm reading 3 books: Four Past Midnight by Stephen King, Armadale by Wilkie Collins (which I am LOVING, by the way) and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson. Now tomorrow I'm totally going to post about my favourite books of 2012 (you know you don't want to miss that!) but I'm just going to say that by far my favourite reading discovery of this year is Haruki Murakami- his writing makes me so happy, whilst his stories make me so sad...

3. Where do you see your blog in 5 years?

Obviously I see it as a worldwide sensation, and the only place that people come to get advice about what to read. But really? I don't know... I want to still be doing it because I kind of see it as a lifelong reading journal that I share with other people, but also I still want everyone else (that I love!) to be blogging too, because it wouldn't be the same without them!

4. What is your favourite part of the book blogging community? Is there anything you'd like to see change in the coming years?

The thing I love most about the book blogging community is the fact that you can pretty much make your own community within it- give a lot of love to the blogs you like, and just ignore the ones you don't. There's nothing I'd like to see change per se (other than, I don't like to hear about people getting abusive comments, because how is that helpful, so they can go) but I'd like more bloggers to read books that haven't like just been released- I pretty much never read really new books, and it's a bit... trying when everyone's reading the same books all the time and there's not too much variety. But, obviously, this is a bit of a personal choice thing, and I can't exactly control what people choose to read and review!

5. Have your reading tastes changed since you started blogging? How?

So, I wouldn't necessarily say my reading tastes have changed since I started blogging (it's basically still just mainly classics and literary fiction, mixed with Stephen King) but I'd definitely say that other blogs have influenced some of my reading decisions- I may never have read Murakami, for example, if it hadn't been for Alice's readalong, and there are LOADS of books that I already owned but have been inspired to read by amazing reviews. The thing which has really changed though, is the way I read- I've always got two books on the go, more usually 3, and I choose them, at the moment, based on challenges I'm taking part in. Which, I realise, sounds restrictive, but is as good a way as any for choosing books to read, especially because I've got so much choice that I'm a bit overwhelmed by it at times. Also, it's totally stopping me reading like all 6 Murakami books I've got in one go, because I want some review variety, so that's definitely a good thing (delayed gratification and all that).

So! I hope that's given you a bit of an insight into my little bloggish world! If there's anything else you'd like to know, shoot me a question in the comments, and I'll be back to answer to them once I've gone and explored some other blogs.