Get To Know Me Tag

The lovely Carlyn Ross tagged me in a Get-To-Know-Me challenge! Here 'tis.

let's do this

V I T A L S T A T S

            Name: Emma Davis

            Nickname: Um…Em? I’m also called Emma Grace by my family, because I have a reputation of being not-very-graceful and often tripping over my own feet.

            Birthday: November 10^th

            Place Of Birth: Jacksonville, Florida.

            Star Sign: Scorpio (I actually had to google this just now because I didn’t know. :P)

            Occupation: At the moment, um…being a person?

Behold, my face:

Not my best photo, but I like it because it was my "I am determined to finish this frickin novel today" face when I finished WSE draft 1. 

A P P E A R A N C E

            Hair color: light-ish brown

            Hair length: Just past my shoulders, although I’m planning on bobbing it this spring! :D

            Eye color: Greeeennnn

            Best feature: I do love my eyes.

            Braces: nah

            Piercing: Just my ears, thanks.

            Tattoos: None now, and none in the future bc I am an indecisive wimp who would immediately regret my decision as soon as I’d had it done.

            Righty or lefty: -waves ink-smudged left hand- Leftyyyy

F I R S T S

            Best friend: Ahhhhhhh um, my cousin Hannah. She's pretty great.

            Award: I think it was a tee-ball trophy when I was like, 5.

            Sport: Tee ball!
            Real holiday: ….I have no idea

            Concert: Winter Jam 20…13, I think?

F A V O R I T E S

            Film: I have several, but Casablanca and Saving Mr. Banks are definitely my top two!

            TV show: Gilmore Girls all the way

            Color: p u r p l e

            Song: THIS QUESTION IS SO STRESSFUL. I can’t pick one so. Top 5:

                        -EMPHASIS, Sleeping At Last.

                        -MOON RIVER, Audrey Hepburn

                        -LITTLE WONDERS, Rob Thomas

                        -SCREEN, Twenty One Pilots

                        -SMALL TOWN MOON, Regina Spektor

            Restaurant: Olive Garden yes

            Shop: Chamblin’s Bookmine, which is this absolute maze of used books and is my favorite place to go ever.

            Books: Again with the stress. Agh. Um… Emma by Jane Austen, Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows.

            Shoes: my stone-gray flats, and the similar colored, slightly-heeled pair I got to replace them once they wore out.

C U R R E N T L Y

            Feeling: A little bit tired and a little bit excited and like I really want a cup of tea.

            Single or taken: hi yes I am 5ever alone

            Eating: I just ate a chocolate cake made out of zucchini and it was surprisingly good.

            Thinking about: this video

            Watching: a documentary about the 70s.

            Wearing: my favorite sweater and a pair of jeans

F U T U R E

            Want children: yes

            Want to married: yesyes

            Careers in mind: Teaching history in some way. <3

            Where you want to live: SOMEWHERE WHERE THERE’S ACTUALLY FALL COLORS DANG IT.

D O Y O U B E L I E V E I N

            God: Completely  

            Miracles: ^

            Love at first sight: I…don’t really have an opinion on this? I guess I think it’s possible but…I don’t think it’s something that happens to everyone.

            Ghosts: welp. Haven’t really thought about this. I guess I don’t?

            Aliens: Doctor-who style aliens? Nah. I think it’s possible that there’s life out there that we don’t know about but I highly doubt they’re gonna come to earth and be all “take me to your leader *beepboopbeepboop*”

            Soul mates: Yes. And this quote is how I feel about this:  

I loved that phrase: soul mate. We asked Grandma what it meant and she said, “Two people who understand each other without talking about it. Two halves of a whole.”

            “Like being married?” I asked.

            “No,” Grandma said. “It could be anybody. Father or mother or sister or friend. A teacher or someone you work with. Anybody. Any two people who understand each other so well that one of them can fly blindfolded and the other will stand unafraid on the wing of the plane.”

            (taken from BLACK DOVE, WHITE RAVEN by Elizabeth Wein.)

            Heaven: Yes!

            Hell: See above answer. Can’t really separate them.

            Kissing on the first date: Um. I have put no thought into this. –shrugs-

            Yourself: I do.

Well that was fun! I am tagging….

                        Mariesa at MeoBird, Sam at The Writer’s Nook, Elly at The Spilled Inkwell and Aimee at To The Barricade!

Book Nostalgia

There’s something especially marvelous about looking at a collection of books and stories and seeing yourself in them. Not just who you are today, but who you used to be, and better yet, who you want to be.

Growing up, I read a lot of classics. Granted, they were the Illustrated Classics editions, but since then I’ve read most, if not all, of the originals. I’d go to the library at school in second grade and come back with Jane Eyre, over and over again. I don’t remember when I first discovered it or when I decided that it was going to be mine, but at some point I did, and I read it so many times that year that I think I could have quoted whole passages.

I came across Nancy Drew around the same time as Jane Eyre. The library only had a handful of the books, so I read the same ones, until I went to the county library, where I found shelves and shelves of them, and discovered the magical thing called a holds’ list. The only Nancy Drew book I’ve ever owned, for whatever reason, is The Bungalow Mystery, which I got with my dad at a small bookstore in downtown Fernandina.

Where The Red Fern Grows and The Secret Garden both happened in third grade. Where The Red Fern Grows was an especially memorable read, because it probably the first book I’d ever read where characters that I’d come to know and love died. I’ve read that book so many times now that the cover is made up almost entirely of masking tape.

I can’t remember when I first read Anne of Green Gables. It was sometime in third or fourth grade, or maybe the summer between. I got the boxed set on Ebay for somewhere around thirty dollars; I don’t remember if I payed for all of it, or some of it, or none of it at all. But I remember when they came in, and I remember keeping them in the little box for a long time, until the box was starting to fall apart, and I moved my library out of the single shelf on my closet and into my room. After I read the Anne books, I found the Emily books, and a collection of short stories LM Montgomery had written set in and around Avonlea.

In sixth grade I went through a massive Louisa May Alcott phase. I honestly don’t remember what started it, or when in that year it began. But by the end of the year I’d read every one of her books I could get my hands on, my favorites being Little Women and An Old Fashioned Girl.

There are so many others. Huckleberry Finn, although I can’t remember when exactly I first read it, was a favorite. So was Treasure Island, only I have a date for that – first grade. I was quite proud of myself. Esperanza Rising, the Dear America series, the American Girl mysteries, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter.

I have almost all of these books still. Most of them are sitting on a short bookshelf beside my bed, and they stay there, neatly stacked, neatly organized. But sometimes I have to take them down to clean this shelf and sometimes I end up sitting here, with a stack of books whose covers are all worn and old and rough with use, remembering what it was like to read them for the first time. I say hello to them again, and let them remind who it is I want to be.