2015 Summer Blogger Promo Tour - BiblioSmiles

I'm excited to introduce Danielle today for this year's Summer Blogger Promo Tour hosted by The Book Bratz! Danielle is owner of the amazing book blog... BiblioSmiles. 

After checking out her blog, I found out she is a very wonderful writer! She has come up with a creative piece on how her reading list has changed since high school. Even her formatting of the piece is wonderful! Thank you in advance for participating, Danielle!

Excerpts From Her Reading List

- Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews

- Petals on the Wind - V.C. Andrews

As a sixth grader she went on a mission each weekend to the library and checked out stacks of paperbacks with beautiful heroines who struggled with their own growth and the confusion of attraction.  She secretly started using Mom’s mascara this summer, and clumsily shaved her legs. She had a crush on her neighbor, and sprawled out on the lawn waiting for her nail polish to dry, hoping he’d fly by on his bicycle.

- White Oleander - Janet Fitch

- Misery - Stephen King

She began to fall in love with movies when her aunt gave her some of her old college film textbooks. She scoured the library shelves for paperback counterparts of her favorite celluloids. Some of them made her think.  Some of them thrilled her to no end.  All in all, she generally determined that “the book is better.”    

- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

- The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

In freshman year of high school people began to expect things of her.  Classmates began to envy her penchant for speed-reading (which made in-class surprise quizzes a breeze) and her eleventh grade vocabulary.  Books could no longer be only an escape – they now had to serve as her ticket to good grades.

- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

- Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Her summers were no longer carefree.  The weekend trips to the library were no longer a pleasant amble through the shelves, but a panicked search for required texts – an AP class reading list that extended to the floor.  

- American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

- The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis

Her first year in college.  A creative writing major, like she always wanted.  Suddenly, she no longer felt “well-read.”  She found herself competing with kids who read Hemingway in grade school, who talked about existentialism as if it was enjoyable. She came into college thinking she knew how to write, and now she started to second-guess herself.   

- A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf

- The Right to Write - Julia Cameron

She started feeling more confident in her writing, and no longer felt like she had to “change” to appease her classmates.  She took classes with wonderful professors who encouraged her to express herself.  These books by women writers inspired her to be strong. 

- The Boys of My Youth - Jo Ann Beard

- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver

One of her professors said: “The best thing you can do as a writer is write your ass off.”  And so she did.  Memoirs and short stories become her favorite means to get her thoughts out on the page.  Her reading list was littered with them. She has a boyfriend.  (It’s not her neighbor.)

- Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See - Juliann Garey

- Wild - Cheryl Strayed

Out of school – a graduate? Already? – she liked to lose herself in narratives on the train.  She doesn’t know where she’s headed yet, but she knows there are so many brilliant books to be read.  The time between New Jersey and New York, in the morning, with a cup of coffee singing in her veins?  This was the time to read.  On an e-reader.  Oh, how times have changed.

Danielle Villano is a New Jersey native and a graduate of the SUNY Purchase creative writing program.  She lives in New York City and should be working on her YA novel instead of going to brunch.  She blogs at BiblioSmiles, and can be reached on Twitter as @daniellevillano.