Book Tag: The Seasons of Book Blogging

 

I got a bit lax with my Thursday book tags, but I’m back now with this cute one, borrowed from Yvo’s blog. I’m Australian, so the seasons are all in the wrong months for me, but I’ll forgive it. 😉

March.
…is the month for luck and new beginnings. Name a book/series you would like to re-experience as if you’d never read it.

The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness. This series was incredible and left me in a shaking, crying heap, but if I could read it again for the first time, I totally would.

Honourable mention to the Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud.

April.
…is a spectacularly ordinary month. Name a book that was so over-hyped that it just could not live up to your expectations

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy this (I gave it four stars in the end!), but there were definitely parts (namely the first 200 pages) where I was thinking, “Really, this is what everyone is raving about?”

May.
…is the month when the flowers start to bloom. Name a book that was a pleasant surprise to you.

It took me a while to get into this book, mostly because I was reading it in very short spurts and it’s really a book that should be read in as few sittings as possible. Once I actually got to sit down with it and give it my full and undivided attention, I was hooked. It’s a beautiful book!

June.
…is the time to take a break. Name a book or genre that you like to read when you just need to check out.

Generally I’ll go with a light urban fantasy at this time.

July.
…is the time to celebrate your independence! Name a book that made you see fireworks.

For ages, I wasn’t really sure about this book. It seemed really slow and I wasn’t sure what was going on and the characters were all a bit weird… then it all came together at the end and I was freaking out about how well it was all constructed.

August.
…is the hottest month of the year. Pick an up-and-coming author that you think will be the next hottest thing.

  I haven’t actually read too many really new, up-and-comers lately, but these authors only have one or two books out there; I don’t know if they will be the next hottest thing but I feel like they deserve to! (I just realised it’s hard to read: Heidi Heilig is the author of The Girl from Everywhere).

September.
…is time for students to go back to school! Pick a book you read for school that you actually enjoyed.

I actually read this myself a year or so before I had to study it, but I didn’t mind revisiting it (and I’m also having trouble calling to mind books I read for school right now). We actually did a comparative study of Emma and the movie, Clueless, and to this day, I can still quote quite a lot of Clueless by heart.

October.
…is time to celebrate Halloween! Pick one character that you would love to dress up as.

Let’s be honest here, if Halloween was as big in Australia as it in the States, I would probably alternate between Doctor Who characters and Disney. So since she’s my favourite Disney Princess and this was also one of my favourite 2015 reads, let’s say Rapunzel.

November.
…is the month when we’re reminded of how much we have to be thankful for. Choose one book you’re grateful for having read and give a shout-out to the person who recommended it!

The Winnie-the-Pooh series, which I first read when I was about five years old, and I still have a boxed set of the hardcovers on my shelf (though it’s one I had to go out and buy myself; the ones on my shelf as I grew up were my sister’s). I never really had them recommended, they were just always there.

December.
…is a time when friends and families come together and celebrate. Name one book you would give as a gift.

I was tempted to name my own book here, but I refrained. 🙂 I was trying to go for some variation because this would really depend on the person, but I guess all the books I would consider giving as gifts are fantasy of one form or another.

January.
…begins a new year. Name a resolution you made this year and if you’ve kept it or not!

I didn’t do resolutions this year. While I’ve got goals in various forms, they have only been set fairly recently (see my 100 Days of Productivity posts).

February.
…is the month for relationships. Name your favorite book relationship: romantic, platonic, or familial, your choice!

In order: Todd/Viola from Chaos Walking (which is friendshippy for the majority of the series, though it gets a little bit romantic towards the end), Cress/Thorne, who were pretty much my 2015 OTP (would I have read Winter right through if not for hanging out for more Cress/Thorne? Probably not), and Chava/Ahmed in The Golem and the Djinni, which is only very mildly romantic and doesn’t even have to be read that way if you don’t want to. I was trying to find some books I’d read with familial relationships, since I’m a sucker for sister stories, but apparently I confine those to movies/TV more than the books I read.

I’m not going to tag anyone particular for this, but please do feel free to steal if you like!

Advertisement

2015: A Year in Books

I was going to do a nice retrospective blog post today, but time got away. It’s already 8:35pm, and I’m generally not one for staying up and seeing in the New Year, so I’ll be going to bed at my usual time. However, in various places on the Internet, I found a couple of fun year-in-review bookish memes, so I thought I’d do them myself and post them here to cap off 2015. You can also see my GoodReads 2015 Year in Books.

#WWW Wednesday – October 21, 2015

Happy Back to the Future Day, everyone! Here is a celebratory picture of me:

This may be the first time my glasses have ever showed up on this blog, despite the fact that I am wearing them more often than not.

Anyway, that’s not actually what we’re here for. We’re here for WWW Wednesday, a bookish meme that is hosted by Sam over at A World of Words and you can join in over there by leaving a link to your own WWW Wednesday on today’s post.

• What are you currently reading?

I’ve just started The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker. The only chance I had to read today was while I was waiting to pick up my partner from work, and that wasn’t very long. But this promises to be a really good book, I think.

• What did you recently finish reading?

I finished Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth and gave it four stars. There was less Rapunzel than I hoped for, but it was still an interesting read.

I listened to Silhouette, which is another Doctor Who novel. It was set in Victorian London and featured the Paternostra Gang as well. It was narrated by Dan Starkey, who was able to do a very good Peter Capaldi impression. In fact, most of his male character voices were great, though the female ones were a bit annoying.

And I finally read Fangirl! It’s due back to the library on Friday or Saturday, so I just got there in time. It got 2.5-3 stars from me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but there were enough parts that fell flat for me to not rate it higher. I think perhaps if I was still as much of a fangirl as Cath is (and trust me, I was once), I might have enjoyed it more. I also wondered if the Simon Snow “excerpts” were just made up by Rainbow Rowell to pad her NaNoWriMo word count. They weren’t especially relevant, except for maybe giving us a glimpse of the world Cath is so invested in.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

I also have We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and the first two volumes of Return to Labyrinth from the library, so they’ll be up next. I will get through the graphic novels very quickly.

It’s getting quite late now, so I’m going to head off. See you soon!

#teasertuesday – The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too

The new Lockwood & Co. book came out today! That link goes to the series page on GoodReads, and you can read my reviews of the first two books here and here. I had the new one pre-ordered on Amazon, so I was able to start it on my break today. Here’s the teaser:

Remember I said there was that moment of sweet precision, when we jelled perfectly as a team? Yeah, well, this wasn’t it.

At the moment that this remark is made, Lockwood is dangling out a window with his coat on fire, George is dangling from a ladder and Lucy (the narrator) has lost her sword down a trap door and is trying to avoid ghost-tentacles. And it’s only chapter three! Things often go awry like this for Lockwood & Co but they always manage to get the job done anyhow.

Please feel free to join in on Teaser Tuesday by visiting A Daily Rhythm and leaving a comment there. I’ll see you tomorrow for WIPpet and WWW Wednesday!