My Life in Books Tag

Hey guys, welcome to another tag. I don’t know who the original creator of this tag is, but I’ve seen it all over booktube and blogs. Once again, I wasn’t tagged to do this by anyone. I just thought it would be fun to do, so here we are. Let’s just get into the questions.

1. Find a book for each of your initials.

 My last name starts with a Z, so this is going to be interesting…

A-   Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

R-   Renegades by Marissa Meyer

Z-   Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

That last one is probably cheating, but I’m pretty sure don’t own any books that have a word that starts with Z in the title, so this is the best I can do. We’re just going to go with it.

2. Count your age along your bookshelf – which book is it?

I’m writing this post in a place that is not my house, so instead of counting on my physical bookself, I went to my Read shelf on Goodreads, sorted by author (since that’s how my actual shelf is organized), and counted 19 down from the top. The book I landed on is probably not the book I would have landed on if I’d counted on my actual bookshelf because there are several disparities, but it works. (Wow, so far this post has a lot of makeshift answers.)

The book I landed on is Heist Society by Ally Carter. It’s the first book in the Heist Society series, which follows Katarina Bishop, who is a thief from a family of thieves. There are three books, and I don’t know if there are going to be more, but it doesn’t really matter because each book stands on its own. Each book is like a snippet in Katarina’s life as a thief, and there is very little overlap other than the fact that it still has most of the same characters. I read these books a long time ago, and I liked them well enough.

3. Pick a book set in your city/state/country.

I live in the United States, so picking a book for my country is easy. I could basically grab any random book off my shelf and it would have a pretty good chance of being set somewhere in the U.S. That feels like a cop out, though, so before I do that, I’m going to try to see if I have any books set in my state, which is Texas. If I owned Emergency Contact, that would be a perfect one, since it’s set in Austin… but I don’t.

I guess I’ll pick The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan. It’s dominant setting is definitely not Texas, but (spoilers, I guess), the characters are in Texas for a good chapter or two, so I think it counts.

4. Pick a book that represents a destination you would like to travel to.

One of my life goals is to go to France, and particularly Paris, France. For that reason, I’m choosing Grim Lovelies by Megan Shepherd. It’s a new fantasy novel set in Paris that’s coming out in October, so obviously I haven’t read it yet, and nor do I own it, but I’m super excited for it. I found out about it because of all the recent unboxings of the ARC on booktube.

From what I’ve heard, it’s a fantastical version of Paris, and the main character is what’s known as a Beastie: an animal that was turned into a human through magic, and who is basically a slave to the person who made them that way. When the main character discovers her evil mistress dead, she is blamed for the crime, and she has only three days to find out the real killer before she and all the other Beasties in the household turn back into animals. It’s like a murder mystery with a magical twist, set in Paris, and it sounds like something I will absolutely love.

5. Pick a book that’s your favorite color.

Probably Calamity by Brandon Sanderson. My favorite color is purple, and usually I’m into darker purples, but I love how many different shades of purple there are on this cover. They really grab your attention.

6. Which book do you have the fondest memories of?

I think I have to go with Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Back in elementary school, we would go to the school library as a class every week to pick out a book, and every week, I would check out that book. I don’t even know how many times I read it, but I loved it. I actually haven’t reread it in a really long time, but it still holds so many fond childhood memories for me.

7. Which book did you have the most difficulty reading?

 There are a lot I could pick for this… Sadly, most of them are classics. I don’t know what it is, I just always struggle with classics. It’s why I don’t read them very often, which I know I should change.

I guess I’ll pick The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Controversial, I know. I read this book at a friend’s house, when she shoved her copy at me and told me to read it (side note, her copy is a little leather-bound edition with gold-edged pages; it’s beautiful). I did finish it, but it was so difficult for me to understand and get into, and I didn’t end up liking it very much. I do want to maybe try again someday, and see if I like it better, especially since I have the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on my shelf, and I do want to eventually read that. I almost feel like I can’t rightfully call myself a fan of fantasy and not at least try to read J.R.R. Tolkien.

8. Which book in your TBR pile will give you the biggest sense of accomplishment when you finish it?

I could probably pick The Lord of the Rings trilogy for this one, but I already talked about that in the last question, so I’m going to pick something different. That something different is also a shameful thing for me to not have read, not just as a fan of fantasy, but as a book lover in general.

I have not read the Harry Potter series. I own all the books because my mom has read them, but I haven’t even opened the first book, or glanced at the pages. This series has been on my TBR for practically my entire life. When I finally get around to it, and especially when I finish it, I have to imagine that will be extremely satisfying for me.

Those are all the questions for the My Life in Books Tag! This tag is pretty old, and I don’t know who has done it, so I send out a general tag. If you’re reading this and you want to do this tag, you are tagged. Go have fun.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next week.

-Ariel