Okay guys. It's Tuesday right now, as I write this post, but there's no way I'm going to have time to get anywhere near my blog tomorrow. Everything that's going on is far too exciting.
I also happen to be exhausted. A four hour round trip that only exists to get you stabbed in the leg several times with a toxic substance (don't worry, I was stabbed by a trained professional, not some random person off the street) will do that to you. So there's only one thing for it ...
COFFEE.
Not that I actually drink coffee. My Dad is low-key addicted to it and I'm slightly afraid of following his example to become the world's most vacant caffeine zombie. It is, however, a good excuse to do the Coffee Book Tag, kindly created by a YouTuber named BangadyBangz, which I sneakily stole today.
Do you know what? I'm think I'm just going to get going before I start sleepy-rambling more than I already have.
The entire book was full of sweet moments and dark ones, hope and despair, darkness and light. If you haven't read it already ... what are you even doing with your life?
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I also happen to be exhausted. A four hour round trip that only exists to get you stabbed in the leg several times with a toxic substance (don't worry, I was stabbed by a trained professional, not some random person off the street) will do that to you. So there's only one thing for it ...
COFFEE.
Not that I actually drink coffee. My Dad is low-key addicted to it and I'm slightly afraid of following his example to become the world's most vacant caffeine zombie. It is, however, a good excuse to do the Coffee Book Tag, kindly created by a YouTuber named BangadyBangz, which I sneakily stole today.
Do you know what? I'm think I'm just going to get going before I start sleepy-rambling more than I already have.
Black: Name a series that's tough to get into but has hardcore fans.
Okay, okay. STOP YELLING AT ME!
No-one can deny that the Harry Potter series has an awful lot of hardcore fans. I consider myself one of them. Even the fact that you're yelling at me for calling it 'tough to get into' - don't deny it, I heard you with my superhuman abilities - proves that. And I definitely don't mean that the books themselves are in any way difficult to read, because I will never forget the day nine-year-old me lapped up the first one in less than twenty-four hours like it was nothing.
What I do mean is that it's pretty difficult to start reading the series nowadays and actually enjoy it. There's so much pressure from said hardcore fans expecting you to enjoy it that you go in with ridiculous expectations that even a book written specifically for you and all of your preferences probably couldn't live up to. And that's if you've somehow managed to miraculously sidestep all the spoilers that aren't really even considered spoilers anymore because everyone's expected to have already finished.
Heck, people are already starting to expect that you've already read or seen Cursed Child, and that released a MONTH ago. You can see why it's hard to start Harry Potter right now.
Peppermint mocha: Name a book that gets more popular during the winter or a festive time of year.
Maybe this is a little bit of a cheat, because it releases in October and has not yet experienced its first snow, but I can imagine that Robin Steven's Murder and Mistletoe is going to be a very popular Christmassy read. To be honest, the traditional setting of Deepdean School for Girls has always felt pretty festive to me - it reminds me of all the films that show around then - but this one is actually. Set. At. Christmas.
I can practically hear the carollers from here.
Hot chocolate: What is your favourite children's book?
This isn't a book I read when I was really the right age to be reading 'children's books'. Because who has a memory that stretches back that far? If I was an elephant, I would not be able to type.
Alice Jones: The Impossible Clue by Sarah Rubin was such an impulse buy that I'm not sure the word impulse even covers it. The thought 'this book is pretty and the blurb says something about maths I need to buy it' went straight from my eyes to my hands without even consulting my brain. There was nothing I could do.
It's been a Long Time since I've fallen in love with anything remotely Middle Grade-y, but I just adore everything about this book. The characters are multi-dimentionally brilliant and really smart, but believably so. I can believe that they're twelve-year-olds. Alice's sister Della is also a brilliant little packet of stardust who AUDITIONS FOR BROADWAY (AND OFF BROADWAY) MUSICALS.
Excuse me while I explode from the amount of empathy I feel for this character.
Double shot of espresso: Name a book that kept you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
E. Lockhart's We Were Liars is so difficult to talk about on a blog because we as a book blogging community basically agreed not to say anything about it other than what's on the blurb and maybe a few sensory details just to prove to you how beautiful (not to mention heart-, mind- and soul-breaking) it is. The prose is just minimalistically gorgeous. It takes place on a private island that is sun and sand and windblown amazingness. But not knowing about the ending kind of makes everything even more tense.
Starbucks: Name a book you see everywhere.
Well. Today, (actually yesterday when you'll be reading this, but I laugh in the face of continuity) Sabaa Tahir's A Torch Against the Night came out. When I checked out Twitter this morning, at least three of my favourite authors - or at least the authors I follow - were wishing it a Happy Book Birthday and generally just raving about it. I opened Goodreads just now to grab the link, and I saw two or three statuses in a row that were people starting to read it.
And no, I haven't read the first book in the series. All this propaganda is becoming a little bit pointless. Not that I'm exactly annoyed?
Oh, I don't even know. Ask me tomorrow when I've actually slept.
That hipster coffee shop: Give a book by an indie author a shoutout.
Um ... I would make a terrible, terrible hipster. I'm not even sure what defines an indie author. Can I get a little bit of help here?Oops! I accidentally got decaf: Name a book you were expecting more from.
Kiera Cass's The Selection is a dystopian romance involving an old-fashioned palace that has a jaw-droppingly pretty dress on the cover.
The last dystopian romance involving an old-fashioned palace that has a jaw-droppingly pretty dress on the cover that I read was The Jewel by Amy Ewing - and I absolutely adored that book. Everyone (or almost everyone) on Goodreads seems to hate it to such a degree that I'm starting to wonder if I even read the same book they did, or if I fell and knocked my head immediately after reading. But anyway. You can see why I went into The Selection with high hopes, and they weren't entirely dashed. The worldbuilding is interesting and there's an awful lot of incredible food (the kind that made me want to lick the page) ... but I just didn't really like America, the main character, anywhere near as much as I liked Violet from The Jewel. This made me very sad and a little confused.
The perfect blend: Name a book or series that was both bitter and sweet but ultimately satisfying.
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven is just a rollercoaster ride of sweet parts and absolute gross sobbing. I'm not saying I was happy about the ending, but satisfying it was. It made me really, really think about everything that had happened - and a lot had happened, so I had to do a lot of thinking - and by the time I'd really processed it properly, I realised just how important that almost bittersweet ending was.
The entire book was full of sweet moments and dark ones, hope and despair, darkness and light. If you haven't read it already ... what are you even doing with your life?
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In the comments: Do you guys drink coffee, or not? Are you hot chocolate fans, like me? And what do you think about the books I've mentioned?