Coffee Book Tag (AKA WAKE UP, LARA!)

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.

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?
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4 comments:

  1. Ooh, I may need to politely steal this from you . . .

    Haha, I see what you're saying about Harry Potter. I'm just glad the fans are being pretty civil with varying degrees of liking or not liking The Cursed Child. xD And I'm hoping my kids will someday, miraculously be able to avoid the many spoilers so we can read the series together like my parents did with me.

    Honestly, one of my favorite things about the book blogging community is how we all agreed without agreeing to anything not to say too much about We Were Liars. It's fantastic.

    Erm, I'm not exactly sure what qualifies as Indie authors, either. Ones that aren't recognized as much? Self-published? Published with Indie publishing houses?

    Okay, I looked it up and it looks like most people define it as being a truly independent author. So whether you've self-published or set up your own publishing house, you retain all the rights and are in charge of basically everything. Sadly, I still don't know a lot of Indie authors!

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    1. Go ahead - politely steal as much as you want! I was actually so tired that I forgot to tag anyone while I was writing this, so you might as well take it and run. I'd love to read it if you do end up stealing. ;-)

      Oh, I hadn't thought about how good people are being about their opinions of Cursed Child - I guess because there hasn't been any drama, it's kind of faded into the background a little? I love the idea of a future you reading HP with your kids, too, and it's great that your Mum read them with you. Mine kind of threw the first book at me and told me to get on with it ... although honestly I don't think nine-year-old me would have had the patience to buddy-read something as amazing as Harry Potter.

      Truly independent author ... so kind of like Roseanna White? I think she's the only person I can think of who writes and has set up her own publishing house, although some of her books are with more traditional houses. So I don't even know if she qualifies. Where are all the Indie authors?

      *peers under sofa suspiciously*

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  2. I'm more of a hot chocolate fan than a coffee fan myself. :) I am not familiar with any of these books, but I did have to stop and say that the Alice Jones book looks very intriguing and I might just try it out because espionage and chill girls and MG are good things for my heart.

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    1. Hot chocolate is the best - I honestly don't understand why they bothered inventing coffee anyway, since we've already got the chocolate. I really hope you enjoy Alice Jones - it's one of the best adventures I've read in a while and hopefully the espionage shouldn't disappoint.

      Thank you for taking the time to comment, and I'm really glad you liked the post!

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