Get to Know Ya Tag: Some Bookish Questions to Get to Know Me a Little Bit Better!!

I don’t even want to look back on when I last did a tag.

A lot of bloggers are bad at remembering to do tags and awards that people tagged them to do, and I’m not excluded!! But I’ve been getting a lot of new followers lately, probably as a result of the Book Blogger Awards and me being much more active again, so I thought, why not do a tag to help people get to know me a little better!

I also was going to post my nominations for the Book Blogger Awards (by the way, GET THOSE IN BY 11:59PM CDT ON JULY 20!!!), but anxiety got the best of me*, and I was running short on post ideas. So it was perfect timing that the lovely Jenna @ Bookmark Your Thoughts tagged me for this! Be sure to check out her post as well!!

*I feel terrible for encouraging people to post their nominations and not doing that myself, but I think as a host it might be better—both in general and for my anxiety—not to do them publicly in case people think I’m showing bias towards the people I nominate!!! I’m obviously not, but every time I think about posting my nominations, I just get filled with a terrible fear that people will think I’m rigging it!!!!!

1. favorite book of all time

I’m highly indecisive and also your typical reader, meaning I CAN’T choose a favorite book of all time!! So here are six books (yes, six, I’M SORRY) from my Goodreads favorites shelf: three hyped, three lesser known.

   

    

2. favorite book five years ago

Somehow, despite my terrible memory, I think I know what my favorite was five years ago, but I’m going to talk about it in the next question and don’t want to repeat myself so:

3. favorite duology/trilogy/series

If I wasn’t trying not to repeat books, you all know I would have chosen Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Instead, this one goes to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which is the ULTIMATE series of my heart, because it’s such a big part of my childhood!!

I read the series when I was… 8 years old?? And I was just in love with it every age after that. It was the first series I became truly obsessed with, and it introduced me to fandom (which led me to YA!), and I still love it so so much. Like, I love it to the point that I’m almost tearing up writing this!!!

4. last book you read

I just finished Her Royal Highness, which I read with my lovely friends Lily and Melanie!! It was… disappointing, to say the least. It was fun and fluffy and I did somewhat enjoy it, but the lack of development, abruptness of the writing, and the weird pacing just threw me off so much. But at least… gay princess??

5. last poetry book webcomic you read

The original question was poetry book (as you can obviously read), but because I haven’t read one this year, I decided to make it more relevant to me and do a webcomic instead!!

The last webcomic I read was Empyrea, which I enjoyed and has nice art! I’m really invested in the characters already, and I’m excited to see where the story goes with the truly glorious soul-eating monster beast things.

Also, after seeing your excited responses to me asking you all whether or not you wanted to see a webcomic rec post, you can DEFINITELY expect one from me in August!!!

6. what book most influenced your life?

Starfish is another all-time favorite of mine It just… means so so much to me as an Asian reader, and I don’t think I could ever forget this book. I don’t even know how to explain how it spoke to me, but just the way it discussed Asianness and beauty and how being Asian affects how you see yourself made me feel so, so seen.

7. book that made you ugly cry

The first time I read The Song of Achilles, I didn’t tear up until the last 10%. And then at the last sentences (if you’ve read, you know it)… well, here’s what I wrote in a post about it: “I sobbed for a full 10 minutes before having to get up from my bed and take a walk, only to lie back down and stay awake crying and thinking about the book for an hour. Fun times.”

And I can’t forget the book that made me cry the most last year!! Anger is a Gift is absolutely brutal but so so beautiful, and I wish I could shove it in everyone’s hands. There’s one scene that I just started sobbing over, and I couldn’t stop crying for the next 30 minutes as I kept reading the book. I cried a lot more after finishing the book and Actually woke up with swollen eyes!!!

8. book that made you laugh

   

I’m going to steal Jenna’s answer for this one: Red, White & Royal Blue made me laugh SO many times out loud. It captured modern humor the best out of any book I’ve read, and it appeals to my exact sense of humor and I LOVE IT!!

And because I’m Riordan trash, the Magnus Chase series was also so so funny. I’m definitely rereading this next year (hi May), because I didn’t appreciate it enough my first time around (I rated the first book only 3 stars HOW??). Magnus and Alex are comedic legends and I love them!!

And also, just to mix it up, a book I laughed over because it was just SO BAD is Shatter Me!!! The metaphors in this book were ridiculous to me, and there were so many scenes that I thought were so absurd that I had to laugh. (Also, the cover makes me laugh.)

9. character you’d like to be for the day

I have a lot of favorite book characters, but I don’t think I’d ever really want to BE one?? But if I had to be gay on main… being Renee Walker from The Foxhole Court or Ella Malikova from Gemina would be cool because I’m in love with them!!!!!

10. book so good you dreamt about it

Okay so this isn’t really an answer to this question, but I HAVE 2 STRANGE BOOK-RELATED DREAMS AND I’M GOING TO TELL THEM BOTH. (My dreams in general are honestly so weird and I have so many good ones I could share, but I won’t, as not to scare off my new followers.)

yes this is my new favorite image

First up is my favorite: I dreamt I was going surfing with Percy and Annabeth… after watching The Lightning Thief movie. I also distinctly remember the feeling of clutching my sheets and lifted my legs up in the air as I was “surfing”. I have terrifying dreams. This dream also somehow morphed into me and Kate, a character from The Mysterious Benedict Society, running away from Ten Men (the villains) and hiding behind cars in a car dealership!!

My second book-related dream is short: I dreamt that I was being killed by Kaz Brekker. No detail. Just saw Kaz holding a knife, coming at me, and then that was it.

11. book you DNFed

The most memorable book I didn’t finish was The City of Brass. Ah, I can hear the entire world sighing as I say this, because they know what’s about to come out of my mouth!!

I made it just over halfway through the book (353 pages, to be exact) after 19 days of trying to read it. It was literally so. boring. Dreadfully, DREADFULLY boring. I’m very bitter about it, because I went in expecting it to be a 5-star read, and it just was… so not. (1 star babyyy.)

12. what book are you most excited to read?

My 2 most anticipated books for the last half of 2019!!: Ninth House and Gideon the Ninth.

I feel like these are the perfect choices for this tag, if you want to get to know my taste in books. Both of these are fantasies (Ninth House being an urban fantasy), and both of them are somewhat dark—I think Ninth House is more disturbing because it involves cults, while Gideon the Ninth has necromancy! Gideon also is apparently hilarious and features lesbians, so like… give me.

I TAG YOU!

I haven’t done a tag in FOREVER, so here a few people I don’t think I’ve ever tagged in anything before! (If I have, I’m very sorry, I have terrible memory.)

• Tiffany @ Read by Tiffany
• Marija @ Inside My Library Mind
• Maha @ Sunshine n’ Books
• Rhi @ Marshmallow Harmonies
• you, if you want to do it!

Click here for the questions:

1. favorite book of all time
2. favorite book five years ago
3. favorite duology/trilogy/series
4. last book you read
5. last book of poetry you read
6. what book most influenced your life?
7. book that made you ugly cry
8. book that made you laugh
9. character you’d like to be for the day
10. book so good you dreamt about it
11. book you DNFed
12. what book are you most excited to read?

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what was the last book you read? have you dreamt about any books (or had any funny book-related dreams)? and tell me all about books you ugly-cried over, I always need recs for that!!