Reader Problems Tag

Hello, my little addicts (Oh my, that is so your nickname now!), this is Evie coming back at you with another Tag post! Today I have had the honor of being tagged to do the Reading Problems Tag by Izzy over at The Reading Izzy! That girl is seriously great so go on and take a moment to hop on over to her blog? This tag was created by another awesome blogging buddy named Jay from over at Books ByJay! (She’s nice too, I swear!)

So, let’s quit yacking and get right down to it!

    1.   You have 20,000 books on your TBR. How in the world do you decide what to read next?

I am a horrific mood reader, me! If I am just not in the mood to read something then I simply can’t. My heart has to be in it, you know? How could I possibly read crime when I crave the sweet romantic pages of Anna and the French Kiss (I'm always in the mood for Anna...)? Read some sickly sweet and fluffy when all I want to do is strike a dramatic life-affirming pose and read a good feminist biography, huh? You see my point.

    2.   You’re halfway through a book and you’re just not loving it. Do you quit or are you committed?

Oh, my. All the secrets are coming out now, aren’t they? Sadly I’m a quitter. Quitters never win, winners never quit… But at least quitters don’t find out that Dumbledore dies, right? (I can say that little spoiler because it’s just about the worst kept secret ever.

    3.   The end of the year is coming and you’re so close, but so far away on your Goodreads reading challenge. Do you try to catch up and how?

Well actually, this is the first year I’ve ever attempted the goodreads challenge (why not check out my goodreads here?), but if I’m having a bit of a slump, not reading as fast as I’d like, well I like to take a trip to the local bookshop. Just the site of all those fresh-smelling paperbacks is enough to send me spiraling into a reading frenzy. TBR? What TBR?!

    4.   The covers of a series you love do not match. How do you cope?

I cope just fine thank you very much! I think a little bit of mix and match gives a bookshelf character, you know? Livens things up a bit! Why go red, red, red, when you can go red, green, blue, indigo, NEON YELLOW, black, white, rainbow, shartruce?! Besides, you should never judge a book by it’s cover! (She says a little guiltily…)

   

    5.   Everyone and their mother loves a book you really don’t like. Who do you bond with over shared feelings?

Well, I’d love to talk to you guys about it but I’m always so scared to write a bad review… But trust me, I may seem all nicey-nicey online but just see me in my Modern Studies class when someone starts talking about Sarah Manning or Carol Ann Duffy! I’m a wolf.

    6.   You’re reading a book and you’re about to start crying in public. How do you deal?

This actually happened to me in a reading lesson at school a few years ago when I was reading ‘Marley and Me’ for the first time. I think if you hold back the tears it kind of tampers with your overall experience of the book so I just bent my head and covered the 300^th page onwards with fresh salty tears! But luckily, with a book like that, all that I needed to say for the rest of the day when people questioned the puffy eyed look I was rockin’ was a simple, emotional ‘Marley’. They understood.

7. A sequel of a book you loved just came out, but you’ve forgotten a lot from the prior novel. Will you re-read the book? Skip the sequel? Try to find a synopsis on Goodreads? Cry in frustration?!?!?!?

Oh man, cry in frustration. I am such a simpleton. I STILL haven’t read Allegiant just because I can’t be bothered to spend a couple days going back over Divergent and Insurgent! It’s like, I’m dying to read it, but I’m also super lazy, but also I can’t remember whether Tris is Dauntless or Amity?! My brain goes into overdrive and deletes the very idea of the book I was wanting to read in order to avoid the prospects of a complete Evie meltdown!

    8.   You do not want anyone—ANYONE—borrowing your books. How do you politely tell people nope when they ask?

Well actually, I’m usually the one forcing books into other people’s hands! If I love a book then I absolutely need other people to love it to, otherwise I’ll have almost no release (well, apart from you lovely lot of course) for all my bookish emotions, and trust me - I usually have quite a lot of emotions. But every now and then there is that one person who will keep my book for years or bring it back like they used it to wipe the kitchen table, and in that case all you have to do is pull on your innocent eyes and tell them sweetly that you’ve already lent that book to your mum/auntie/sister/cousin/dog and so you couldn’t possibly give it to them for another 99 years… sorry! Problem solved.

    9.   Reading ADD. You’ve picked up and put down 5 books in the last month. How do you get over your reading slump?

I’ve actually done all my scientific research on the reading slump already and have published my ground-breaking findings in a post right here: How to Cure the Reading Slump! So, if you really want to know, and you know how to open a new tab you can just go read that! Go on, I’ll wait here.

    

   10.  There are so many new books coming out that you’re dying to read! How many do you actually buy?

Well, being sixteen, I’m poorer that bloomin’ Oliver Twist, so probably not as many as I’d like! Occasionally I beg my family to spend a few quid on poor old me, like the little begging cretin I am, but mostly I just harbor all the teeny tiny pennies in my purse until I can afford one or two all on my own!

Rich little blighters. 

   11.  After you’ve bought the new books you can’t wait to get to, how long do they sit on your shelf before you get to them?

I finish whatever I’m reading and then GO, GO, GO! I don’t see any point in waiting until my excitement has died a slow and painful death to read a book! All the fun is the buy-and-read-immediately buzz!

And that, my little addicts, (see, I told you I was gonna use it!) was the Reader Problems Tag! It was such lovely fun, but what would make it even more fun if we could have a wee chat about some of your answers to these questions down in the comments section. It’s comfy and warm down there, you’ll like it!

But before we do so, I would like to tag a few of the best blogging pioneers in the business (bar Izzy and Jay of course!)

Morrighan Rose from Elysian Fields Book Reviews

My girl Tika from Fangirl Confessions

Yvonne from A World Between Folded Pages

Ellen from Quest Reviews

Maz from Two Handed Library

And finally, Emily from Forever Literary

Thank you very much addicts! ( the third time makes it a definite thing )

Sisterhood of the World Blogger Award

Thank you so much, Jay, for nominating me! You should check out her blog: Books By Jay, it really is phenomenal. I’ve been dying to do this tag for ages and I am locked and loaded to write down the best darn answers to any tag you’ve ever read!  So…  let’s do this thing

1.   What was the best dystiopian book you've ever read?

Now this is a very difficult question indeed because I do love my dystopian and trust me I have read a lot of it! However, if you really are going to be so cruel as to make me choose then I would probably have to go with… ‘Delirium’ by Lauren Oliver. That book made me weep all kinds of ugly. I must have cried out around 50% of the water in my body. My friend told me what happens in the other two books though and with an ending like that I can’t bear to even attempt to read them… Aren’t spoilers the worst?

2.   How many books are on your TBR shelf?

I’m quite new to this whole blogging thing compared to some of you keyboard dinosaurs out there, but I think this is like a goodreads thing? In which case, I don’t know, because apparently I’m too stupid to work out how to use goodreads. You can find mehere if you want to try and figure it out for me…

However, if you’re talking about the books in the massive wobbly pile by my bed then I have about 10! Though it is my birthday this month so with any luck, that’ll double!

3.   What is the book that you really want to read but can't get your hands on?

So, recently in the UK the movie adaptation of ‘Love, Rosie’ by Cecilia Ahern came out and my friend pointed out in Waterstones that it had this really wicked writing style! Of course, it made me want to read it right then and there, immediately. But, what with being a teen n’ all my pockets are perpetually empty and I decided that £7 was far too much to pay for this book. Luckily, my town has about a thousand charity shops so I figured I’d just hunt the book down under its old title ‘Where Rainbows End’ (cheesy, I know).

I looked for that book for hours. I swear, I must have gone into more than twenty different odd-smelling shops and bumped into enough of the elderly to have me banned from all care homes ever, but it wasn’t there…

All of this just makes me want it more!

4.   What book is your most anticipated book of the year?

I can’t wait for ‘My True Love Gave To Me’! It’s a compilation of twelve different Christmas stories written by some of my absolutely favourite authors, including the Romantic Rainbow Rowell and the Spectacular Stephanie Perkins! It’s actually already out in the shops but I can’t afford it and it’s glorious pink pages… So, I will wait until my birthday and hope with all of my might.

5.   Who is your most read author?

I actually admitted in my recent blog ‘Defending Jacqueline Wilson’ that I have read a total of 32 of her books… I honestly don’t know how I did it! I was a massive fan of hers as a kid, every time we went to the bookshop I would pick out one or two of her books without fail. My brothers and sisters were fantasy addicts and they used to get annoyed by my total devotion to something that didn’t even have a single hobbit in it.

6.   Do you have any signed books? What are they?

Ha! I wish! The authors I love are mostly American but even the British ones never hop on over to my part of the UK! I never get any chances to get anything signed. I don’t buy the signed books from Waterstones again because of price, but even if they were cheaper it’s still not as exciting as having the actual living breathing author in front of you scrawling down your name… Maybe if I wish hard enough John Green or E. Lockhart will suddenly be compelled to jump on a plane, hunt me down and write a deep personal message in the front of my book, but until then, I can only dream.

7.   Who is your favourite contemporary author?

I cannot stress enough the love I feel for Stephanie Perkins and Rainbow Rowell. Every single one of their books so far has managed to break down my floodgates and turn my eyes into some kind of Niagra Falls lookalike. They have such a beautiful writing style and I am most comfortable when immersed in one of their gorgeous romances… *sigh*

8.   What is your favourite book to movie adaptation?

Book to movie adaptations are always better if the writer was in some way involved and that is why ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ was so on point! Chbosky himself wrote the screenplay for the movie so it was always destined for greatness. The characters were so well cast (even if Emma Watson's ‘American’ accent was so annoying…) and it was such an emotional movie. Seriously: Read it. Watch it. Rip your heart out of your chest. And then lose the ability to feel emotions entirely.

9.   Who is the most relatable character you've ever read about in a book?

I often find it quite hard to relate to a character because obviously in fiction the situations can be so extreme. I mean, I’ve never been forced to participate in a battle for the death against 23 other teens in which I nearly die of dehydration, fire, flying bug attacks and angry dogs who look weirdly like that guy I once knew, all the while being broadcast to millions of rich costume-lovers – so how the hell can I say I relate to Katniss Everdeen? That said, I would probably say I’m a bit like a few different characters. I’m stubborn like Emily in ‘A Heart Shaped Bruise’ (though, er… not to such a murderous extent) and I’m quirky like Lola in ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ – my friend says I even dress a bit like her!

10. Which book that you own has the prettiest book cover?

This one! (AND it has illustrations on the inside too!) 

My Questions:

If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this good and proper!

1.    If you could change the ending of any book, what would it be and what would you change it to?

2.    If you could dump hot noodle soup over the head of any one book character, who would you choose?

3.    You’re getting married! Choose your soon-to-be spouse, your best man, your bride’s maids and your DJ?

4.    Sum up one book with an album or playlist

5.    You’ve stole a chocolate fudge cake from the local bake and you’re about to be shoved into prison for twenty two years with one book character of your choice, who would it be?

6.    If you could ask any author three questions who would it be and what?

7.    You can attend one fictional school for an entire year, which would it be? (Hogwarts is banned from this answer because, well… duh!)

8.    Would you rather snog Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood or Ron Weasley? State why!

9.    If you had to get a tattoo of one characters face on a body part of your choosing, who and where would you choose? (Keep it clean people!)

10.                       You can bring one fictional character back from the dead, but by doing so you have to kill another: which two do you choose?

I Nominate:

Tika from fangirl Confessions

Anastasia from Cuddle Reads

Emily from Forever Literary

Ellen from Quest Reviews

Monica from My Island of Books

Good luck girls!