The 20 Questions Book Tag: Answers to the questions you did not ask

Technically this is a book blog. I mean, the word “read” is in the title. There’s a review category in my main navigation bar. I talk about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a lot and that’s a book.

But this blog is focused on one thing more than it is focused on books, and that thing is Me.

Books I like. Books I don’t like. Shows I like. Graphics I make. My jokes. Me talking about how obsessed I am with myself. Me talking about my life except scratch that last one because I only do that when I’m complaining vaguely about the shambles it’s in.

Long story short, you guys have a lot of unsolicited info about Moi.

Every once in a while I like to give you EVEN MORE. In massive amounts, and today I’m going to answer twenty Qs you never A’d.

This is the 20 Questions Book Tag!!! I was tagged by Bentley @ Book Bastion and May @ Forever and Everly, two beautiful people with beautiful blogs. I love all four of these things (Bentley + Bentley’s blog + May + May’s blog) more than life. FOLLOW THEM!

Now let’s get into it.

How many books are too many books in a series?

Two.

Okay no just kidding but god I am so into standalones. There should be more standalones. NOT EVERY STORY NEEDS A SERIES TO BE TOLD.

Also I am sick to death of all these authors “”finishing”” “”series”” and then adding more books like they’re slick. Maas. Clare. Now Bardugo?! It never ends and my suffering is infinite and truth is fake and everything is deceit.

Anyway I don’t think many series need to be over four books.

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How do you feel about cliffhangers?

At, like, the end of a book? When there’s going to be another book that won’t come out for another small infinity? (That was a half-assed John Green joke. Shoutout to The Fault in Our Stars, as always, for being garbage.)

Anyway they bug me for a while but then I end up forgetting about it and then forgetting the book and then forgetting the series and then seeing everyone in my various feeds reading the just-released sequel and then I’m like, “I guess I have to reread this book now? And then buy the new one?” And then months pass and then I reread and then months pass and I still haven’t bought the new one and at this point if I got the sequel I’d have to reread AGAIN and that’s just insane.

This is all to say they don’t affect me very much at all.

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Hardback or paperback?

Hardback. All the way.

They’re prettier. They look better on a shelf. They’re easier to read. (I feel like we don’t talk about the fact that you can damage a paperback irreparably literally by reading it enough). (And not even like reading it wrong. Just…reading it. If you open the book past an acute angle the book will permanently scar itself out of righteous fury.)

Dust jackets are weird, yeah, but hardcovers don’t PUNISH YOU FOR READING THEM.

I’m very passionate about this.

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Favorite book?

ALICE.

ALICE.

ALICE ALICE ALICE.

No, yeah.

It’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

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Least favorite book?

Oh god it’s so much harder to pick just one.

That’s not normal, right? People who like reading have a harder time picking a favorite than a least favorite? Huh. I wonder what that must be like.

Let’s do a fun top-ten-in-no-particular-order. Rant reviews linked! ❤

1. Thirteen Reasons Why
2. The Fault in Our Stars
3. The Girl on the Train
4. When We Collided
5. Perfect Ten
6. The Light We Lost
7. This is Where the World Ends
8. Alex, Approximately
9. In a Perfect World
10. A Court of Wings and Ruin

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Love triangles, yes or no?

No.

Next!

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The most recent book you just couldn’t finish?

I try to…never do this? I have DNFed 9 books in my whole human existence. If a book reaches an unimaginable level of garbage to which I cannot finish it, I’ll usually know early enough to just…not really start reading it.

Or the force of my fury powers me through.

Usually I only DNF a book if it’s just boring as hell.

In February I read The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher, and DNFed the sh*t out of it. But that was for a Unique Reason.

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A book you’re currently reading?

Infinity. Infinity books. And also none.

But kind of The Sleeper and the Spindle and Jane Eyre and Ink and Bone and A Million Junes and a thousand others.

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Last book you recommended to someone?

I never recommend books to anyone in real life, because a) who reads in the human world and b) who puts themselves out there ever, and I never recommend books to anyone in the world of the internet because a) I never like anything and b) no one ever likes anything and c) I couldn’t handle the pain of recommending a book to someone that I love – the book, not the person; a book that is near n dear to my heart – and they didn’t like it???

I’d have to fall on my sword.

Technically speaking I shouted at the lovely May to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But I’m pretty sure I’m just constantly projecting that/attempting to foist it onto everyone more than actively recommending it.

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Oldest book you’ve read? (publication date)

Ohhhh god now I have to scroll through my classics shelf on Goodreads.

Wait! I’m not going to do that. Because I’ve read the Odyssey (not a fan) and that sh*t was composed eight centuries before 0.

Truly wild.

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Newest book you’ve read? (publication date)

Now this is considerably more complicated. I’m truly going to have to go to my ARC shelf on Goodreads and see which has the furthest-in-the-future release date.

The things I do for you guys, which you did not ask me to do and presumably do not care about at all.

Oh! I read Run, Hide, Fight Back, which was supposed to be out this summer and is now being pushed back to September 2019. Which mostly sucks because I actually wrote a review for it and everything and now I can’t post it.

The injustice.

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Favorite author?

I HAVE SEVERAL.

They are: John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jane Austen and Lemony Snicket and Jonathan Safran Foer and Roald Dahl and Emily Henry.

Ah.

Let’s just relish in the love for a sec.

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Buying books or borrowing books?

Buying!

Then you have them!

Forever!

What other justification do I have to give!

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A book you dislike that everyone else seems to love?

Oh jesus christ it’s like this tag was specifically designed to be incredibly difficult for me, specifically. Me alone. Me of everyone else in the universe who could possibly do this tag. Where is the fun. Where is the opportunity for some classic hijinks. Where are the jokes?

That last one is a genuine question because I am slightly sleep deprived and either being extremely brilliant right now or wildly boring. Can’t tell. Going to go with the latter.

Anyway I have an unpopular opinion tag here and an unpopular opinion shelf on Goodreads and I am garbage at updating both. Go to either and take your pick. Or go with the fact that every Sarah J. Maas book is actually bad in my privileged opinion, which rules all other opinions like a benevolent king.

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Bookmarks or dog ears?

Neither. I pick unwritten option #3: “Whatever scrap of paper happens to be nearby – usually a receipt or something or like a tissue but a clean one duh I’m not disgusting.”

I don’t have my life together enough to keep bookmarks around, let alone buy them, but god I also don’t hate myself or my books. WHO DOG EARS. WHO FOLDS A PAGE. WHO WOULD DO THAT………..TO A BOOK. (I hope at least one person read that in the “Who would do that……..to a friend?” voice from cinematic masterpiece I, Tonya.)

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A book you can always reread?

I AM SO ADDICTED TO REREADING RIGHT NOW. Look at all the books I’ve reread! Look at all the books I want to reread!

It’s an endless cycle of endless suffering and it will never stop.

I can always reread Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, because duh. I can often reread The Great Gatsby, because also duh. And my favorite contemporaries – The Hating Game, I’ll Give You the Sun, Anna and the French Kiss, Just One Day, Wanderlove – are compulsively reread-able.

I am constantly, actively resisting the compulsion to reread all of these books. The fact that I get any other reading done is a goddamn miracle. I don’t like to throw around the word “hero”…but I’m totally, definitively a hero.

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Can you read while hearing music?

I mean, technically I can. But like, unless I am on a bus or in a café or yards away from an erupting volcano or in some form of loud, people-centric situation, I would never ever want to.

And I’m pretty good while reading at blocking out the sounds of lava-related fear screaming noise.

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One POV or multiple POVs?

ONE.

PLEASE GOD, STOP WRITING BOOKS WITH MULTIPLE POVs.

At best, it is tolerable. It neverever adds to the story and the voices always sound the same and it’s just boring and confusing and I hate it.

There are some exceptions. Like I’ll Give You the Sun and Emergency Contact. But the rules do not apply to Jandy Nelson and Mary H.K. Choi, because they are goddesses among men and are allowed to do anything they want including murder.

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Do you read a book in one sitting or over multiple days?

Never in one “sitting,” because that would imply that I am capable of sitting down without getting a snack or opening my laptop or picking up a different book for 200-400 pages. And I am rarely that.

If a book is good or short or both, though, it won’t take me multiple days to read it. But it will take approximately 800 micro-sittings.

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Who do you tag?

I am going to be a truly garbage human being and take the pass on this one, because as I type this it is 12:49 a.m. and I have miles to go before I sleep. By which I mean I interrupted a strict regimen of packing and homework to write this post. Yippee.

But it should go without saying that if you want to do this post, consider yourself tagged!!! Even comment if you want and I will formally tag you. But, like. In the comments, though. Editing a post is too hard.

What are your answers to these questions? Do you prefer hardback or paperback? What’s a book you can always reread?

Which questions made you go “hell yeah, Emma, right as usual/often/okay at least sometimes”? Which made you think “Emma, you are objectively wrong, how typical, you pond monster”?