Back To School Book Tag!

Hello Everyone!

So I’m heading back to school this week! It’s my last Fall semester as a graduate student (for this degree anyway 😉 ). So in honor of heading back to classes, I wanted to make this an “unofficial” back to school week here on the blog. I’ve had a few posts planned out for a while, but I haven’t written them up ’til now (🙈 ), but I’m hoping to have them all up the rest of this week! 😉

Starting off today is the Back to School Book Tag! This tag originated with Jenny  on her YouTube Channel: Jenny Unscripted.

Who doesn’t like going back to school? Okay, well maybe not everyone loves this time of year as much as I do. I just love browsing the isles of target (or staples, or anywhere where lovely school supplies are sold) and looking at all the beautiful school supplies. I buy new supplies every year (even still in grad school!). I just can’t pass up the opportunity to get new pens, stationary, binders, notebooks…haha I could go on forever! It’s seriously my favorite time of year & it coincides with my favorite season, Fall 🙂 So in celebration of the time of year I thought I’d combine my love of going back to school with my love of books 🙂

Name Your Favorite Author’s (or books) Writing Syle

Libba Bray is one of my favorite author’s. I have so many authors for this one, but I decided to pick Libba Bray because I feel like her writing style is unique and so on point. I love everything she’s written and feel like she’s such a strong writer. All the worlds and characters in her works are so developed and her scope of writing is also diverse genre wise. She’s one of the first author’s I fell in love with as a teenager and am so happy that I picked up her book, A Great and Terrible Beauty, after browsing the shelves on afternoon in Borders. 🙂

A Book That Made You Frustrated!

I do have to admit that I love Math. However, geometry & trigonometry always seemed to frustrate me because of my lack of love & skills for this particular type of math. So for this prompt I picked She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick. I was super excited to read this book and I felt like Sedgwick was still a good writer and the main character Laureth was definitely well developed, but the plot was frustrating and left me disappointed in the end. You can read more on my thoughts in my review of the book.

A Book That Really Made You Think or Question Things

This recent read really made me think. I haven’t read from this POV before and I really felt like I had a front row seat to the history of Ghana and a peak into life of Ghanaians during multiple generations. This story was eye-opening and heartbreaking. The characters & the families as a whole had to go through so much. Still, this novel was written beautifully and I loved the way Gyasi decided to tell this story. While I wanted to read more from each character, I still felt like I had a resolution for each one as I transitioned into the new character’s POV. Overall, this book was fantastic & I felt like it really made me take a step back & think about history in a new way.

Your Favorite Book From a Different Time Period

A favorite book this year from a different time period was actually a YA non-fiction title that I picked up for class, The Symphony for the City of the Dead. This book focuses on the Russian point of view of Post World War I through WWII–mainly following the life of Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich. I was instantly drawn in, as I have Russian heritage, and I quickly immersed myself in the history of this nation and these people. To say the Russian people suffered during this time is an understatement. Anderson does a wonderful job of displaying the hardships that the Russian people faced not only from Nazi Germany, but from their own government. It was a dense read, but a fascinating one. You can read more of my thoughts in my review on the book.

A food from a book you would love to try*

I can’t quite remember what food was mentioned within Anna and the French Kiss, but I know any kind of food from Paris is food I want to try! I spent two whole days in Pairs and it still wasn’t enough! I really loved their croque monsieur & who doesn’t love crêpes? Ugh to be back in Pairs again… Anyway, hopefully this book works for this prompt haha because I’d definitely love to try French food for lunch 🙂 Also, if you’re looking for more of my thoughts on this book than you can check out my review on the book here. 

Your Favorite Book with Pictures

Nobody Likes a Goblin is a fun picture book that I read this year. It’s great for fantasy lovers and shows readers how to be brave & stay loyal to your friends. Eventually, you’ll find your tribe and that’s exactly what happened for the Goblin. This was really so cute & I loved how the fantasy elements of the story kept my interest as an “adult” and that the story was still relatable to any reader’s age 🙂

A Book You Would Love to See Turned into a Play**

So I just started reading this fun graphic novel series. It’s a great GN series for younger readers and I fly through each book within 10-15 minutes maybe 20. It’s that quick of a read. Even though it’s a super easy & fast read, I find the stories so funny & entertaining! I so love the idea of a Lunch Lady spy, action-star person. So with the humor, action & unique idea, I feel like this should totally be put on broadway! I mean come on, who wouldn’t go see this live?!

Name a Character You Think (or Know) Would Have the Same Musical Taste As You

I actually wasn’t too sure about this one. But then I was like, I’d totally be a member of The Raven Boys because I’m kind of weird like them all haha. So naturally I picked Blue & her boys for this prompt. I’m sure one of them would have the same musical taste as me. I mainly listen to rock and some pop, but really I dabble in all musical genres so I’m sure I’d bond with one of the lovable group members over music 😉

A Book or Author That Is Relaxing

These fun pocket-sized paperbacks were some of my favorites in high school! I loved the romance stories that were light-hearted and a quick read. Besides this one from Rachel Hawthorne, I also enjoyed Love on Cue, A Novel Idea, Royally Jacked and Summer in the City by Elizabeth Chandler. Each story had a sweet romance and characters that I related to a lot being a teenager and awkward haha. But they were fun and definitely my idea of a relaxing read. I think in YA these days, it’s hard to find a relaxing read as some drama or quest or suspense is happening in every storyline. I mean I don’t mind that, but these stories were definitely breaks from that and I hope they start making/writing them again 🙂

A Book Someone Else Told You to Read & You Ended Up Enjoying It

So my two co-workers recently suggested that I pick up this one. I had actually already purchased A Study in Charlotte when it released earlier this year because I love all things Sherlock Holmes related & knew I wanted to get my hands on this right away. So come release day, I went to Barnes & Noble and treated myself to this gem. However, I didn’t actually pick it up to read until the urgings of my co-workers this past summer. Mainly my lack of picking up the story had to do with school reading assignments, but I still I didn’t have any real excuses for not picking this one up sooner. As soon as I did read it though, I really ended up enjoying it! I cannot wait for the next book & I’m so thankful to my co-workers who urged me to give it a try sooner rather than later 🙂

Thanks so much for stopping by & reading this fun book tag! I hope you enjoyed it & are having some fun gearing up for back to school whether you still attend school or not. This will always remain one of my favorite times of year even when I’m done with school haha so I will most likely still be browsing the school supply isles every Fall 😉

*I switched the order of the tag to put lunch time around “lunch time” in this fake class schedule. It originally appeared after music class.
**I changed the prompt to see changed into a ‘play’ versus the original prompt of see changed into a ‘movie.’

Happy Reading!

*Disclaimer: None of my links on this post or on this blog are affiliate links. If I ever begin to participate in affiliate links, I will let you know. 🙂

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