Hi! It's Penny here and today I'm going to be doing the Classic
Rock book tag. As with all book tags this is just an excuse to talk about lots of
different books, except all the prompts are classic rock
inspired, as you might guess from the title.
I was tagged by Breakeven Book so I will leave his video
down below along with a link to the original tag
by Backlist Books. So the first prompt is Don't
Stop Believing - what is a book that inspired you?
So I struggled with this a little bit because I was trying to think of
something that really like inspired me to do
something but I couldn't come up with anything so instead I just went with a
book that I really liked and it made me think differently.
And that is Arrival by Ted Chiang or it's actually a
short story anthology originally published as
Stories of Your Life and Others. But then one of these short stories
is the inspiration for the movie Arrival. This is the movie tie-in
edition that i got for like two dollars at a thrift shop but
now that I've read it I really want to get a proper edition because I
absolutely loved this short story anthology and I don't normally like
short story anthologies, although I do do better
with ones where they're all written by the same author. And these are science
fiction short stories but they all just look at things in such a
strange world and all the concepts were amazing and I
think this is likely to be one of my favorite books of the year.
Next, we have Dream On, name a character who pursues their
dreams no matter what the cost. And for that, I'm gonna go with Ronan
from the Dream Thieves. If you know about Ronan's
ability, then you would see that he pursues his
dreams in a way that is far beyond what most people do.
And then this concept of dream type magic is
taken even further in the Dreamers trilogy, which the first
book Call Down the Hawk has been published but we're waiting on the
rest of the series. I know it's gonna take things so much further
and there's a bunch of other characters in that series
that also I would say pursue their dreams uh
actual dreams, not just oh I'd like to do something
but dreams made into reality. I love it. Next, we have
Stairway to Heaven - recommend your favorite book with lyrical writing. And
for that, I'm going to go with This is How you Lose the Time War by
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. This is a really strange
book where you basically have these two
factions trying to change the timeline so that
their future will be more likely. You've got a very technical
side and a more biological side competing against each
other. These two agents from either side start
writing letters to each other and the letters are just so beautiful.
The way that they are sending the letters to themselves,
it's explained in such a beautiful way. And the eventual romance that develops
between these two, honestly, everything about it was
beautiful and this book is just beautiful. Also, really short so easy to
read! Next, we have We're Not Gonna Take It -
name a character with a rebellious personality. And for that I'm gonna go
with Kinsey from Locke and Key. She's not actually in
this one. I need to get some more Locke and Key graphic novels. But this one
is like a a short story like side... what's it called? A one-shot.
I'm not good at comic vocabulary. But uh the main Locke and Key series is all
about this family who after this traumatic experience move
back to the family home and then they start finding all these
magical keys that let them do different things. It's very
dark. There is one girl, Kinsey, and at some point in the series
she uses the Head Key, which is one that lets
you like put a key in your head and open up and see the inside of your head and
she takes out her fear. And after that she just does whatever
the hell she wants because she's not afraid of doing it. And I really love her.
Also, like the whole family has gone through some really traumatic times
and I think that just makes you care even more about them.
Next, we have Who Wants to Live Forever? Who
or what is your favorite immortal character? And I feel like there must be
heaps of options for this but I really struggled to think of some. So
I'm probably missing something really obvious but the first one that
came to mind is actually the bad guy in the Kate
Daniels series. So Kate's father, Roland, is this
magical person who is essentially immortal,
has lived for a long time. I don't know how long?
Thousands of years at least. And in this series as magic is coming back into the
world, he's regaining his powers and it's really
interesting because while sometimes he is the big bad and
he's doing really horrible things, there's also a part where he just wants
to be a fatherly figure for Kate and a
grandfatherly figure for the the girl that Kate looks after and
honestly, for the whole series, even though he was the bad guy,
I was really hoping that he would somehow just
turn into a nice old grandfather. And I mean, almost.
Almost. There's still a chance for him because the series is kind of continuing
in the spin-off series that's currently being published online but we should get
the first book properly published next year and i'm
excited for it. Next, we have Come As You Are, which is recommend a
book that features drugs, addiction, or addiction recovery.
And honestly, I think it's debatable to call Come As You Are classic rock but
we'll we'll allow it. And also, this is another one where I feel like
there's lots of options that I just can't think of. But
the one that I am going to talk about is the Poppy War and
also even more the Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang.
So this is a chinese inspired war fantasy
where the magic in this world involves taking control of gods
and in order to do this there is an element of
drug taking. And that causes several characters to get
quite messed up and, especially in the second book the Dragon Republic, there is
a character dealing with quite bad addiction and working through
the awfulness of that. Now I didn't particularly like the Dragon
Republic and I would say to a large part of it was
that I didn't enjoy reading about the effects
of this drug addiction. I wanted more exciting
fantasy and I wanted the main character to take a more proactive role in the
story. But I can totally see why other people
have enjoyed the exploration of this topic.
Next, we have Dancing with Myself, name a book with no romance
or that has an asexual character. So I actually went through
my goodreads list of all the books that I've read and pretty much couldn't find
any that didn't have any romance, which
considering that I don't really like the romance aspects of stories,
it's kind of annoying. But recently, I did read
Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healy. This is a New Zealand author and the book
is set in New Zealand. It's about this girl who
gets involved in this maori mythology fairy type thing that's going
on. Again, I don't think I'm really the
target market for this. There were some y.a romances in it so you can't say
there's no romance in this. And one of the side characters
Kevin is asexual and right at the beginning of the book he's
talking with one of his friends about how to talk with other people about that.
Next, we have i would do anything for love which character would do anything
for the ones they love. And for this I'm actually going to go with
Sorsha from Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. This is another
New Zealand author and this is a seven swans
retelling. I don't know what that fairy tale is called but
basically Sorsha's seven brothers are turned into swans and she
is not allowed to talk and she has to weave these
nettle somethings... I've forgotten the details but anyway, it's really painful,
makes her hand bleed, and she's not allowed to talk while she's doing it
or she won't be able to get her brothers turned back. At the same time she gets
kidnapped by their kingdom's enemy and they are
holding her hostage and still she can't talk. And she goes
through such awful times because of this and
there's some really awful moments. I cried so many times
reading this book and also, there is a romance in this book and it
didn't bother me at all. I quite liked it, which given that I don't usually like
the romances, that says a lot for it. But just when I
went through all the books that i've read,
this is the one that really stood out as a character having gone through a lot
for the people that she loves. Next, we have
living on a prayer name a character that is in a precarious
living situation. And for this I'm gonna go
with uh Ascender the graphic novel series but also the series before this
the Descender graphic novels. Basically this whole
series every character is in a really awful situation. This one
especially their living situations at the beginning
of this? Not great. There's a war between humans and
robots so pretty much everyone is only just
managing to survive and at the end of Descender
a lot of people don't survive. Actually, at the end of this volume
several people don't survive. So rough times,
but I really love this series. Last we have
Good Riddance - name a book that took an unpredictable
turn. And for that, I'm gonna go with, not this one, but the sequel
the Empress by S.J. Kincaid. It took such an unpredictable turn
that most people don't like the second book because it just
wasn't what they thought it was gonna be. Personally, I thought it was really cool
how it really went in such a different direction.
But basically, in this series we've got this genetically engineered bodyguard,
she takes the place of the girl that she's looking after and goes into the
capital so that her uh what is the word for a person that
has a bodyguard? A bodyguardee? But what's the word? You tell me because
I don't know it. But regardless, she wants to protect this girl so she
takes her place and then in the second book someone that she
really trusted does something very unexpected and it's
quite dark. It's quite rough. I can see why people didn't like it.
But I loved it! And the third book for this series is coming out soon. And I'm
super excited to see where the series is gonna go
and what's gonna happen. And I can't wait. Anyway, that
is the classic rock book tag. Let me know if you have any other
better answers for some of these questions or if you've read any of the
books that I talked about today, I would love to talk with you more about them
down in the comments. Otherwise thank you so much for watching! I hope that you
are doing well and I will see you next time :)