It’s time for another round of Tag Thursday! I was tagged in this one by Sarah, whom I love very much and you should absolutely check out. ♥

1. the struggle of getting started →

a book or series you struggle to begin because of its size
The Stormlight Archives series by Brandon Sanderson! Those books are just massive (I believe the 3 out so far are all 1k+ pages), and (if I recall correctly) there are going to be 7 of them by the time it’s all said and done.

2. cleaning out the closet →

a book or series you want to unhaul
The Conquerors Saga by Kiersten White. The last book was so awful, IMO, that it ruined the first 2 and made me never want to touch them again. ? I just haven’t gotten around to listing my copies for sale.

3. opening the window and letting fresh air in →

a book that was refreshing
The Captive Prince trilogy! I adore this series so much and am basically ALWAYS thinking about it, but also, it was refreshing when I first read it because at that time, I’d been really dragged into (and bothered by) this whole idea that you couldn’t read ANYTHING that ANYONE has EVER called problematic, because then people would hate your guts or whatever. I’d almost written this series off because I had acquaintances who were literally blocking anyone who gave it a positive review because they deemed it “trash”, and at that time, I just wanted to make people happy and not deal with drama, y’know?

My best friend talked me into giving the first book a try, and I ended up reading the whole series in about a week. It reminded me that there are always going to be scenarios where reviewers view things differently, and that’s okay. It also helped me realize that I had dipped into a section of the bookish community that was becoming toxic fast (as in the people who were shaming readers who enjoyed books they deemed problematic), and I got the heck out of some of those situations.

4. washing out the sheets →

a scene you wish you could rewrite
In A Court of Frost and Starlight (I think! It could have been ACOWAR… but I’m pretty sure it was ACOFAS), there’s a scene involving, er… someone “cleaning” the dirt off of someone else… yeah. I enjoyed the book overall, but I’d love to erase that scene. ??

5. throwing out unnecessary knick-knacks →

a book in a series you didn’t think was necessary
I don’t know if I’d even still like this series today, but as a teen, I read the Frankenstein series by Dean Koontz. It was originally a trilogy that he then went back and added 2 more books to, and I thought books 4 and 5 were ridiculously unnecessary and ruined the original “ending”.

6. polishing doorknobs →

a book that had a clean finish
Damsel had a pretty fun ending, and I thought it wrapped things up well. Mostly, I just REALLY like seeing justice served, one way or another. ?

7. reaching to dust the fan →

a book that tried too hard to relay a certain message
Unpopular opinion here, I think, but Watch Us Rise was so heavy-handed that I couldn’t even read it. It felt like a textbook on basic feminism, as opposed to a story that naturally wove in those same values. I adore feminist books and believe I can learn something new about being intersectional every single day, but this book just did not do it well at all.

8. the tiring yet satisfying finish →

a series that was tiring but satisfying to get through
I’m going to steal Sarah’s answer: The Raven Cycle. It emotionally and mentally exhausted me because I was so invested, but I genuinely loved the ending and thought it all closed up so nicely.

t a g s:

Cassie | Kal | Bex | Rachel | Amanda

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