The Bookish Bucket List Tag

Hey (: today I’m posting another tag and I’m very thrilled, and surprised, to be one of the first people to do this one. I was tagged by the wonderful and ever so lovely Madison @ Madison’s Inkwell who also happens to be the creator of this tag. So definitely make sure you check out her answers and have a look around at her other posts too; they’re fantastic! Thank you so much for tagging me in this.

The Rules:

• Link to the creator in your post (Madison’s Inkwell)
• Link to the person who tagged you
• Tag as many people you want
• Have fun!

1. What books or series that intimidate you (because of length, density, subject) would feel like an accomplishment to finish? 

The series that immediately came to mind for me when I saw this question was The Lord Of The Rings. I tried to read them once when I was younger but rather quickly decided that the writing style wasn’t for me. Now I’m mostly worried that I’d end up finding them dry as a result. Having looked them up on Goodreads they don’t appear as long as I remember them being although, to be fair, they definitely strike me as one of those books that would have very small writing for some reason. That’s what I found with Great Expectations at least; it didn’t look too long but it took me longer than expected since the font in my version was literally tiny. Another book that would feel like an accomplishment to finish is Vanity Fair – being a classic, and a very long one at that, it seems rather intimidating to me but I still quite fancy reading it for some reason.

2. What author would you like to coauthor a book with?

One author that I think it would be amazing to co-author a book with is J.K. Rowling. How awesome would it be to see your name listed alongside hers? Plus it would maybe mean that I’d get to help work on the Lord Voldemort backstory that I so desperately want!

Another author that I’d love to work with is Melissa Marr. She’s the author that originally got me into fairies with her wonderful Wicked Lovely series so naturally I’d love to work on a similar project with her. I also imagine that she’d have lots of good suggestions when it came to other books about the fae!

Honestly I could probably come up with reasons for a hundred different authors :L

3. If you could interview any author for your blog, who would it be? What’s one question you would ask?

Wow this is a tough one. There are loads that I’m sure I’d have hundreds of questions for but as soon as I try to think of them my mind goes blank.

I think I’m going to go with Rachel Caine. I’m not sure what made me think of this, maybe mentioning Shakespeare in my earlier post this week?, but I really enjoyed her Romeo & Juliet retelling and thought she did a fantastic job of putting a new spin on the tale. Plus she managed to include some of the original language without letting it become too overwhelming for any other readers like me who don’t get on well with Shakespeare. I’d like to ask her for her opinion on Shakespeare’s work, mostly due to the way that this story was written. I’d also love to ask her: ‘what made you decide to make Benvolio Montague the central character of your novel and how did you come up with his backstory?’ I’ve really loved some of her other series too so I’m sure I could come up with plenty of questions related to those as well.

4. As a writer, what genre is out of your comfort zone that you’d like to conquer someday and write within?

Anything I’ve written in the past seems to have contained some magical or supernatural element to it so I think the genre that I’d love to write, which is out of my comfort zone, would probably have to be contemporary. I’m worried that without having all things supernatural to fall back on that I wouldn’t know what to write. I just have this overwhelming fear that without magic my writing would be dull. Although I do want to stress that this doesn’t mean I find contemporary novels dull – I really enjoy them when I read them – I just wouldn’t know how on earth to write something as compelling within the genre :L

I think thrillers could also be quite challenging due to how difficult I imagine it must be to weave a mystery together. It must be so challenging to create a story that keeps the reader second guessing everything throughout without making events seem utterly implausible. Sometimes I look at some author’s twist filled novels and think to myself ‘how on earth did they do that?’

5. What specific edition of a book would you like to own someday? It could be rare, a first edition, an anniversary edition, signed, or one with a cover special to you, etc. 

Maybe this will sound bad but I don’t think I’ve ever really thought much about this before. I’ve always mostly just contemplated what books I want, rather than what version of them that I’d like. Naturally I’d really love to get some of my books signed because that would just be so amazing!!

The two specific books that sprang to mind when trying to answer this question though are: the Throne Of Glass Collector’s Edition and the Fairyloot edition of Finale. Both of them I saw on Instagram and instantly fell in love with because OMG they’re so, so beautiful!! I seriously love the sprayed edges on Finale too!! It just looks so awesome! So yes my reasons are totally shallow but it’s a total case of cover love with these two books. To be fair I do love Throne Of Glass and wouldn’t feel too bad about owning more than one copy of it as at the moment I only have it as an eBook. And I do need a copy of Finale too so why not the one with such beautiful sprayed edges?

I haven’t included a picture of ‘Finale’ as I’ve only really seen it on Instagram but it’s the version with card symbols sprayed onto the page edges.

As a side note I’ve also always been very envious of the US covers for The Graces, especially since my Kindle updated my copy to the latest UK version of it.

6. Are there any books or bookish items that you’d like to collect? 

I feel like I’m majorly in the minority saying this but I don’t really collect bookish items. That being said I would really love some sort of Harry Potter merchandise as I adore the series so, so much! I’ve recently seen a Harry Potter teapot that I liked online and I think I’d probably get some jewellery linked to it one day, maybe. I really love pretty, themed bookmarks too though so I’ll probably end up getting those one day, I hope. Basically I feel like if I bought merchandise it would end up being items that I could see myself using. So bookmarks, jewellery, mugs maybe bags? That sort of thing.

I haven’t actually read Alice In Wonderland but I also seriously love some items that are themed in such a way. They’re so beautiful and lovely and just… I definitely need some Alice stuff one day!!!

7. Name one bookish place you’d like to visit. (Not somewhere you’d like to visit because of a book and not a fictional place within a book. A library, bookstore, etc.)

Apparently my knowledge of bookish places is appalling as the only thing that immediately comes to mind is the Waterstones that I went to once in Oxford. From what I remember it was four or five stories tall (or my brain is mis-remembering which is equally possible) so I’d love to go back as that’s one hell of a lot of books to browse!

I’ve got to say that I also love the idea of visiting some of the places that I’ve learnt about from Madison’s blog! Hay-on-Wye sounds fantastic and basically like a book lovers heaven so I’ll definitely have to try and go there one day (thank you so much for mentioning it in your post Madison, it sounds amazing!). I’ve also fallen in love with some of the libraries in another post on her page: ‘Extraordinary Libraries of the World’ which you should definitely check out!

8. Name one bookish event you’d like to attend. (A festival, a signing, a book fair, etc.)

Definitely Bookcon but honestly? I don’t think I’d cope at an event like that. On the one hand it sounds amazing to go somewhere and meet loads of authors, see all the panels, get all your books signed and pick up some fantastic ARCs but then it sounds unbelievably busy and I don’t think my social anxiety could handle it. Actually I’m certain that it couldn’t. I haven’t even been to an author’s signing before though so I guess a good goal would be one of those for now.

9. Your WIP is getting published and designing the cover is solely up to you. What does it look like?

This is another really hard question! Actually it’s probably the hardest of them all and I’m honestly not sure how to answer it. I don’t really have a WIP just a few ideas at the moment (how on earth do people plan an actual entire novel? That’s the part that always stumps me most) and I’m not sure what the cover for any of them would really be like. For some reason I can’t picture a cover for my fairytale based ideas at all /: although actually I’m going to go for that one because as soon as I wrote that it started to slide vaguely into place. I want a light purple background with most, or all, of the details to be done in silver. I think I’d want a glass slipper on it but for the pumpkin carriage from Cinderella to almost be caging it in, if that makes sense? Then I’d throw in some smaller details around the edges, probably items like swords. And I’d want a little bit of blood dripping from the title but in silver, not red. I think? Oh I honestly don’t know; I’m not very good at this :L

10. What’s one thing you’d like to accomplish within the bookish world? As a writer, reader, blogger, whatever you want.

So I’d love to be an author but I honestly don’t know how to start. I’m terrible at planning novels and just… I don’t know. How do you plan one? I get snippets of ideas (some big, some small) but putting them altogether kind of overwhelms me. I’m planning to try and do some research sometime for my fairytale ideas so hopefully that’ll help and my other two ideas I really need to start jotting notes down for more regularly.

Other than that, I’m not sure? I’d love to catch up on my TBR! That would feel like a massive achievement considering the size that it’s grown to be :L And maybe meet some authors? That would be wonderful if I didn’t tense up and completely lose my voice.

This was a really fun tag to do with a lot of different and intriguing questions (:

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I tag these amazing people who have such fantastic blogs which you should definitely check out:

Sophie @ Me And Ink
Xandra @ Starry Sky Books
Sophie @ Sophie’s Corner

As always it’s up to you whether you take part or not; if you do I really look forward to reading all of your answers. Also I hope it’s okay that I’ve tagged the first Sophie in two posts so close to each other; I remembered reading that you’re a writer so I thought some of these questions were perfect for you but don’t worry if it’s too much. Thanks again to Madison for tagging me in this.

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Also, just as a side note, I’m probably not going to be online for a week or so (I don’t know exactly how long). I’ve fallen into a really bad reading slump so I kind of want to take a step back and really try to work passed it so I’m going to try and read more in my free time over the next few days. It’s not the books I’m reading – I love them – just me, falling into a really frustrating pattern of convincing myself that I can’t concentrate every time I have a few days away from reading. I also don’t really want to use the computer atm because I’ve been on it, catching up, quite a lot today and in this heat I’ve practically melted feeling all of the heat radiating off of it. So I kind of want to minimize my time online until this heatwave passes. Of course if it goes on for too long I’ll be back before it. I have my monthly book releases for July set up to post on Sunday though.

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