The Fall for Books Tag

I was tagged by Chelsea for the Fall for Books tag – thank you!!  If you guys don’t follow Chelsea already, you really should – especially if you live in the Toronto area, as she posts fantastic reviews of the local theatre scene!  Anyway, back to the books, here we go.

THE RULES

• Please link back to this post so I can see your answers!
• Have fun!

One of the first books you fell in love with

The Heartland series by Lauren Brooke was my elementary school jam.  It’s about this girl who takes over the family’s horse farm following her mom’s death in a tragic accident… also it’s a refuge barn where they look after neglected or abused or otherwise traumatized horses.  Since I was That Horse Girl for a huge part of my life, these books spoke to me – they were also a bit ~dark and edgy~ for that reading level, lol.  My dark fiction origin story.  Did anyone else read this series??

A book you knew you were going to love from the first page

I knew I was going to love this before the book even started.  The first page is a quotation from a fictional book written by one of the characters in The Heart’s Invisible Furies.  (That is to say, the following quote is actually by John Boyne.)

“Am I alone in thinking that the world becomes a more repulsive place every day?” asked Marigold, glancing across the breakfast table toward her husband, Christopher.

“Actually,” he replied, “I find that–”

“The question was rhetorical,” said Marigold, lighting a cigarette, her sixth of the day.  “Please don’t embarrass yourself by offering an opinion.”

Maude Avery, Like to the Lark
(The Vico Press, 1950)

A book you didn’t think you would love as much as you do

Castle of Water by Dane Huckelbridge.  This seems like it’s going to be such a run of the mill boy-meets-girl plane crash story – you can practically map out how the entire story is going to go from the very first page, but it was so much more than that??  The tone of this book is so funny and irreverent but it also ripped my heart out.

 

The character who will always have a place in your heart

Kathy H from Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.  I don’t even know why… I mean, I do, but I don’t know how well I can explain it.  I read this for the first time when I was 14 and I was really struck by how flawed and tragic this character is, and how her whole narrative is about fighting for agency in this world where she’s pretty much powerless.  The sort of quiet strength that Kathy has is so subtle and it’s just heartbreaking to me.  I love this character a lot.

Character you love on the page, but would never want to meet in real life

Alex from A Clockwork Orange.  I don’t think this one needs a whole lot of explanation.  Alex is a truly repulsive character who does repulsive things, but it’s almost impossible not to sympathize with him, at least a little??  I mean, it’s pretty heavy-handed allegorical fiction, and it’s clear that in the framework of the narrative, Alex is being used as a pawn – I hate to say it, but my heart goes out to him.  But if he were real, I’d obviously run the other way.

Literary couple you will ship until the day you die

You know how in book tags people tend to use the same answers over and over??  I am well aware that there are a handful of books you guys are probably sick of me talking about.  To the point where the other day I thought ‘the next time I get tagged in something, I am NOT going to mention A Little Life.’  But then I got this horrible question, and there is no other answer besides Jude St. Francis and Willem Ragnarsson that is even worth mentioning.

An author whose writing style you fell in love with

The only Donna Tartt book I’ve read is The Secret History, but I’m obsessed with it and Donna Tartt’s prose sucked me in immediately.  If I could write even a fraction as well I would be be very happy indeed.

 

 

A book recommended to you by a friend/family member that you quickly fell for too

I asked my German friend to recommend some German lit to me, and the first thing she said was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind.  I loved this.  The main character is probably the most unlikable character from anything I’ve ever read, but it’s such a darkly compelling story that I didn’t even care that I was reading about someone so despicable.  The sensory descriptions in this book are unlike anything I’ve ever read before or since, and I wish my German were good enough that I could read the original prose 😦

Piece of book-related merchandise that you had to own

This isn’t a direct reference to any book in particular, but I’m rather partial to this mug.

An author whose works you love so much that you auto-buy/borrow their new releases

Kazuo Ishiguro and Celeste Ng come to mind, though in the future, Hanya Yanagihara and John Boyne will also be up there.

I tag:

Sarah // Ally // Ann // Charlotte // Kristin // Irena