Reader Time Capsule

Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog! 

Today I'll be doing a tag of a sort. This is absolutely inspired by Jesse from the YouTube channel jessethereader. His most recent video (as of my writing this post) was this reader time capsule, which is essentially a bunch of questions that are designed to look at your reading from the past year and used to see how much you grow. The idea is that you would redo the video after a year has passed and see how different your answers are as the years go by. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and so I immediately decided to do it myself. 

There are ten questions, so let's just get into it!

(Also, just to keep this consistent, I'll be looking at the final months of 2022 for the answers to these questions, so I'll only be mentioning books that I read between September and December. This wasn't something Jesse did, but I like more structured timelines for things like this.)

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1. What's the book that impacted you the most recently?

    I'm gonna hop right on that bandwagon and say Babel by R.F. Kuang. Even though it was historical fiction, so many of the commentary and arguments made are current issues also. This book really opened my eyes to the most horrible bits of colonialism and imperialism, and I also learned quite a lot about linguistics and how languages interact with one another, which was absolutely fascinating to me. I have an entire spoiler-free review of Babel here on my blog if you want to know more of my thoughts.

2. What's the book that you loved the most recently?

    I think I have to say The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Even though it was a reread, it just made me so happy and I saw so many new things in the text. (There is also a review of this book on my blog.) I also have to mention Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater, which was my last read of 2022. While it wasn't a five star read, I think it was such a great ending to one of my most favorite stories/universes.

 

3. What's your most loved trope at the moment?

    I'm not really a trope-driven reader, in fact I tend to get annoyed if a book I'm reading leans into the tropes a little too much. Plus I feel like when you hear the word "trope" you immediately think of romance tropes, which of course I prefer to avoid at all cost. And sadly, a lot of the fantasy tropes are ones that I dislike. But I do really enjoy the "reluctant hero" trope, maybe because I'm reluctant to do any sort of adventure and so I relate to those kinds of characters. But Frodo from Lord of the Rings is probably the quintessential reluctant hero, and that really solidified how much I enjoy that trope.

4. What topic do you love seeing explored in books?

    It might be old news at this point, but I still love seeing a character come to terms with their sexuality. It's always so validating and invigorating to see someone recognize, accept, and love their queerness on page. And I especially love seeing coming out stories being taken and written by POC, because the publishing industry really needs to up their diversity percentage. 

5. What's your current favorite genre?

    I'm in my horror fantasy era. I've always been a fantasy girlie (it's been my top read genre my entire life, I think) but when there's that sprinkle of spook thrown in there, it's bread and butter for me. I love getting that eerie atmosphere without having to deal with the ick factor that is in so many mainstream horror novels, like the excess of gore, the objectification of women and their bodies, and the social "commentary" that really just seems to be an excuse the author made to be as racist and horrible as possible. 

6. What's your favorite format to read in?

    I actually really enjoy reading on my iPad now. I read much faster when it's an e-book for some reason, and I also am able to read more diversely this way, too. As in, I get a ton of books downloaded from my local library, some so far backlist you can't even find them in the bookstores anymore. That's what I really appreciate about libraries. 

7. Show your favorite bookmark?

This made me dig out all of my bookmarks and actually take a picture of my favorites, so I hope you appreciate these. The woodmark is a quote from The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, which of course is one of my favorite books of all time. and the resin bookmark is a gift from my cousin. It's a little too thick to actually use in books (hardcovers especially) but it's so gorgeous to look at that I still consider it a favorite.

8. What do you think this year of reading will look like?

    Based on how the first couple weeks have gone, I'm thinking this year will be a slow and intentional reading year. As in, I don't think I'll be reading nearly as many books as I have been lately, but I do think that they'll be on average higher rated. Since I'm spending so much time on a single book nowadays, I think I'll be DNFing more often when I'm not vibing with the story. 

9. What (blog post) from last year are you most proud of?

    I made a lot of improvements in my blog last year, finally making it feel like an extension of myself rather than a persona I made up. But I think the posts I'm most proud of from last year are the seasonal recommendations I did. I loved going through my books and figuring out which ones were the right fit for Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. I don't see how I can do these posts again, not at least for a few years, but I am really happy with how they turned out.

10. What's a YouTube channel you've been loving lately?

    I'm actually pretty set in my BookTube niche at this point. The channels I watch are the ones I've been watching for years now. My favorites sometimes shift between them, however. Right now, I'm really loving BooksandLala, Ariel Bissett (my Canadian queen, as always), and Emma from *emmie*. Plus I always get excited when Hannah (A Clockwork Reader) posts a new video, even though they are few and far between. She's an OG favorite, for me. 

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Okay, that's all for this year's time capsule. I wonder what my answers will look like next year? I'm so excited to find out! 

Until next time!