Reader Confessions Book Tag and Blogoversary

Happy Blogoversary to me!!! My little corner of the book blogging world has been alive and kicking for two years and I’m really amazed by how much it’s come to mean to me. I’ve now got 200 followers which I know doesn’t sound very many to a lot of you but I’m so happy that anyone bothers to read what I post especially those of you who read and comment on nearly everything I write. It’s such a change from those early days when I felt as though I was just posting into space and got excited when I had one person press like.

To celebrate my blogoversary, I ‘m going to do the Reader Confessions Tag. I saw this posted by Carl on The Pine Scented Chronicles and thought it would be a nice one to do. I’ve tried to find out who created the tag but none of the posts I’ve found mention the creator. It’s certainly been around a long while as the earliest posts are way back in 2016 so whoever thought of it, had a great idea.

Have you ever damaged a book?

I do try to be careful with books and apart from wear on the spine, especially my frequent re-reads, I haven’t damaged books that I can remember. Apart from the answer to the next question.

Have you ever damaged a borrowed book?

😳😳😳 I had a brand new book from the library once and I was reading it while eating strawberries. I hadn’t realised quite how squishy this particular strawberry was and I managed to drip strawberry juice on one of the pages of this lovely new book. I did confess to the library assistant who said that they’d had a lot worse.

How long does it take you to read a book?

How long is a piece of string? That depends on so many factors. I can often read a romance or a normal length crime novel in a single evening so say about 3 hours. However, A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon which I read recently took about 5 days.

Books that you haven’t finished

I don’t often not finish books, I’m far more likely to skim read to the end but three books that I’ve put aside in the past six months were these:

Nights of Plague was one where I didn’t enjoy the writing style. The blurb sounded really exciting but it was presented as a history and written in quite a dry way so I lost interest.

Helgoland was my attempt to understand physics better. I got about halfway through and then gave up as, despite my best efforts, I just didn’t understand it 😢

1794 – The City between the Bridges was just so unrelentingly grim. I don’t mind dark books, I love the grim dark fantasy novels of Joe Abercrombie but this was on a completely different level.

Hyped or Popular Books that you thought were only OK or disliked

This could end up being quite a long list! The most obvious is A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas. I don’t get the fuss about that one at all.

Two more recent books that I haven’t been that impressed by are Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake.

Is there a book that you wouldn’t tell anybody that you’re reading?

I can’t think of any thing for this question. I read fairly widely but there aren’t any books that I can think of where I wouldn’t want to own up to reading them.

How many books do you own?

I genuinely had no idea about this. I have less books now than this time last year as my husband and I had a huge purge of books before we created our little book room. I did a quick count and I have about 450 actual physical books spread across several book cases. According to my kindle, I have 535 ebooks so altogether I have own almost 1000 books!!!!!!

Are you a fast or slow reader?

Definitely a fast reader. It used to really annoy me when people would accuse me of not reading books properly because I read them so quickly. When I became a teacher and studied reading, I found that people read at a whole range of different speeds and some even faster than me.

The speed of my reading might also depend on what type of book I’m reading. I will probably read non fiction or a fantasy book with a lot of world building a bit more slowly than a romance which has a lot of dialogue. Sometimes if I’m really into the story, I will read more quickly as I desperately want to find out what happens.

Do you like to Buddy Read?

I have no idea as I’ve never done it. I think it would probably be fun to share your ideas about a book as you read it though.

Do you read better in your head or aloud?

It would never occur to me to read aloud when I’m reading to myself so definitely in my head. I do enjoy reading out loud though and used to love reading to my own children and to my class at school.

If you were only allowed to have one book, what would it be and why?

Can I have my kindle? It’s book sized after all!!!!

If I have to choose one physical book, then I would have to choose Lord of the Rings. I want the single volume with the illustrations by Alan Lee so I’ve got pictures to look at too. LOTR is a book I love hugely and I have so many memories of reading it at different times of my life

Thanks to Carl at The Pine Scented Chronicles for bringing this tag to my attention.

What would your reading confessions be?

Advertisement