The Bohemian Rhapsody Book Tag
For something different this week, I decided to randomly find a book tag to share. This Bohemian Rhapsody book tag was created by Emma Russon (thebookishunderdog) back in 2016, but Queen are always relevant, so here we are.
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1. Mama, just killed a man – A fictional character’s death that really upset you?
I know we're not supposed to talk too much about the boy wizard these days, thanks to his creator being who she is, but Hedwig's death at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is one that I know will stay with me for life. I can still recall the visceral shock that went through me when I read that page, and crying while trying to carry on reading. Not only that, but I think it was so painful because Hedwig was an innocent animal caught up in everything. She was symbolic of Harry's transition into the world he was born for. Losing her felt like a loss of innocence, and a warning that we were long past the time of these being children's books, we were reading something much, much darker.
2. Carry on, carry on – Pick a book that was hard to keep reading but was worth it in the end?
It usually takes me a couple of days to finish a book, perhaps a week for a longer one, so the fact that Wolf Hall took me six weeks says a lot about how dense and challenging a book it is. Now, I will happily hold my hands up and say that it didn't take me the whole six weeks, I was reading the book on and off between others (I would read one part of Wolf Hall, then a different book, then come back for the next part) but that's because of how so slow-going and demanding it is.
For those who haven't read Wolf Hall, it follows the life of Thomas Cromwell, once advisor to Henry VIII, but it uses a strange literary tactic of referring to the main character as "he". That can make it hard to follow, and I never quite gelled with the author's writing style. Still, I ploughed on and eventually made it to the end, and I'm very glad I did. I doubt, however, that I'll be continuing with the rest of the trilogy. For me, authors like Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir make the Tudor era far more accessible, even if they haven't won the Booker Prize for their efforts.
3. Sends shivers down my spine – pick a book with a beautiful spine/cover?
I'm not someone who picks up books purely for their covers (even if Godkiller does have me sorely tempted). Books I've read recently with stunning covers include:
Horror Hotel and Cursed Cruise by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren: Dark but gorgeous, even if the books themselves aren’t that great.
On Silver Tides: I love this one so much, especially the use of the moon.
Lumberjanes Series: There are so many awesome covers in this collection.
The Last Firefox by Lee Newbery: This cover leaps out at me every time I spot it, it’s so vibrant and I love it.
Wranglestone by Darren Charlton: One of the most stunning covers I’ve ever seen.
All That's Left in the World by Erik J. Brown: I bought a paperback copy of this despite owning a digital copy, just to have the cover on my shelves.
4. Goodbye everybody, I’ve got to go – A book that you couldn’t finish?
I don't DNF a lot of books, but I'm also not afraid to do so when I need to, and I keep a separate DNF category on Goodreads. Some of the more popular books on that list include:
Bride by Ali Hazelwood
Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull
Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
5. Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening – which book did you find very, very frightening?
I read a reasonable amount of horror but don't find much of it all that horrifying, I think it comes from being exposed to horror movies at a disturbingly young age. One book I found genuinely frightening, however, was The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, largely because of how easily I could see society (specifically the USA) becoming just like it.
For more traditional spooky vibes, I was freaked out by From Below by Darcy Coates - being trapped underwater with limited oxygen is a nightmare before adding in the paranormal elements - and also Tales to Keep You Up at Night by Dan Poblocki, a middle-grade that spooked me way more than any adult horror I've read recently.
6. Bismillah, no! We will not let you go – which book/series do you wish there had been more of?
The Adventures on Trains series by M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgeman. This is a middle-grade series with a very self-explanatory title and I absolutely adore it. I have read all six of the currently available books and am hoping we might get more in the future.
7. Mamma Mia, mamma Mia – which book/series should be made into a musical?
Twilight. Hear me out. Can you imagine how utterly hysterical it could be? I honestly don't know if it would be funnier if it was intentionally made as a comedy or if it tried to be serious. Either way, I would pay good money to watch a Twilight musical, and I know a lot of other people who would too.
“Say it! Saaaay iiiiiit!”
”Vampire!” *Chorus gasps*
8. The head-banging bit – Which book made you facepalm?
Confessions of a Shopaholic AKA The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic. I just could not with the main character. Absolutely no lessons were learned at any point in this book, and I'm reliably informed the books only get more ridiculous and despair inducing as the series goes on. I want to watch a series where that finance guy from TikTok (Caleb Hammer) reads and reacts to these, but I think he'd probably have a stroke.
9. Oh baby, can’t do this to me, baby – Pick a moment from a book where you felt like the author was being mean to you?
I really struggled to think of a book for this, and ended up having to return to the Harry Potter series. Specifically, the very end of Prisoner of Azkaban where we and Harry think for just a few pages that he's going to escape the Dursley's forever and get to live with Sirius, only to have that future snatched away. It felt cruel and arguably unnecessary, I was reading Harry Potter, not A Series of Unfortunate Events.
10. Nothing really matters to me – which character/s did you not care about
Every single character in Rock, Paper, Killers by Alexia Mason. I read that book only six months ago and could not tell you one of their names or anything about any of them. In fact, the characters were the primary reason I ended up giving this book a measly one-star (it would have been a DNF, but it ticked off too many reading prompts to abandon it) and I'm clearly not alone in thinking this way - the book has an astoundingly low 2.41 average rating on Goodreads.