Category: tag

What My Favourite Characters Would Be Doing in Quarantine Book Tag

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn książki, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot43 Comments

We’ve been recently tagged by the unparalleled Orangutan Librarian to “take 5 or more of the favorite book characters and imagine what they would be doing if they were quarantined with us in the real world”. The tag, created by Kal at Reader Voracious, looks so much fun that we jumped on the opportunity right away! 😉 We are in a very hyperactive mood lately, I guess it’s a giddiness born from being in lockdown for far too long 😀 So, thank you for this little tag, Orangutan Librarian – it was fun!

Characters in Quarantine

FitzChivalry Farseer from Robin Hobb’s Realm of Elderlings series

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He’d be secretly happy to have another opportunity to whine and feel sorry for himself. I can totally see him using the quarantine as an excuse to lock himself down in a remote, desolate place and once again write the story of his life :D.

Fraa Jad from Neal Stephenson’s Anathem

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He’d have already explored all possible universes and options, and chosen the one course of action that would have prevented the coronavirus from jumping from bats/pangolins to humans in the first place. So, long story short, he wouldn’t be in quarantine now, because there wouldn’t have been a pandemic! Unless what we have now is the best possible option already…. (shudders).

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Fantasy Bucket List Book Tag

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn książki, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot63 Comments

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Our second Wyrd & Wonder tag 🙂 We decided to go crazy, and there were a few we wanted to do for quite a while…

Ladies and Gentlemen – Fantasy Bucket List Book Tag, originally spotted on The Little Book Owl.

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A fictional world that you would like to tour

Piotrek: Middle Earth. There are many fascinating universes in the world of fantasy, but this is the one that started it all, the Amber of fantasy realms. I want to walk in Lorien, rest in Rivendell, climb… well, not necessarily Caradhras in winter, but perhaps Erebor, if Smaug isn’t around? Yes, one of the rare peaceful moments would be perfect for an extended tour. It already is one of my special places, although only ever visited in imagination.

I hope I’ll get to visit New Zealand as an acceptable substitute 😉

Ola: Please do! 😀

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As I am already in the Earth-equivalent of Middle Earth, the fictional world I’d like to visit the most would be Amber – the pattern-world of fantasy worlds created by Roger Zelazny. Though in truth it’s a cheating answer – because from there I could get (more or less) easily to other worlds: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Robin Hobb’s Realm of Elderlings, Neal Stephenson’s Arbre from his absolutely mind-blowing Anathem (the review of which will come soon!), Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, Glen Cook’s world of the Black Company (but I’d only go there if I had a guarantee I would come back, even the mythical Khatovar doesn’t strike me as a good place to live), Iain Banks’s utopian Culture worlds and Neal Asher’s Polity, and so many others!

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Favorite books in five words

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn książki, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot43 Comments

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This is a tag that has been making rounds last year (and we never picked it up, slightly overwhelmed by the task) – thankfully, it has also been suggested for this year’s Wyrd and Wonder. After some deliberations, and temptations from every side (yes, we’re looking particularly at you, Bookforager and Maddalena! :D) we decided to make our own rendition of the tag. Here it is!

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The Finished Book Tag

On By piotrekIn książki, Piotrek, tag55 Comments

First, a complaint. Bookstooge made me set up a LibraryThing account, and now I’m dedicating significant percentage of my free time into moving my catalogue there… I have to agree, it’s an excellent website, and so much fun 🙂 They even have some of my obscure Polish books in the database, although some I have to put in manually.

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I did not have time to check the more advanced options, but this week I started adding 50-100 books a day and when I’m done I’ll look what more they have to offer.

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But that’s not the main topic of today.

Back in December we were tagged by the excellent Bookforager with The Finished Book Tag. It looked really interesting so added it to my list of tags I want to do someday, and here we are, only four months later 😉

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The Wanderlust Book Tag

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn książki, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot45 Comments

It’s been some time, actually, since we did a book tag. As we were recently tagged by the wonderful Orangutan Librarian with The Wanderlust Book Tag we decided to do one now 🙂 It looks very interesting, especially as one of us starts thinking about this year’s travelling plans, and the other is just finishing their holidays… 😀

First, Rules of Engagement:

  • Mention the creator of the tag and link back to original post [Alexandra @ Reading by Starlight]
  • Thank the blogger who tagged you – thanks, Orangutan Librarian! This one’s fun!
  • Answer the 10 questions below using any genre
  • Tag 5+ friends

and now,

the questions:

1. Secrets and lies: a book set in a sleepy small town

Ola: James Lovegrove’s Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon is a really nice example of the “cozy mystery” genre, full of nods in all the important directions, and yet still holding up commendably on its own.

Piotrek: Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip takes place in a sleepy village, but there are secrets and lies in a small community, and getting to the hard truth is the key to success of our protagonist.

2. Salt and sand: a book with a beach-side community

Piotrek: H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I don’t remember if there was an actual beach, but definitely a sea-side community of sorts is the central part of the story 🙂 No the perfect seaside for you summer vacation, mind you. Re-reading Lovecraft is one of the great many things I need to do!

Ola: Zoe Gilbert’s Folk is definitely a book that stays with the reader long after the covers are shut. I was deeply impressed by the maturity and melody of her writing voice, and more than a bit appalled by the ferocious abuse visited by her on Folk’s protagonists – the violent fantasy clad in the everyday reality of a small beach-side community, hidden in gorse bushes and suspended indefinitely somewhere between the eighteenth and early twentieth century. Thanks to Bookforager for putting this one on my radar!

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Bookish Heavenly Virtues

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn książki, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot56 Comments

Buoyed by the success of our Deadly Bookish Sins tag we decided to even out the playfield – and created a corresponding Bookish Heavenly Virtues tag 😉 We had a lot of fun writing the questions and answering them, and now we hope you’ll enjoy reading them – and, if you do, we invite you to participate in the tag as well :).

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CHASTITY: Which author/book/series you wish you had never read?

 

Ola: Aaand we start with a bang 😉 The two that most easily come to mind are Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind (DNFed around the junkie dragon mark and I only wish I threw it down sooner) and Justin Cronin trilogy (DNFed within first 100 pages of the third installment – what a waste of time). I’m usually pretty lenient when it comes to books, as they are in fact someone’s years of hard work and dreams. But I absolutely abhor waste of time on things I dislike, as the theory of alternative costs plays in my mind different scenarios of what I could have done with that precious resource, and the two examples above represent exactly that.

Piotrek: It’s a hard one. I usually only go for books I can be sure to enjoy at least a bit, and some of the really terrible ones I revenge-reviewed, so it was not a waste of time, was it?

One case where I could have saved the time and read something else, even at a cost of not having a vitriolic review to write, was the Iron Druid Chronicles. Details – in the linked review 😉 but I have to say, the more time passes, the more I’m convinced it’s a case of urban fantasy tropes tortured inhumanely for no good reason.

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Bookish Deadly Sins

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn książki, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot51 Comments

We do not do tags often, and when we do, it’s usually so late everybody’s forgotten about them 😉 but we did like this one, one explored by several friends of Re-E, and now we’re ready to post 🙂 Seven deadly sins, but for readers!

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What is the most expensive book you own? Which is the least expensive?

 

Ola: Huh, the book that springs to mind most quickly is my Folio Society’s edition of The Once and Future King, because I paid for the pristine, mint condition book personally 😉 But I do have a few signed books, or rare first editions, that may be worth more. Never really considered it though, and besides, I left them all back in Poland, for now – with a promise I made to myself, that I will bring them home one day, wherever it will ultimately be.

Least expensive? Old used books bought on Amazon Marketplace. I’m not counting the gifts, because those that I received as a gift were definitely expensive, to the giver 🙂

Piotrek: Well…I paid £75 for a Folio Society Edition of Dune, but some of the XIX-century volumes I own might be actually more expensive, I’d have to have them evaluated. They are family heirlooms, so I’m not going to sell them anyway.

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Least expensive… I have dozens of volumes bought from Amazon Marketplace at £0.01 + postage and packing, great value for money, although recently the postage got more expensive, and less reliant – I blame notoriously unreliable Polish Post Office.

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