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The Wanderlust Book Tag

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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

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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

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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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Book Blogger Insider Tag

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We’re rather selective about tags, but when Lashaan from the one and only Bookidote blog tagged us with this one (thanks!) we decided it’s interesting enough to participate 🙂

1) Where do you typically write your blog posts?

Ola: At my desk, where my computer usually resides 😉 It’s a very neat wooden desk by a large window, and having my back to everything else helps me to concentrate on the task at hand 🙂

Piotrek: My desk is where my computer resides always, as it’s a desk-top. This desk faces the entire room, becoming a kind of the bridge of the SS MyHome. Sometimes I call it my battlestation, I do some gaming here 😉 I also really need two screens, both at work and here, it’s just so much better than a one-screen setup, for any work with sources. Or just to watch YouTube while I pretend to work…

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2) How long does it generally take you to write a book review?

Ola: Hmm, do we count the preparation time? 😉 I almost never write reviews right after reading a book, so the books usually stays with me for a while before I start writing. But the writing itself takes anywhere from 2 to 6 hours – the Two-shots definitely take more time than single posts, but are so much fun! The Witcher post took probably up to 8 hrs, but it was an exception.

Piotrek: It depends on the amount of research. 4-8 hours usually? I write slower than I used to in the university days, and I work more with number than words, so maintaining a blog is a great exercise, but also a challenge.

3) When did you start your book blog?

February 2015

Long time ago! 😀

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Odds and ends

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Piotrek: As Ola recently realized, Re-E have just reached 100 subscribers! It’s even 103 now 🙂 Thank you all very much, it’s such a pleaser to see the audience widening… We’ve already had an anniversary post this year, but this is a nice occasion to give our thanks to all the people who, from time to time, spare us a few moments.

Ola: Yes! Thank you all!!! 🙂 We’ve also been recently nominated to The Versatile Blogger Award – thank you, Briennai/Alex! However, since it involves talking about ourselves, we’ll stick to our regular fare and keep reviewing books 🙂 Or else you all might just run away or fall asleep from boredom 😉

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The Sunshine Blogger Award

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As you can see, Re-enchantment got its first blogging award 😉 Big thanks to bookorbit for the nomination!

Rules:

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you in a blog post and link back to their blog.
2. Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you.
3. Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.
4. List the rules and display the sunshine blogger award logo in your post/or on your blog.

I received only one question, thankfully, so I will answer it and then proceed in bending the rules even further 😉

What’s your favourite movie of all time?

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Spelling Bee :)

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We came across an interesting challenge lately, taken up by two fellow bloggers whose sites both of us frequent often: Chris at Calmgrove and Paula at Book Jotter. The challenge was borrowed from yet another interesting blog, Fictionphile. A silly but fun thing, really, to spell a blog’s name in books from your TBR list.

my-blogs-name-in-books(Piotrek – And let me just take a moment to complement background graphic of the Fictionphile, I have mixed feelings about B&N hardcover classics, I own only their psychedelic Lovecraft, but they look just great there!!)

With rules as follow:

Rules: 

1.  Spell out your blog’s name. (this is where you wish your blog’s name was shorter LOL)

2. Find a book from your TBR that begins with each letter. (Note you cannot ADD to your TBR to complete this challenge – the books must already be on your Goodread’s TBR)

Well, neither of us keeps a Goodread’s TBR, so we decided to just use what we have – vast numbers of books waiting patiently for their turn on our bookshelves.

Calmgrove had 9 books to find, we – 23. But we are gonna make it, the entire name of our humble blog, including of the and even the world 🙂

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