Today I’ve put together a book tag for you!
Unfortunately there is no video component of this but I loved this tag from Booktube and wanted to answer the questions myself!
This is the Star Wars Book Tag, in honor of Carrie Fisher, by The Restricted Section on Youtube.
Let’s get started!
The Questions:
1. Princess Leia: Choose a book with a fearless and badass female heroine or protagonist.
For me, I immediately thought of Anita Blake from the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series by Laurel K. Hamilton. Especially in the first books in this series, Anita is totally badass and in charge, not taking shit from anyone even though she gets a lot from all the men in her life. (In later books, her priorities change but she is still a pretty badass fighter!)
2. Storm Trooper: Choose a book that's a dime a dozen.
My thoughts immediately turned to a recent book I read, Girl Online by Zoe Sugg. This one is just a fluffy contemporary full of all the YA tropes like insta-love and the magical power of a boyfriend to make life better for the “heroine.” It was nothing unique but it was a fun story that made me smile a lot.
3. FN2187 (Fin): Choose a book that breaks the mold and stands out from other books in its genre.
Honestly, this was the first book I found from Instagram instead of more traditional means: Poet Anderson … of Nightmares by Tom DeLonge. I loved the concept of a book being co-written with a YA author (Suzanne Young, of The Program series) as well as tied into a musical soundtrack that just adds to the whole sensation of reading. I can’t say I loved this book, but I did love the concept and I liked the book a great deal, especially the first half (I was rather unsatisfied by the ending). I would love to hear more people’s opinions about this book, because I haven’t seen much about it.
4. General Organa: Choose a book with a mature, take charge female character who is not afraid to be a leader.
Another book from my recently finished pile, I’m going with Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce, book 1 of The Circle Opens quartet. This is about Sandry growing up after the Circle of Magic quartet (though she is still just 14). She left her magic family for her blood family and finds herself taking on responsibilities in her uncle’s kingdom that she hadn’t anticipated. Then she gets involved in a local murder, finds another magic user she is charged with teaching, and generally handles all of the many hurdles she faces with a maturity that far exceeds her age. She comes into her own as a leader in this book and it was fun to read so many years after I first read a Tamora Pierce book and realize that all those lessons are still very relevant and useful to an adult reader-me. Just as they were useful and relevant to a child reader-me!
5. Han Solo and Chewbacca: Choose a book with a dynamic duo who demonstrate a fierce loyalty to each other.
My favorite dynamic duo is Jeremy and Emmet from Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan. Jeremy has an anxiety disorder and Emmet is autistic and together they create a relationship that allows them to thrive in society. A goal for both of them is to get away from their families and develop their own independence and together they develop the skills they need to do that and to go to college and share an apartment, despite all the struggles they face internally and externally (and of course falling in love). I hesitate about this book because, as far as I know and have researched, Heidi Cullinan is not an OwnVoices writer and, though she does a great deal of research before presenting her finished product, I want to find more books about neurodiverse characters written by neurodiverse authors before I form a stronger conclusion about this book. Opinions of others?
6. Darth Vader: Choose a dark book that really got into your head.
This question was very easy for me to answer: Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel. This book started kind of slow, but dear god the ending left my head majorly f*cked up. Seriously though I think this book kept me up for weeks thinking about all the happenings at the end. I have no words for this level of head-f*ckery. Read it, guys. Seriously.
7. C3P0 and R2D2: A book in which your favorite characters were side or minor characters. Or, a book with awesome side or minor characters.
Okay, there is an adorable couple in The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris, Nico and Alice, that are in about 20 pages total of this 400 page book, but every time one of them shows up at the chocolate shop I squealed a bit. I love them to death and I hope they are happy and healthy together forever (because seriously they don’t start out happy or healthy). Also, I kind of hated everyone else in the book at some point, but these two were solid loves throughout!
8. Rey: A book with a reluctant hero or leader.
Literally, the main character of Gilded by Christina Farley spends over half the book trying to deny her “destiny” and then sort of thinking along the lines of “okay, first I defeat this evil, then I go back to my normal life. No one has to know anything and this will all be over.” Majorly reluctant, but also really relatable considering she’s in high school and just wants to focus on her grades and boys, not mystical mumbo-jumbo and saving the world.
9. Emperor Palpatine: Let the hate flow through you! Pick a book you fucking hated.
Easy choice: An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. I read this book in high school because the title sounded cool, the plot sounded interesting, and it was on the approved reading list. A friend of mine said she had loved it so I gave it a try. Thing to know: Naturalism, the style of this novel, is a style where everything is social segregation and humans are basically destined to the life they are born in so trying to raise above the class of your birth is doomed to fail. The main character of this books wants to be rich. He fails because he was born poor and therefore he is morally compromised and deficient. He is a horrible person, does horrible things, and I don’t know where he ends up because I couldn’t finish this book I hated it so much. I tried to read another Dreiser book recently and felt much the same about it. Basically, I hate Naturalism. No.
10. Yoda: Choose a book with a wise but eccentric character.
It’s a bit of a stretch, but in The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin the native people, Athsheans, have an interesting society where they live in small groups in the forest which covers almost all land on the planet. They are pacifists but fight back when charged by one of their own, who they call a god among them (and godhood is obtained by being an actor for change, which is gone when that change has occurred). But an older woman in the village visited by one of the Earthling characters is wise and knowledgeable, but she is also just so strange to an Earth perspective that I think she qualifies as eccentric.
So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it! Thoughts? Comments? Insults? Leave it below.
