The Animal Crossing Book Tag!

Hello there! ✨

I’m a big fan of Animal Crossing (ever since I played it for countless hours on Nintendo DS as a kid), and couldn’t not get caught in the hype train for New Horizons! I got myself a Nintendo Switch Lite and started playing Animal Crossing yesterday 🥳

I’m already in love with it! I thought that the game would pose a huge threat on my reading, but I feel like it could have the opposite effect and I could get through quite a few audiobooks while playing 😊 I have been in a kind of reading slump for the past month, and now I feel re-invigorated to enjoy my free time again.

To celebrate Animal Crossing, I wanted to do a themed tag for today’s post. The Animal Crossing Book Tag was created by McKenzie @ The Bookish Things and Tea, and she has also made pretty graphics that I’m using in this post 😊 As a lover of books, Animal Crossing and tags, I can’t wait to get started!

If you don’t know what Animal Crossing is, I highly recommend you to check out Meaghan @ Hail and Well Read’s post here! She doesn’t only explain the gist of the game but there is also a danger that she will turn you into Animal Crossing fan as well 😱

THE RULES:

• Please link back to the original creator of the tag, Bookish Things and Tea.
• Answer the following Animal Crossing themed book questions.
• Feel free to use graphics, but be sure to credit Bookish Things and Tea.
• Tag some friends to spread the love!

I’m using the graphics created by McKenzie @ The Bookish Things and Tea, and all credit goes to her ✨

There are so many that I’m anxious to pick up, but lately I have been very intrigued by Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I have this beautiful black-and-white edition on my bookshelves and I would love to go through everything that the Brontë sisters have written. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is one of my all time favourite books! I haven’t gotten to Wuthering Heights yet because classics really intimidate me – they can be quite tough to read and my enjoyment of them strongly depends on my mood. Have you read it? Did you enjoy it?

Many book series tend to suffer from the sequel syndrome; the first book is a wonderful, immersive adventure and then the second book doesn’t live up to the first on any scale or measure. But A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers was even better than the first book in the Wayfarers series! In fact, it is one of my favourite books of all time. A Closed and Common Orbit manages to communicate such strong and complex emotions while still holding on to a strong plot and it completely mesmerised me.

Ummm I hadn’t realised how many of my favourite books are set in small villages or in forests! But The Confession by Jessie Burton is here for the save. It is a brand new favourite, and I only finished it last month. The story is set in both London and LA, and it is a breathtaking book about Rose who is desperate to understand what happened to her mother 30 years ago. The writing is spectacular and the complexity of the story and the characters had a lasting impact on me. I’m even low-key considering taking a tattoo of the bunny on the cover 😊

Aaah oh no, I haven’t read any new releases lately! The most recent one was Daughter From the Dark by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko that was released in February, but I’m determined not to focus on it because I ended up disliking it haha. Instead, I’ll mention a book that is a new release, which I’m expecting to be a 5-star read and which I’m determined to read very soon; Hold Back the Tide by Melinda Salisbury. This beauty was released in the beginning of March and I have a copy on my Kindle that I’ll hopefully get to once I finish Queen of Ruin by Tracy Banghart. I love love love Melinda Salisbury’s State of Sorrow, and so I’m fully expecting this to be wonderful as well!

I haven’t got old print copies of my books with me because I moved abroad 6 years ago, but I still have all my treasures at my mom’s place for safe keeping. One book that has stayed in my heart through thick and thin (although the beautiful print copy is in Finland) is Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (the Finnish edition, Mustesydän, is pictured). I read it multiple times when I was 12 years old, and I have been thinking about rereading it for some time now. The world means so much for me and I cannot wait to be re-visit it! I have only read it in Finnish so reading the English version of it will be an adventure.

The Gloaming by Kirsty Logan was my second favourite read of 2019 and I’m constantly longing to reread it. It isn’t only rich in its cast of characters, but the writing style and the story are very unique as well. As a whole, The Gloaming seems to have a very strong, individual voice. But the characters themselves, ah, everyone is flawed and hurt and breaking in little pieces.

Uuuu I love it when tags have questions that make bloggers spill some piping hot tea 🍵 I love me some strong unpopular opinions, so I’ll just go ahead and pick a recent read that I’ve a very unpopular opinion on. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman was my first one-star read for this year and I can already imagine it going in my worst books of 2020 list. The book is pitched as a bookaholic’s dream with an awkward main character who loves to read. But I didn’t find Nina at all relatable and the plot was nonexistent. Even the bookish bits felt all wrong to me – Nina kept insisting that she loves reading, but I felt like she doesn’t love the act of reading but rather all the tidbits of information she collects while reading. Instead of being a relatable booklover, she came across as a frustrating book purist. I have a full rant review on Goodreads if you want to check it out!

I can’t choose one favourite history/historical fiction 😱 so I feel like I can’t give a definite answer – a week from now I’ll definitely come up with a book that I should have mentioned here instead – but I’ll go with Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I love Downton Abbey and this book strongly made me think of Mr Carson, the butler in the TV series. It almost felt like his personal diary, and I loved seeing England through his eyes. Because it is a classic, I was worried to pick it up, but then I accidentally got immersed into it after 2 pages and devoured it in a few days.

I won’t tag anyone specifically in this one because I don’t know who is as deeply in love with Animal Crossing as I am 😅 But if you are – consider yourself tagged right now! I tag YOU! Also, if you want to be friends in New Horizons let me know, I don’t know anyone yet 🥺

Do you play games? Do you play Animal Crossing? Have you read any of these books? I would love to know!

Thank you so much for reading!