The Birthstone Book Tag

As you can see, last week I was tagged for The Birthstone Book tag by one of my great followers (and, more importantly, commenters) Savannah Perran. As far as I can tell, there aren't any rules for this tag other than the unstated-but-hopefully-obvious DO THE THING which I probably was going to do anyway.

First off, I tried to do this post and almost died at the questions. How in the world am I meant to choose?! And so, I've decided to narrow the book options down to books I read (this year, until we get to after June when I'll go back to last year) during the month of the question. (Goodreads helps me keep track of things like that nicely. And I've only read 60 books this year yet so it'll be much easier.)
(Hopefully that explanation made more sense than I feel like it did.)

Therefore, I gave it another go and here is what I ended up with:



1. January Garnet: Name a character you think is evil/dark. 
Queen Levana from Cinder. She's a great...bad....villainy villain.

2. February Amethyst: Name a book you think of as regal.
Hmm, I'm not very good at regal but something like Out of Darkness Rising by Gillian Bronte Adams could be described that way. It was pretty epic.

3. March Aquamarine: Name a character that you think of as weak, or more of a follower.
This one is a hard choice between two characters in the Squire's Tales series. Both are complete idiots (I'm going for the weak part).  But I think Culloch wins the weak-idiot award. He made me want to thump my head on the wall for 24 hours straight (though it didn't take me that long to read the entire book). So yup, a random Welsh lad gets this one. I am just sooo glad that he wasn't the main character, otherwise... *dies*

4. April Diamond: Name a book you love, but isn't very well known.
The Billabong Series by Mary Grant Bruce. I don't think they're very well known but I love 'em to pieces. A really Australian series with such real characters and...I can't recommend them enough.

5. May Emerald: Name two characters that balance each other out well.
Jeff and Iforgothisname from Rifles for Watie were great mates. I think the other guy could've been Noah...maybe? Anyway, I did like that book even though learning about American history can get annoying after a while (don't take offense? Take a gate if you must, but I'd say fences are too hard to carry). 

6. June Pearl: Name a character who is loyal.
Cress! And Jacin. Both from the Lunar Chronicles again, but I've already used that series so I'm going to say Benedict - A Branch of Silver, A Branch of Gold - although, I haven't finished that one yet. I'm halfway through, and I will be done by the end of the month (definitely) so I reckon it counts. It would just be very awkward if Benedict does something really unloyal in the second half...meh, he's loyal at the moment.

[So, since we haven't gotten up to the rest of the year yet, I'm going to choose these answers from their respective months last year (except for the next question where I'm going to cheat and use one from June that I really want to growl about)]

7. July Ruby: Name a book that aggravates you/makes your blood boil.
The Infinity Cage (by Alex Scarrow, book 9 (the finale) of the Time Riders series). *shudders* I do not like that book. No. Not at all. It is the ONLY book in my whole one and a half years of using Goodreads that I've rated a horrible little one star (even though it deserved minus 100 because of the eight previous books it destroyed). I quite liked the series up until that last book, it had so much potential and then BOOM.  I could've loved that series but the last book RUINED EVERYTHING FOREVER. *distant sobs*

Ahem, sorry, the question did ask for it though. (And I dislike it so much that I don't even want to put the cover here so...sorry about that too if you wanted to see it.)


[Now we're getting to books I read last year. Wow, it feels like I read those books aaages ago.]

8. August Peridot: Name a supporting character you preferred to the main character.
Ahah! The Weasley Twins! Always them. I just love 'em both. Gred and Forge are close to my favourite Harry Potter characters (and yes, I did only read the series for the first time last year). Yeah, technically the twins didn't get that much notice in the last two books (the ones I read in August last year) but I still loved what they had. 

And you know those random 'What Character are You?' quizy things? Well, whenever I do one for Harry Potter, I am very please that I get one (or both) of the twins every. single. time. Which is great, 'cause usually those quizzes seem to pick the person most opposite to what I'm like (that or I am just such a random assortment of stuff that it can't understand me and just comes up completely blank). But me and the twins have a lot in common really. Funny is our middle name.

9. September Sapphire: Name a book you found to be calming.
Umm, looking back through the books I read, it appears that I only read hilarious books that month...but I guess they could be calming...maybe...or not. But it was nice to be able to finally hold The Tournament at Gorlan in my hands, and presumably it calmed my excited anticipation of reading it, so...satisfactory? Yeah, I'm just going with that. And besides, it was funny, and funny is my middle name.

10. October Opal: Name a book with a pretty cover.
I did not read pretty cover books that month. Humph, that really helps, thanks past-me. But if I was to choose my favourite from the books I read that month it would be Four. Not a bad cover (and not a bad book either), but there are plenty of cooler ones. But it was my idea to invent the random rule...It's made my answers so far much more interesting than they usually would've been.

11. November Topaz: Name a book with a resilient protagonist.
Er, Percy? Yup, he's pretty resilient. He's got to be. Technically he's not in The Lost Hero, but I like that one's cover better than Son of Neptune so I'm putting it here. And I read them both in November so it works. I loved the Heroes of Olympus so much (same with Percy Jackson and the Olympians too naturally), so much funny. And (bet you can guess what I'm going to say) funny is my middle name. ;D

12. December Blue Zicron: Name a fictional friendship you would love to be a part of.

Well, do I choose Ky Huntyr or Heather Stone? Ky? Heather? I guess since I've already done one Songkeeper Chronicles answer I'll go for Heather. She's the main character from Counted Worthy, and she's pretty cool. Counted Worthy is freakishly realistic (it's a dystopian book) and the scary thing is that I can really see it happening. But it's cool. Really cool. Oh, it's also Christian which makes it even better.

Well, I do think that the random only-choosing-from-books-I'd-read-that-month thing did make the answers rather different than they would've been, and it made me realise how very many books I've read already. Only problem with the rule is that I didn't get a chance to mention Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. *gasps* Do a book post without saying something about them?! Never! But I guess this paragraph has kinda rectified that, so no worries.

Thanks again Savannah for tagging me, I had plenty of fun writing the post. Hope you all liked the completely random assortment of books! And I would tag some people but I think all my normal tag-receivers are busy finishing other tags I gave them a while back. Basically, Jessica, if you're feeling up to it, I tag you. If you're not, I probably tripped over on the way and missed you, so don't worry. :D

Hmm, that was kind of long. Amazing how all those book covers can lengthen a blog post so quickly. But they make it look more interesting.

Fair Winds!

Jane Maree