Good morning.  This week I’m going to do something different.  Quite honestly, none of the books I’ve read over the last couple of weeks has inspired me enough to write a full book review for a post, so I’m going to do the Olympics book tag.  Thanks to RiverMoose Books for bringing it to my attention.

Ancient Greece:  the book that started it all for you.

As a child I was always reading.  Like many British kids I grew up with Enid Blyton – I loved the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and the St Clare’s boarding school series.  I’m not sure how well known they are in North America.  I can also remember at school on Friday afternoons it was story time and the teacher used to read the Three Investigators stories.  I loved those and read a lot more of them on my own.

The first book that I can remember being totally and utterly sucked into though was the classic Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I was around eleven at that time and I just couldn’t put that one down.  This has led to a lifelong love of fantasy literature.

Opening Ceremony: a series that you love that has a lot of excitement and fanfare surrounding it.

For this one I’m going to pick Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles.  This is such an awesome series and there is usually a lot of hype around a new release.  The books easily live up to the excitement though.  It does remind me of a regular discussion I had with my parents.  Every time I mentioned Harry Potter they’d react by saying “bah, it’s all hype.”  No matter how often I tried to convince them that the hype was well justified, it happened every time.  That is until I gave them a Kindle and access to my Kindle library and Dad actually started reading Potter…

Gymnastics: a book full of twists and flips.

My choice for this category is one that perhaps not many of you will have read yet.  I’m going to go with Caraval by Stephanie Garber.  I was lucky enough to get an Advanced Reader Copy at BEA this year and it’s definitely one of my top reads of 2016.  The world Garber has created is breathtaking and the ground is forever shifting from under our protagonist’s feet.  I really can’t wait til January when you all can read this and share your thoughts.

Wrestling: a book that you keep picking up and putting back down.

For me this has to be Red Rising and the rest of the popular trilogy by Pierce Brown.  I know, many people love this, but I have been unable to get into it despite a couple of attempts.  Sorry.

Track & Field: a book made up of a lot of parts.

It took me a little time to come up with an entry for this category.  In the end though I’m going to go with A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.  For those of you unaware of the history, Robert Jordan sadly passed away before completing his Wheel of Time series and Sanderson was tapped to complete it.  As they say, “the story grew in the telling,” and at the time Sanderson picked up the baton, the series had a huge, unwieldy cast, massive scope, a shedful of prophesies to be fulfilled and a metric tonne of plotlines to be resolved.  It took him three books, but in the end Sanderson crafted an ending out of these parts worthy of its Creator. 

Weightlifting: a book you have trouble picking up due to its size.

OK, I have nothing for this one.  I’m a hardy reader – big books don’t scare me!

Archery: a book that missed the mark for you.

For this one I’m going to go with Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, the Austen Project’s retelling of Pride and Prejudice.  From the initial preview I’d been cautiously optimistic.  Sadly though, the book itself didn’t measure up to my hopes.  While it had many positive aspects, I felt that Sittenfeld had not remained true to Austen’s much loved characters.  This led to my giving this book the lowest GoodReads rating of a book this year.

Badminton: a lesser-known but equally amazing read.

Here I’m going to pick The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson.  This novel focuses on the lives of the inhabitants of a small English village in the leadup to the First World War.  The social history is fascinating, the characters are interesting and very well written and the plotline is very touching. An excellent read.

Rowing: a book with an awesome team of characters.

In this category I’m going to nominate The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare.  This series has one of the most powerful love triangles I’ve ever read in YA, and the whole intricate relationship between Will, Tess and Jem is just so beautifully written.  And dang it, that ending to Clockwork Princess.  <sniff>

An honourable mention to The Lunar Chronicles for the awesome female characters and their teamwork.

Diving: a book that you easily jumped right into.

Court of Fives by Kate Elliott is the book that fits this category for me.  When I picked it up, I was in the middle of a really bad reading slump and the worldbuilding and the characters still drew me in immediately.  The sequel, The Poisoned Blade, is high up on my TBR.

Closing Ceremony: a book/series with a bittersweet ending

For me, you can’t get much more bittersweet than the ending of The Lord of the Rings.  The whole idea of Frodo’s having gone on that journey to save the Shire, but being so damaged by it that he cannot enjoy the peace he won with so much struggle is heartbreaking.  The whole scene at the Grey Havens where the Fellowship breaks for the final time gets me right in the feels each time.

This seems a good point to express my concern about the ending of A Song of Ice and Fire.  George R.R. Martin has gone on record to state that the ending he has planned is “bittersweet.”  Knowing Martin, that means I’ll need to buy at least 10 boxes of tissues before reading A Dream of Spring.

Let me know in the comments if you agree with my choices!