Bookish smash or pass tag

Hello there, friends! This tag was created by Becky in her book blog, and I knew I just had to do it when I saw it on Jordyn’s blog. So here we go!

bookish tropes

SMASH – if, and only if, they are written well, and if they are tropes that I like. There are so many books I’ve read that kind of feel like a bunch of book tropes stirred together into a flimsy plot and watery, uncompelling characters. Kind of going like ‘oh this is an enemies-to-lovers forbidden romance story with morally grey characters, a knife-to-the-throat scene and there is only one bed’ but everything is so meh.

alternating POV

SMASH – I mean, I don’t mind it, but I feel like multiple POVs are better than just two POVs.

ambiguous endings

SMASH-ish, I guess. I don’t mind endings that are left up for the readers’ interpretation, but it has to be written well or otherwise it’s just annoying.

non-fiction

SMASH. I read a lot of non-fiction books, mostly books on wildlife, plants, gardening, field guides, history and ornithology, and a few books about painting and drawing.

historical settings

SMASH. I love historical settings, especially if it has fantasy mixed in as well.

morally grey characters

SMASH.

first person POV

SMASH. Wow, this tag is really reflecting my ‘read anything I can get on my hands’ policy I had when I was young. There are some incredible books I’ve read that have a first person POV (The Hunger Games, for example)

audiobooks

PASS. I’ve never used audiobooks, and I also don’t know if I can focus on listening to something for long.

re-reading

SMASH. I’ve reread some books so much I’d basically memorized passages out of them. When I get obsessed with a book, I go all the way.

classic novels

SMASH. I started out my reading journey with reading children’s classics like Railway Children and A Little Princess, simply because they were the most recognizable books in a bookstore. (no such thing as reading diverse books back then.) And since required reading was like, an alien concept in my school, I didn’t go through the uncomfortable ‘being forced to read classics’ phase either, and I’ve always enjoyed reading them.

annotating

PASS. This is coming from someone who didn’t even annotate her textbooks unless it was absolutely necessary. Unpopular opinion but thinking of scribbling in book pages in non-erasable stuff feels taboo.

cracking book spines

SMASH. And it’s not even a conscious decision. It’s just something that happens when you read a book, right? I didn’t even know it was such a big deal till I joined the bookish community here.

smut

PASS. I rarely read romance books, and even in other genres I don’t care much for the smutty scenes as the days of pining and tension that come before.

character driven books

SMASH all the way!

past/present split timeline

SMASH. More specifically, I love that moment when something in the past is shown that gives a totally new perspective to what is happening in the present. But this kind of thing has to be written carefully as it has a lot of potential to become too confusing. Favourite examples of books using this style are Vicious and The Girls I’ve Been.

heavy world building

SMASH. You can really see when an author has given a lot of thought into building their world and I love that feeling.

I tag…

Lotus @ Pages of Starlight

Lila @ Hardcover Haven

Riddhi @ Whispering Stories

Sahi @ My World of Books

Meghan @ Whimsically Meghan

That’s all for today, folks! And if you enjoyed this tag, you’re welcome to use it!

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