Unforgettable Bookish Memories Tag

Despite the fact that this is the Unforgettable Bookish Memories Tag I found some of these questions hard to answer than others, and by some I mean the first two. My memory is terrible, and the first book ever read to me was read to me a long long time ago. I was tagged by The Orangutan Librarian. Thanks for the tag, I had a lot of fun answering the questions for this one so I hope you enjoy reading my answers just as much.

No. 1: The first book you ever read (or was read to you)

I can’t remember, and this is really bad but I honestly can’t remember. The first book I can remember reading is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but I know it wasn’t the first book I ever read or that was ever read to me.

I used to have a Bumper Book of Fairytales, it was massive and at one point the book actually fell apart it was that well read, but I know this is what would have been read to me. My parents would read the stories to me and eventually I read the stories myself (it’s possibly the reason I love fairytale retellings so much).

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No. 2: The first book you ever brought with your own money

Again I can’t remember the first book I brought with my own money but the first book I can remember buying with my own money is Mean Spirits and Young Blood by Meg Cabot. Yes this is two books but I brought both of them at the same time, I actually only had the money for one but because I wanted both (this was a favourite series of mine at the time) I brought both.

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No. 3: A book you stayed up all night reading

The last book I stayed up late reading (not all night, but later than I should have considering I had work the next morning) was Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. Considering how excited I was for its release I’m not surprised I couldn’t put it down until the last page.

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No. 4: What book or series will you never forget

My favourite standalone book is The Night Circus and I think that has to be the answer for this question. Even when I forget some of the smaller details that happen I’ll never forget the magic that I feel when I read it and explore the circus through Erin Morgenstern’s writing.

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No. 5: A book you frequently think about

The books that tend to stay with me longer than any other are magical realism books. There’s something about the stories, the characters, the lyrical way they’re written that I just can’t forget, and for me the best of the best is When the Moon Was Ours. It’s an all-time favourite of mine.

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No. 6: A scene that has haunted you for years after reading it

The last page of The Book Thief. No matter how many times I read it the last few paragraphs, narrated by Death, never fail to give me shivers.

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn’t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words so damning and brilliant.

None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.

All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.

A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR
I am haunted by humans.”

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No. 7: An unforgettable character

Maybe this is cliché but it’s cliché for a reason so I’m going to say Hermione Granger. She was a character I loved in Harry Potter and I wanted to be just like her; not so much in terms of her being a witch (although I would have loved that) but in terms of how smart she was.

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No. 8: A book that changed your opinion about something

While my favourite genre is fantasy my second favourite is contemporary, and the book that opened me up to that genre is Just Listen. It was the first YA contemporary book I read, the first one I loved so so much, and even now Sarah Dessen is a favourite contemporary author of mine.

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No. 9: Share another random bookish memory

I mentioned this a little earlier in my post but my memory is reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the first time.

It was the end of my family holiday, and me, my parents and my sister had just popped in to say goodbye to my great aunt before driving home that evening. My parents gave me a hardcover copy of Goblet of Fire (which I still have sitting on my bookshelves, slightly worse for wear now) as I was getting into the car. I started reading straight away and as it got darker and darker out and I was forced to read chapter by chapter under the light of the streetlights my parents told me to put the book away before I damaged my eyes.

I think eventually I fell asleep in the backseat of the car, I didn’t get to the end of the book before then I’m not that fast a reader.

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So can you remember the first book you ever read or the first book you brought with your own money, or is your memory as terrible as mine is? What scene is going to haunt you for years to come? Let me know.