Get to Know My Reading Taste
Mar. 24th, 2025 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alaterdateThere's a reading meme going around on youtube and I wanted to fill it out so I did.
Source: get to know my taste tag (original)— mynameismarines
The Questions
I took out the Booktube specific questions.
How do you rate books? Give a quick rundown of how you do your star ratings (or if you don’t use star ratings, how you evaluate books).
I use star ratings in places where the option is given to me like Goodreads and a reading journal I received as a present. There's hardly ever any math involved. It's just a vibe scale. 1 - Did not like it, 2 - Not for me, 3 - It's okay/a book, 4 - I liked it, 5 - I loved it. Hardly anything gets a 5 star rating, most books get a 3 star rating.
On my dreamwidth journal I've tried to use stars like a tagging system. If I remember how I felt about a book I can probably find it based on the stars. But recently I've been trying to rethink this kind of organization. I don't want to go by genre because that would give me a lot of tags eventually. I need something equally as vibes based. I'm starting to think I could just do three tiers. It's bad, It's fine, & It's good. Most books would undoubtedly fall into the "It's Fine" territory.
On my website there's no kind of rating tags. Just the list of books I read that year IF I wrote any kind of notes about it.
How do you approach reviewing books? What’s your review style? Are you analytical, emotional, casual, or structured?
I definitely go into reviews in an emotional style. I keep a lot of emotional thoughts as notes when reading a book. Also very casual, I think it's fun to post in a casual voice on the other hand I do sometimes wish I could muster up the energy to be more analytical and structured about it. But I'm not really writing an essay when I write a book log/review it's more how I felt while reading for sure. I suppose this is why I don't enjoy writing logs/reviews of non-fiction works for the public. The more serious nature calls for a more serious discussion in my mind, whether true or not.
What’s the book that made you a reader? Whether it was your first favorite or the one that got you hooked, what book started it all?
I couldn't say. I was a voracious reader as a child, but it was more in a "look what a good student I am" way rather than an obsessive joy with books. Of course I did enjoy reading books or else I would have just faked anything having to do with them. But to try to think of a book that "made me a reader," is impossible. It was school that made me a reader.
A book that gave me a sense of loving stories though? That's technically a different question. The earliest book I can think of as being my favorite is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. I read a snippet of it in a children's anthology book and I was so taken in with it I just had to find and read the whole thing. It's such an amusing tale of playing with words and meaning with a touch of the surreal. I can see why I ended up loving Kafka's works so much later on in life.
There is another book that stuck with me before I ever heard of The Phantom Tollbooth, but I never considered it a favorite. It is ingrained forever as the first book that ever made me cry. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Do I know why they made a very abridged children's version with pictures & do I know why my family had it—no. I needed to read something for school, pulled it off the shelf, and had quite an experience. I don't know what happened to that book, I had it up until middle-school, I know I let my younger brother borrow it to read for his morning reading in class and he drew pencil mustaches on everyone, even the guys who already had mustaches. But he did give it back to me, hence me seeing the multiplied mustaches, but after that, no clue. I haven't actually read The Count of Monte Cristo in quite a few years in any fashion, but I'm now thinking that book may have been the well from which my love for angst and grudges sprang, lol.
The first book that ever got me invested into a series was Artemis Fowl. I devoured the first four books over and over. I didn't keep up much with the series as I grew older, but when the last book was set to release I read everything and I did enjoy the last book though it didn't carry on that spark of deep love that the first four books gave me. I still have trouble reading a series to completion.
I only read school assigned books and other classics most of the time. In 7th grade I was in a charter school where you do packets on your own and then go in and take a test about them to pass. I must have scored quite high on their evaluation tests because I had a) the craziest math which I could not understand, & b) they made me read The Odyssey on my own (comparatively some people's 9th grade assigned packets had them learning about verbs...). I really like The Odyssey. There are quite a few classics that I really like, most of them were assigned in my 12th grade AP English class. So that was a very fun reading time. Oh, how I remember reading Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure for "fun" while sticking my nose up at The Hunger Games. I would learn much later that The Hunger Games is really good too though.
Then I stopped really reading novels for fun until around 2018. That year I found r/52books and decided to use the Goodreads challenge tracker thingy. I read 80 books that year. What kicked it off? The Captive Prince series by C.S. Pacat. I ate that shit up. I have pages of notes for those damn books lmao. I couldn't forget about how Tumblr wouldn't shut up about them being problematic and I had to see for myself.
I read so much good shit that year though. The Hunger Games, Patricia Highsmith, Haruki Murakami, Rainbow Rowell 🤣, Mind Fuck 🤯, Michael Crichton, my first het romance book, Ira Levin, Angela Carter my beloved, Stephen Graham Jones, V.E. Schwab, The Mountains at the Bottom of the World, Elantris, Bonnie Jo Campbell, there were quite a few great authors, books, and genres I delved into. Now reading is just a thing I do again.
Do you have a genre niche? Are there certain genres you gravitate toward? Or do you read widely across genres?
I'd say I read widely. I'll pick up almost anything that has an interesting summary. I used to have hard-no's for YA, litfic, and het romance. But I tried some and eh- I still wouldn't say they're a favorite genre, I'm often more frustrated than not when I pick up a title shelved under those categories, but they're not the scourge of the earth.
I definitely have favorite types of flavors. Historical, sad/tragic, bizarre, mysterious, horny.
Do you generally prefer character-driven or plot-driven stories?
I'd definitely choose an internal focus over an external one, but writers must remember that characters can only progress so far when nothing external happens. I've heard it said that in plot-driven stories the main character could be anyone, but I don't think that's true. These things are cogs, the difference is which one is bigger.
What’s a book you love so much that you don’t care if others don’t like it? What’s that one book you love enough for everyone?
The book with the lowest average rating, that is not a classic, and which I have given 5-stars is Kiersten White's And I Darken. Yeah, I'd go to bat for Lada. I'd step up to the plate for White's YA fiction. I wouldn't say I love them enough for everyone, but they are fun books.
Maybe an Iggulden book would better answer this question. I just remembered showing a book on my favorites shelf to a friend and she was like "Really? A man book?" with an incredulous look, to which I replied "The homoeroticism though." You'll never take my (sexy, sweaty, doomed) Spartans away from me.
What’s a book you love so much that if someone doesn’t like it, you know your reading tastes don’t align? The book or books where a difference of opinion is a strong indicator of different reading preferences.
The opposite metric: If you LOVED The Song of Achilles I am side-eyeing you.
What’s in your “trash pocket”? What books, tropes, or themes that you know are bad but you love them anyway?
Nothing is "bad," love & peace.
Some things are embarrassing. I still think the writing in Carry On is so, so, fluffy. The "serious", popular quotes are sentiments so shallow and devoid of merit that I will laugh every time. But I enjoyed that book anyway, in spite of/because of — doesn't matter, and I admit that.
My trope downfall is that I will fall for "enemy to lovers" marketing even though I know it isn't gonna be true.
Do you have any dealbreakers in books? Something that, if present, immediately turns you off from a book.
Not anymore really? Nothing immediately pops to the top of my head. I'll probably complain later, but I don't think I've ever immediately put something down for a singular reason.
What’s a strong opinion you have about a book released within the last year? Whether it’s overrated, underrated, or just a take you need to share.
Books released within the last year? Uh? Grady Hendrix is overrated?
What do you look for in writing? What makes a book stand out to you? Is it prose style, themes, voice, structure, or something else?
Prose style is one that I catch onto when it's exceptional in either direction. What makes a book stand out to me most is the amount of trust the writer has in me to grasp their little straws and make a bale. I also, of course, have a fondness for really cool scenes. And fucked up-ness, and homoeroticism, and characters who can't help being what they are.
How do you decide what to read next? Do you plan ahead, mood read, or follow external factors (hype, recommendations, ARCs)?
I hear things, jot them down, then borrow 500 books from the library because holds always seem to come in waves, write a list of everything I have waiting for me and rank them in a cross of preference and due date. Some of these books aren't so popular and so I can have them sitting around my house for months, some need me to drop other things and read them because several people are waiting behind me. If I can't be bothered with a certain popular title at the moment, I'll return it and do another round of Holds on it. Yes, it's always been that random. I just picked up All the Other Mothers Hate Me because I happened to see it on a display shelf and the title made me curious and checked that out along with The Great Gatsby, even though I already had a hold just come in and 5 other books out on Libby 👍
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Date: 2025-03-28 07:01 am (UTC)D'arvit yes! I used to be able to read that fairy/leprechaun language that ran across the bottom pages of some of the editions too. I've always loved secret languages. It was a very fun series!
Thanks! I had fun answering it. Hope you did too. I just saw that you did the meme, gonna go check it out.