Bookish Book Lover Tag

Good evening, fellow dragons, wyverns, griffins, and other mythical flying beasts!* I seem to have fallen into the bad habit of waiting until the final hours of the day to put up my weekly post. Really need to start writing these sooner.


*Not only are you questers, readers, friends, bloglings, etc., you are now also a motley crew of legendary creatures? I don't even know. I just need something to call you. Dragon will do.


Anyway, on a day like today, a tag is the perfect rescue. Thanks to Deborah O'Carroll for passing this one along from her book blog, The Page Dreamer! (Pssst, go check it out! Her reviews always have this amazing way of making you want to read a book, and yet they don't spoil it.)

The Rules

Use the banner.

Answer the questions.

Use lots of book covers.

Tag your bookish friends!

(I was going to provide links to Goodreads, but ran out of time. Sorry!)

1) What Book Are You Currently Reading?

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It's a 1,006 page beast, but a very entertaining beast at that. I honestly didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I am.

2) What’s The Last Book You Finished?

Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz (book three in the Alex Rider series). It was a definite improvement over the first two.

3) Favorite Book You Read This Year?

Illusionarium, A Snicker of Magic, Cinder, Knightley Academy, Howl's Moving Castle, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. *deep breath* I can't pick just one!

4) What Genre Have You Read Most This Year?

Without formally counting? Probably fantasy. (Did you even have to ask?)

5) What Genre Have You Read Least This Year?

Well, I won't list the genres I haven't read at all. Instead, I will tell you that I've read only one nonfiction, only two thrillers, and only two contemporaries. Also one sci-fi/fantasy crossover (aka Cinder) and one steampunk (aka Illusionarium).

6) What Genre Do You Want To Read More Of?

Steampunk!!! And always, always more fantasy.

7) How Many Books Have You Read This Year, And What’s Your Goal?

Heh, funny you should ask. I've read a measly sixteen out of the fifty-two book goal I made for myself. I was hoping to match last year, but at this rate . . . Okay, the year's not over yet, so maybe I'll catch up! Maybe. Possibly. We'll see.

8) What’s The Last Book You Bought?

One of the local bookstores is closing down (sadness), but the one good thing about that is discounts. I walked out of there with four books the other day:

Moonblood and Dragonwitch by Anne Elisabeth Stengl (now only Golden Daughter and the two novellas are missing from my collection)

Raven's Ladder by Jeffrey Overstreet

Prophet by R.J. Larson

9) What Book Are You Saving Up To Buy Next?

There are several Bryan Davis books I don't yet own, namely Reapers and Beyond the Gateway, along with the Tales of Starlight series.

Other than that, I don't know. There's a few gaps to fill in other series I'm collecting. Oh! Can't forget A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold by Anne Elisabeth Stengl!

10) How Many Books Did You Check Out Last Library Visit?

Five, I think? It was--gasp!--back in March/April, and since then I've been reading books I have in the house already. But I'm missing the library, so I'll have to make a trip again soon.

11) What’s A Book You Can’t Wait To Read?

ALL OF THEM. Well. Not true. I can't wait to read Scarlet, The Dream Thieves, and The Shadow Lamp. Just to name three. Because you know how I can't keep my answers to just one book.

12) What’s A Series You’d Recommend to Everyone?

Oh, toughie. The Chronicles of Narnia definitely. Classic, superb storytelling, and that profound quality that makes it enjoyable to both children and adults. Also Bryan Davis's three connected series: Dragons in Our Midst, Oracles of Fire, and Children of the Bard. Because everyone could use more dragons in their lives! And more importantly, the depth with which Bryan Davis pens his tales builds one's faith.

13) Who’s An Author You’re Hoping Writes More?

All of my favorites ever. Oh, you wanted specifics? How many can I mention? All of them? No? Okay, some of them. Anne Elisabeth Stengl, to begin with. She just released ABOSABOG (doesn't that look hilarious in acronym form? The first time I read it, I was like, "Who on earth is Abosabog? Sounds like a monster."), but I'm itching for another Tales of Goldstone Wood installment. And Heather Dixon needs to write more. So does Sharon Cameron (right, Mary?!). I could keep going, but it also bears mentioning that numerous writer friends of mine NEED TO KEEP WRITING. And I would greatly enjoy it if they PUBLISHED those epic writings. Meaning I would screech and flail and cry happy tears and order five dozen copies of each book!

14) A Few Books Your Heart Adores?

Excuse me, what? A few? A few. You know what that word makes when you take off the F? Ew. How can I pick just a few books my heart adores? Nevertheless, I shall make a valiant attempt to answer this.

The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis. By my recollection, the first portal fantasy (or really, first true high fantasy) I ever read. It's because of this book I have a fantasy addiction. Narnia's creation scene especially whispered deep into my soul, and I think I carry an echo of that wonder with me.

Starflower and Shadowhand by Anne Elisabeth Stengl. Yes, that's two from the same series (the whole of which is dear to my heart), but those two in particular struck a chord.

The Bones of Makaidos by Bryan Davis. That ending is the most perfect one I have ever, ever read. And it was, at the time (before he added another four books), the culmination of the adventures, joys, and heartbreaks of the characters packed into one giant book.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Probably doesn't need explanation. It made me think, laugh, and inwardly cry.

The Ale Boy's Feast by Jeffrey Overstreet. It came into my life just when I needed it, and was part of what got me through a difficult time.

And . . . I'd better stop now before I list a hundred books.

15) What Series’s Coming Conclusion Makes You Sad?

I don't know when Tales of Goldstone Wood will end, but that will be a very sad day indeed. I don't even want to think about it. #denial

16) What Books Are On Your Wish-List?

See question #9. Plus all of these . . .

Lord of the Rings (no, I don't actually own them yet) by JRR Tolkien

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Books 2-5 in the Bright Empires series by Stephen Lawhead

Maybe all the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Maybe the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Books 2 and 3 in The Solitary Tales by Travis Thrasher

Books 2-4 in the River of Time Series by Lisa T. Bergren

The Calling by Rachelle Dekker

Books 1 and 4 in the Auralia Thread by Jeffrey Overstreet

Books 8-10 in Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan

Golden Daughter by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

The entire Dreamhouse Kings series by Robert Liparulo

And that's not even all of them. When I find a series I love, I must collect them all. I must have them, own them, display them. Consequently I am running out of bookshelf space at an alarming rate.

Well, this has been great fun! Thanks again to Deborah for tagging me! And now I shall tag the following fellow bookdragons: Sarah / Blue / Emily / Skye / Annie / Tori / Anna / and Savannah, whose blog is private. (Deborah has all the questions in a nice copy-and-pastable list included in her post.)

How about YOU? Any of the bajillion books here spark your interest? Any you've read before and loved? Which books does your heart adore?


P.S. The nominations are pouring in for the 2016 Silmarillion Awards! We'd love for you to participate and make this event even more epic, so be sure to nominate and second all your favorite fantasy characters/items before July 1st. (Which means June 30th is the last day the nominations will be open.) I can hardly wait to see who will win in each category!


EDIT: It means July 1st is the last day the nominations will be open, actually. Sorry I told you wrong.

The Silmarillion Awards 2016: Riddling and Poetry Nominations

Hey questers, welcome to the first ever Silmarillion Awards! This has been in the works for a while, so I'm quite excited to finally get to share it with you.


The Silmarillion Awards have been created by DJ Edwardson and Jenelle Schmidt as a way to honor J.R.R. Tolkien as the Father of Modern Fantasy, open up a discussion about some of our other favorite fantasy works, and to have a ton of fun this summer.


When we started thinking about creating a sort of “Fantasy Oscars,” we found it difficult to fathom any award that wouldn’t be won by a character or item from The Lord of the Rings . . . so to make things a bit more interesting, we decided to call them “The Silmarillion Awards” and have characters from LOTR and The Hobbit present the awards as examples of the ultimate standard for each award. Hopefully that will even the playing field a bit.


Joining the team are myself and seven other bloggers and authors who will each be hosting one of these awards, called Silmarils, on our blogs towards the end of July.


But before we get there, we need YOUR help! Starting today, June 20th, and proceeding through July 1st, the nomination period for each award will be open. Please visit the participating bloggers (found in the list below), read the descriptions of the awards, and make your nominations!


So the way this works is you'll be nominating characters and whatnot in the comments of each blog post. If someone has already nominated the character you would've nominated, you may second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.) that nomination. We will be picking the 5 characters with the most "seconds" for the final voting period that will take place between July 4th - 13th.


It's not as complicated as it might sound at first. Basically, an individual can make as many nominations and "seconds" as they desire, but you can't second your own nomination. That would be like you nominating the same character twice, which is *gasp* cheating.

Fine print

1. Please do not nominate anything from one of your OWN books!
2. You may nominate a character AND second, third, fourth a character . . . but please only vote once. (i.e. You cannot nominate a character and then also second that same character. Basically I'm just repeating everything.)
3. Please share about the Silmarillion Awards on social media to spread the excitement far and wide across Middle Earth. Use the hashtag: #silmawards2016 wherever possible!
4. Don’t nominate a Tolkien character for the awards, as the characters presenting the awards are already the standard for each award.
5. Don’t stress if a character you nominate doesn’t win this year. We are hoping to make this an annual tradition, and these awards are LIFETIME AWARDS, meaning that they cannot be won by the same character more than once!

Official Schedule

Phase 1 - June 20-July 1: Award nominations open


Phase 2 - July 4: the final nominees will be announced and voting will open and last through July 14th


Phase 3 - July 16-28: Presentation of the awards, one per day, each award will be hosted on a different blog each day


Phase 4 - Celebration! July 29th was the official publication date of the Lord of the Rings back in 1954. We invite you all to celebrate with us the 62nd birthday of this masterpiece of Fantasy Fiction. Congratulate the winners, take and post a photo of yourselves with LOTR paraphernalia, write a blog post about your favorite LOTR moment, scene, character, quote, or memory . . . get creative and have fun!

List of Participating Blogs

DJ Edwardson Hosting the Best Friend Silmaril

Jenelle Schmidt Hosting the Most Heart Wrenching Death Scene Silmaril

Deborah O’Carroll Hosting the Strangest Character Silmaril

Abbey Hosting the Most Nefarious Villain Silmaril

JL Mbewe Hosting the Best Redemption Story Silmaril

Tracey Dyck Hosting the Riddling and Poetry Silmaril

Jack Lewis Baillot Hosting the Best Fantasy Mount Silmaril

Madeline J. Rose Hosting the Most Epic Hero Silmaril

Zachary Totah Hosting the Wisest Counsellor Silmaril

Rawls E. Fantasy Hosting the Best Fantasy Weapon Silmaril

As you can see, I will be hosting the Riddling and Poetry Silmaril here on Adventure Awaits. Below are the criteria for the sort of character or riddle/poem that ought to be nominated for such an award. Keep in mind that LOTR characters, as the ultimate standard of fantasy fiction, will be presenting these awards (so don't nominate any Middle Earthians, please!).

The Riddling and Poetry Silmaril should go to either:

• A piece of poetry so beautiful and fantastic that it stirs the soul to action, awakens the imagination, or whispers to the heart . . .
• A riddle so riddlesome, so clever and epic, that it turns your brain inside out . . .
• A character who wields words with utmost skill, be they a bard, singer, or riddle-maker. This character should stick in your memory as someone whose riddles/poems bring depth, creativity, humor, or a sense of foreboding to the book.

That's the sort of riddle/poem/character I want you to nominate, questers!


Near the end of July, this award will be presented to the winner YOU vote for by the one who comes from under the hill . . . the one known as Ring-winner and Luck-wearer and Barrel-rider; he who walks unseen; who came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over him. I shan't name him now, but I'm sure you can easily guess who it is.


I know I just threw a lot of details at you, so feel free to ask questions! (There are no stupid ones, remember.)


Now go forth into the comments section and nominate away! The world is waiting to applaud the very best riddling and poetry fantasy has to offer!

Is Our Writing Needed? (a response post)

I've never written a response post before, so today will be a first. The lovely, spitfire authoress Jenny Freitag (who penned Plenilune, a book I want to read one day) over at The Penslayer wrote a post the other day called Why NOT Being a Prolific Writer is a Godsend. Now, I agree with/am inspired by a number of Jenny's posts, but something she said in this one burrowed under my skin and stuck there. So I'm pondering it in the form of a blog post.

The Lord doesn't need you + you don't know what you're talking about. If you possibly think you know enough to "write" for the Lord, you know nothing of the smallness of man nor the immensity of God. Do as Job did, and put your hand over your mouth. Be humble. God has left his written witness. My fiction - your fiction - none of it is necessary.

I confess, I blinked at my screen and did a double take at that first phrase: the Lord doesn't need you. I won't presume to know all the thoughts and intentions behind Jenny's statement, but I'm bothered enough to want to unpackage and sift this for myself. Cool?


God is infinite. Infinitely complete, infinitely self-sufficient. So of course He doesn't need me. Need is felt only by finite beings. He has and is everything. The creation of the world and of mankind was not done out of a vacancy of God's. It was not because He was somehow lacking. No, He spoke creation into being because He wanted to. It was what He desired, and it brought Him pleasure.


But the Lord I'm spending my life getting to know does want me. After all, He brought me into existence. And every page of the Bible is evidence that He wants to love me, wants me to love Him back, and basically wants to have every piece of myself. And He shows me the way to live a life that builds His Kingdom. One way I can do that is through my writing.

If you possibly think you know enough to "write" for the Lord, you know nothing of the smallness of man nor the immensity of God.

Maybe this is just arguing semantics, but by "writing for the Lord" do you mean "writing in service of the Lord" or "writing because He can't speak loud enough on His own?"


"For the Lord" in the sense of a lesser being serving a higher one--or in the sense of fulfilling someone's lack? I can bake muffins for you because I like you and want to give you something that will bring you pleasure, or I can bake muffins for you because you can't/are too busy/don't know how/don't want to.


All it takes is for me to look up at the stars on a dark night to recognize the smallness of man and the immensity of God--only a scrap of it, you understand, because my finite mind cannot truly comprehend the infinite. But if I say that I write for the Lord, I don't say so under any delusion that He somehow needs me to. As if His plan would fall apart if I didn't.


And yet! And yet . . . one of the greatest mysteries of all is how a God so indescribably powerful would choose to give such a measure of authority to earthen vessels, human beings. How He would choose to do His work not with a bang and a flash of lightning and an instantaneous solution, but through the slow, painful process of moving in and through mankind. Through flawed, limited people. Yes, through me.


Does He need me? Isn't He capable of accomplishing whatever He wants no matter what I do? Yes. And also no.


This mystery confounds me. It's like prayer. He doesn't need us to tell Him what we're thinking and what we need, because He already knows. But for the purpose of relationship and the maturing of our faith, He wants us to pray. There's a big difference between needing and wanting. I don't think we realize the full extent of our prayers' impact. Prayer is needed.

None of it is necessary.

 I see where you're coming from--you're speaking to those of us whose heads have gotten too big, those of us who pressure ourselves to write, write, write, because there are SOULS TO SAVE. Those of us who stagger under the unrealistic pressure we've heaped upon our own shoulders. I get that.


But every mile of road has two miles of ditch. The opposite swing of the pendulum is one which causes us to throw up our hands and weigh our writing too lightly. If my writing is not necessary, then why do it? It's too much work and pain and bloodshed to press on if it doesn't matter anyway. (But there's the rub--maybe it really is unnecessary, and yet it still matters. Maybe it's something I don't have to do, but when I do it, it makes a difference. Or maybe it is necessary. I'm not 100% sure.)


This post is all over the place . . . But that's the shape of my pondering, so I won't apologize.


I think this has become more of a spinoff than a response post, because Jenny's aim was one thing and my thoughts have veered off on another that's rather tangential. She was speaking to relieve the pressure we place on ourselves to produce copious amounts of story, and here I am talking about the necessity-or-not of writing and whether God needs it or wants it of us. (Sorry, Jenny.)


For me, writing falls under the umbrella of living well, of making use of everything God has given me. For me, writing is one means of discovering Him and in the process, sharing His light with those who may read my words. Do I feel worthy of such a task? Not at all. But God seems to have a penchant for using the unworthy. If I can be an instrument in His hands, that's incredibly humbling and brings me such joy. If He can shine through the chinks in my stories, then I will keep penning those tales.