Hi everyone! Today I’m here with another tag! I was tagged to do the Stuck at Home Book Tag by Abi @ The Knights Who Say Book, and if you haven’t checked out her blog yet, I highly recommend you do. She’s amazing, and I’m always struck by the eloquence of her posts!

Anyway, thanks for tagging me, Abi! I know it took me a while, but since I had just done the Stay at Home Book Tag and the names of these tags are so similar, I thought I’d wait a while… The questions are different though, so you’re getting new content, don’t worry 😉

First, though:

THE TAG RULES

• Thank the person who nominated you
• Answer all the questions down below
• Pingback to the creator: Ellyn @ Allonsythornraxx
• Nominate 5+ bloggers you’d like to know more about to do this tag

So let’s get into the questions!

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What are you currently reading?

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare! I still haven’t completely given up hope that I’ll manage to have read all Shakespeare plays in time for my exam in August… And, of course, me choosing to read this play in particular has everything to do with how much I loved The Ballad and Songbirds and Snakes. I wanted to see if Suzanne Collins took any inspiration for President Snow from Shakespeare, and let me tell you: If you’ve read this play, there’s no way you can miss all the allusions to it in The Hunger Games. It already opens with Plebeians blaming the Capitol for letting them starve while the Patricians live in opulence… I’m actually really enjoying comparing the two and am excited to see where this goes!

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What’s your favorite “can’t leave the house” activity?

At the moment, that’s probably a tie between watching Russian things on Netflix (Still trying to improve my language skills here!) and music. I recently changed my violin strings, though, and for some reason, they still won’t stay in place! It takes me about half an hour to tune my violin at the moment, and it’s driving me crazy… So I’ve actually been neglecting it a little and gravitating more towards piano and ukulele – I know that won’t solve the problem, but my patience is limited!

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A book you’ve been meaning to read forever?

At some point, I really want to read something by Herrmann Hesse. I’ve read so many English classics by now, but, outside of school, I have barely scratched the surface of the German ones. And my mom said that she really liked Hesse’s books when she was a teenager, so I really want to see for myself! Who knows when I’ll finally get around to it, though. I’ve been intending to read one of his books for years now and have never done it, and with the amount of classics I’ve been reading lately, I think I’ll probably be in desperate need for something else once my exam is over – Aurora Burning and The Dragon Republic are definitely first on my list!

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An intimidating book on your TBR?

This has got to go to Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. This is also on my required exam reading list, but the thing is, it’s huge! It has over 1,500 pages! Plus, I’m not even done with Samuel Richardson’s Pamela yet. That was my commute-audiobook at the time the pandemic struck, and now that I don’t have to commute to university anymore, I just haven’t really found the time to listen to it. Or maybe I just don’t have enough motivation – Pamela’s virtuousness and “lost sheep” airs can get a little annoying after ten hours of listening… Anyways, all this is making me a little apprehensive to pick Clarissa up. I do plan on reading it eventually though (even if I don’t make it in time for my exam), since this book was super-influential on British literature and the development of the novel, and I want to form my own opinion on it!

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Top three priority books on your TBR?

A Shakespeare play (I’m gravitating towards Richard III, since I’m apparently into villainous protagonists at the moment), Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, and, so that I can read something that isn’t exam-relevant, Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings. The latter was described to me as a slow, character-driven book, and that sounds exactly like what I’m currently in the mood for!

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Recommend a short book?

The Longest Memory by Fred D’Aguiar! This is the story of Whitechapel, a slave on a plantation in the pre-Civil-War American South, and of all the people who are somehow connected to him. It includes multiple points of view as well as multiple ways of storytelling – for example, one character’s chapter is written in poems – which make for a very nuanced, raw, and honest portrayal of slavery. This is such an important story and so relevant to our times, so please do yourself a favor and read it!

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Recommend a long book?

Everyone has probably already heard of The Name of the Wind, but just in case you are one of those people intimidated by its massiveness and haven’t read it yet: It is so worth it! I have rarely come across a fantasy world as fleshed out as this one is and a tale with writing anywhere near as lyrical. We follow our main character Kvothe as he quite literally tells his life story – how he lost his parents and turned to music, how he became extremely skilled at magic, and how his downfall came about. And, look at the upside of things: You can take your time reading this, since I doubt we’ll be getting the final book in this series anytime soon… Please, Patrick Rothfuss, can you publish The Doors of Stone already??

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Something you’d love to do while stuck at home?

Basically anything that doesn’t involve exam preparation! I have a bunch of things that I really want to try once all that is over. I want to properly start learning Spanish. I want to listen to a Harry Potter podcast that one of my friends recommended to me. I want to bake. I want to write short stories again. I want to get started on my master’s thesis (it has to do with algebraic number fields and hyperelliptic curves, if anyone is interested 😉 ). Though I do kind of hope that I won’t be stuck at home anymore once I finally have the time to do all of this 😅

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What do you plan on reading next?

All the stuff I mentioned under my priority books? Although I guess I could also mention The Silmarillion here. I’m buddy reading it with one of my friends, and we’ve been discussing around five chapters every week. So the next thing I’ll read will probably be this week’s chapters. It is definitely interesting, especially if you enjoyed the world building in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but, regarding the writing style, it does also kind of feel like I’m reading a fantasy, info-dumpy version of the Bible… I’m still trying to figure out whether I like it or not.

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And that’s it for today! Let me know what you thought of my answers!

I TAG:

Mia @ Of Books and Boys

Jay @ Jay Reads

Sumedha @ The Wordy Habitat

Sofia @ Aelin’s Kingdom

Evelyn @ Evelyn Reads

If you want to, that is! And if you haven’t already done this tag – I feel like I’m pretty much the last person to jump on the bandwagon here… But I’d love to read your answers either way!