THE EPIC READS TAG

And here we go with another tag post: I found this one on a search for interesting themes and my thanks go to Adventures of a Bookish Girl where this interesting tag was posted some time ago. And on with the questions!

If you could invite one author and one of their fictional characters to lunch, who would you invite and what would you serve them?

In my opinion, lunch with an author should be a fun experience, so I cannot imagine a more delightful guest than John Scalzi, whose wit and brilliance come clearly across both from his fiction works and from his blog posts. And adding his character of Kiva Lagos, from his Interdependecy series, would certainly turn the occasion into something quite memorable, if a little four-letter-words-heavy :-D. 

The two of them might very well enjoy my time-tested bacon-wrapped chicken legs: family and friends assure me they are quite tasty!

What book do you wish the author would write a prequel for?

While reading Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, I often wondered how society evolved into such a rigid class scheme and which events sent Earth’s history on the path that we experience in this saga.

Which two characters (not from the same book) would make a good couple?

Since I’m not very romantically-inclined as far as my reading material goes, I choose to interpret the term ‘couple’ a little more loosely and rather focus on a partnership rather than a love affair, and so I believe that  Murderbot (from Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries) and Brittle from Robert Cargill’s Sea of Rust could share an interesting journey: the former, with its distrust of human feelings, and the latter, with its longing for human company, might go on an adventure of  mutual discovery and understanding, learning more about their flesh-and-blood creators. And maybe watch together some episodes of Sanctuary Moon while they’re at it… 😀

If you ran into your favorite author on the subway and only could say one sentence to them, who would they be and what would you tell them?

Oh my! That’s a difficult question for a number of reasons: first I don’t have just ONE favorite author, there are many whose books I would buy sight unseen, so mentioning just one for that oh-so-lucky subway encounter would be next to impossible. As for the one sentence I would be allowed to say well… knowing myself, I know that I would still be frantically ruminating on that, while I gather my courage, as the unnamed author left the car at the next station….

What book made you a reader and why?

Since I started reading at a very young age, and I’ve been told that even as a child it was far from unusual to find me with my nose in a book, it might be hard to name THE BOOK that turned me into a reader, but it would be a safe bet to name the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, or Pinocchio… But memory does not help me very much on this one, sorry!

Your bookshelf just caught fire: show the book you’d save.

That’s an easy one: since I do practically all of my reading through e-books, there is no chance that my virtual bookshelf would be consumed by flames (and I have backup!!), but should that happen to the physical shelves where I store my paper books, I know I could grab, with a swift double move, both The Lord of the Rings and Dune. They have been with me for a long, long time, and I would hate to be parted from them.

Which dystopian world would you want to live in if you had to choose one? And why?

Dystopian worlds in general are not exactly pleasant places to live in, since they tend to represent a negative version of our future, so if I were forced to choose one I might set my sights on the world portrayed in the Daniel Blackland series by Greg Van Eekhout: in this version of future Earth power rests in the hands of wielders of bone magic, i.e. those who can extract magical powers from the bones of exotic and extinct creatures like dragons. Why would I choose it? Because it’s the kind of dystopian world where common citizens are relatively safe if they stay out of the power struggle, which – considering how things usually go in this kind of setting – is a considerable plus.

What is your most epic read of all time?

There are two, actually, and I’m still in the process of discovering them in their entirety: for a more classical approach to epic fantasy I would mention both John Gwynne’s series The Faithful and the Fallen and Of Blood and Bone; while for a touch (ok, more than just a touch…) of grim-darkness there is the First Law world created by Joe Abercrombie.

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As usual, I’m not tagging anyone – no pressure! – but if you find this interesting, just jump in and share your point of view!  🙂