Top Ten Tuesday #399-Reindeer Book Tag

Hi all! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these. I arrived in Australia on Thursday morning and have been having a great time so far. I went shopping with my sister on Saturday, and we went to quite a few cool bookshops which was great, my favourite was one called Coventry Bookstore, a small independent bookshop owned by a married couple, one of the owners John, was super helpful in recommending books for my dad’s Christmas present and his wife Belinda was doing gift wrapping, which I very gratefully took up as I am a horrible present wrapper! We went to a couple of other bookshops as well, one was called Hill of Content and it was really lovely too, I swear if I didn’t have limited space in my suitcase, I would have bought quite a few books from here because they had a great selection. The final one we went to was the Paperback Bookshop, and that one is the kind of bookshop that you imagine just lives in a book lover’s mind as their ideal place, it had that book smell as soon as you walked in and there were books stacked everywhere in no particular order, it was kind of like a bookish maze! Not so good if you were looking for something specific, but really great to browse. I also went to the State Library yesterday and that was really cool, it’s such a gorgeous building.

In non-book related outings, we went to a couple of the wineries in the Mt Macedon regions on Sunday, and that was really lovely, it was a beautiful day, and the wines were generally all really good. I’ve also got a trail ride booked for tomorrow (because of course I had to fit some riding in somewhere), and we’re going to see Hamilton on Thursday, so all in all it’s shaping up to be an exciting week!

Anyway enough of my rambling, it’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is meant to be our annual Books I Hope Santa Brings This Year, but since I generally don’t get all that many books for Christmas, I am once again going rogue and doing a Christmassy book tag instead! It’s become a tradition over the last few years and it’s always fun to do, so I thought why not do it again? This year, I’m doing the Reindeer Book Tag, inspired of course by Rudolph, and this one was created by booktuber Hailey in Bookland. So here we go:

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer: An Underdog Or An Inspiring Book/Character

Not a character but a real person, Chanel Miller’s story of her sexual assault and the aftermath of that was many things. Infuriating in places, when you see what survivors have to go through in order to get justice (and even then how they don’t), emotional of course, funny in places, powerful and even hopeful despite everything she went through. I found it really inspiring reading this, listening to her reclaiming her identity and power and also just in how brave she was to go public with her story because it can’t have been easy.

Dasher: A Book You Read Quickly Or A Fashionable Character

I finished this one in about four days, and granted it’s a really short audiobook, just over 4 hours, so it probably doesn’t seem that fast, but it’s very quick for me. It was a super funny and engaging read, and though I was mainly in it for the Gilmore Girls stories, I found Graham’s pre-Gilmore Girls stories of her life as an actress equally fun.

Dancer: An Artistically Inspiring Book Or A Character Who Loves To Party

I’m not really one for artsy books, so character who loves to party it is! This one was pretty obvious for me: Evie O’Neill from The Diviners Series. Evie is definitely the life and soul of the party to a damaging degree as her partying tendencies can be a little self-destructive and are definitely a coping mechanism to deal with her underlying depression (which is addressed more as the series goes on).

Prancer: A Light-Hearted Book Or A Conceited Character

What could be more light-hearted than a book about two very loveable Labradors? Olive and Mabel brought smiles to so many people over lockdown and I couldn’t stop grinning when listening to this book all about their adventures and their rise to Internet fame!

Vixen: A Trickster Character Or A Deceptively Hard/Easy Read

I know a vixen is meant to be a female deer, but as soon as I saw this prompt, there was only one name to come to mind: Kaz Brekker. Kaz is a criminal mastermind and in this book undertakes a tricky heist with the help of his crew and breaks into the infamous Ice Court to retrieve a hostage being held captive there. Kaz definitely fits the trickster definition as his whole life is about running cons!

Comet: A Book That Is Out of This World Or A Children’s Book

Given that the movie version of the stage musical released fairly recently, I thought that this would be an apt choice. Matilda was one of my favourite books as a kid, I really loved Roald Dahl and obviously this was my favourite because I could see a lot of myself in Matilda, but it’s also just a really fun read!

Cupid: A Couple That You Really Want To Be Together Or A Hyped Book That You Liked

It’s not my absolute favourite Schwab book I’ve ever read, that title still goes to A Darker Shade of Magic, but I really enjoyed Addie LaRue, a lot more than I was expecting to given that slow, lyrically written books generally aren’t usually my kind of thing!

Donner: A Book You Constantly Shout About, Or An Opinionated Character, Or A Character Who Lacks Tact

Katniss was the first character to come to mind for this as her lack of tact is quite prevalent throughout the books!

Blitzen: A Powerful Book Or A Quick Read

I already did a quick read further up the tag, so I thought I’d go for powerful book for this one. Laura Bates’ 2020 release, Men Who Hate Women was an incredibly powerful read, I learned a lot about the different communities of extreme misogynists and their online worlds and how that spills into offline action. It was quite scary in places reading about the activities of some of these groups and how they have inspired horrific violent murders of women. Still I definitely did feel a lot more informed after reading it!

Olive: A Self-Effacing Character

Is Olive a reindeer? I swear I’ve never heard that name in the song! Anyway, this one was a little more challenging for me to do as the books I read tend to have more brash characters, but I thought Charlie from The Perks of Being A Wallflower fit well here. He’s shy, modest and doesn’t really like to stand out, preferring to blend into the background.

So there we go, that was my 2022 Christmas book tag, the Reindeer tag! If you’re reading this and want to do a Christmassy tag before Christmas, then consider yourself tagged! Has anyone heard of Olive the reindeer? Have I just missed something all these years? What are your plans for Christmas this year? Let me know in the comments!

I’ll be back next week with my final Top Ten Tuesday of 2022, which will also be my 400th Top Ten Tuesday ever! Feels like a nice one to end the year on. Our final topic of this year is Most Recent Additions To My Book Collection, an evergreen TTT as those shelves are always growing! In the meantime, I’ve got quite a bit planned for the end of the year, though we’ll see how we go as I am on holiday and I might be having too much fun doing other stuff to write blog posts. I’ve got three reviews to catch up on, so I’m going to do my best to get those up before the end of the year, I’ve got my last Quarterly Rewind post of 2022, which will probably be coming your way on either Thursday or Friday, and my End of Year Survey and End of Year Check In which will be coming your way once I’m back in the UK I think! Either way, there’s lots of content coming for you between now and the end of the year.

Merry Christmas everyone, and I hope you all have a lovely one however you’re celebrating!