Play Book Tag discussion

We all pick books for tags and challenges based off recommendations or just because the fit the tag.

A book you picked just to complete the tag but ended up loving?
Was there a character you thought you'd hate but ended up rooting for?
A genre trope that you usually avoid but was handled brilliantly?

If you have and bad experiences, we'd like to hear those too!!

Oh, this has happened so many times! That’s one of the things I love so much about this group. I haven’t been thrilled about the tag, but it led me to something that I never would have picked up or expected and I was so grateful to experience it. The funny thing is, I’m not coming up with any good examples. But there have been some profound ones. Of things I never would have picked up but totally enjoyed.

As for picking things I haven’t cared for, that’s happened too particularly around the subdue the shelf challenge. But you know I look at that as a chance to toss things off my TBR. When I’ve selected a bunch of books that are possibilities I’ve been able to eliminate some. I’ve been trying to keep my TBR to 400 even though my actual list that I play around with every day is a lot longer. It’s in the thousands. But the actual TBR is 400. So that’s what I’m choosing from generally. But oh have I been given some wonderful surprises, mostly with suggestions from you guys. Again, that’s one of my favorite things about the group. Second to the community that we’ve created.

A specific example from 2024 of a book that surprised me that I picked just for the tag was Clockwork Boys by T Kingfisher. I ended up being really intrigued by the author writing style and style of humor that were displayed, and I finished the duology later even though that wasn't the tag of the month (I did use it for a play harder prompt but that was just an excuse to read it right then). I don't feel like I'm really into Steampunk in general, but that duology really grabbed my attention and really impressed me.

That Steampunk tag was really tough for me. I obviously picked the wrong books, because, unlike MelanieJoy, I didn't enjoy that tag at all!

One of my play harder prompts had me reading a book set in Hungary. I wasn't impressed with the options I was seeing, but landed on Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts. I didn't expect much, but was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the audio version of this book. It was so much better than my (very low) expectations.

I am sure I have many of these, but the one that jumps to mind immediately is:
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson - I gave it 4 stars!

In Steeplechase game, I was reading for all the tags, and the one I was especially dreading was "zombies."

From my review: "I do not normally read books about vampires or zombies, and when I do, I rarely enjoy them. It is unexpectedly philosophical. It was not solely focused on an invading hoard of supernatural killers. It is a study of isolation, and how a person might react as a sole survivor of humanity, wondering if it is worth surviving if you are doomed to be forever alone. This book was published in 1954, and it is extremely well crafted."

Back in 2022 we had Classics as our tag and I had a couple on my TBR that had been on my shelves for a while. One was a Pulitzer and the other was the first of its kind. Both of which I did not enjoy at all. But they are done with now.

How To Be a Medieval Woman – Margery Kempe (2 stars) 3/2/22

My Review
This is an autobiographical memoir of a Medieval women purported to be the first of its kind in English; written as told to a priest. She traveled extensively and had several businesses, not common for women of the day. She seemed to be half mad with visions and conversations with Jesus, Mary and the Holy Spirit. She's continually crying and arguing with her husband and many people in authority getting thrown in jail or kicked out of places. The text was continual run-on sentences. I did not enjoy this at all.

A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole (2 stars) 3/9/22

My Review
This Pulitzer Prize winning novel did not appeal to me at all. There were a few funny scenes and the ending had a bit of hope, but the characters were unappealing. I just don't care for this type of satire that takes things to the extreme.

A Confederacy of Dunces - the most unreadable book of all time and in my not so humble opinion, totally undeserving of any award. In fact, it's borderline on my list of books that should never have been published for any reason. Tried to read it a couple of times and never got past page 30. Ugh.

I hate it more than Wolf Hall and more unreadable than Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, or Celine's Mort à crédit - those last 2 books I struggled to read and comprehend in classes in college.

Jason wrote: "We all pick books for tags and challenges based off recommendations or just because the fit the tag.

A book you picked just to complete the tag but ended up loving?
Was there a character you thou..."

Yes to all three of your questions, and I've also had some horrible experiences. It's late for me to be on so I don't have time to stop and think through my various answers. Some of the worst ones were when I was also reading them for a PBT game. Anyone who is new here won't know that no matter how I start off saying I won't get competitive (in fun) I do which is why I'm abstaining this year.

I do miss the team camaraderie I've had in the past, but I'm also reading far fewer books I don't like.

Theresa wrote: "A Confederacy of Dunces - the most unreadable book of all time and in my not so humble opinion, totally undeserving of any award. In fact, it's borderline on my list of books that sho..."

I loved A Confederacy of Dunces on audio. The narrator cracked me up. Oddly, I often like reprobate characters.

I started She Who Became the Sun a couple years back and couldn’t get into it. But it worked last year for Romantic Fantasy, and Theresa kept recommending it, so I tried again and gave it 5 stars. I also loved A Taste of Gold and Iron and Tress of the Emerald Sea for that tag, and I wouldn’t have read them otherwise.

On the other hand, I read several books for Steampunk and didn’t really like any of them.

An IRL book groups that had some men in it got me to read Seabiscuit: An American Legend, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and An Officer and a Spy, all excellent but I never would have chosen them.

Theresa wrote: "A Confederacy of Dunces - the most unreadable book of all time and in my not so humble opinion, totally undeserving of any award. In fact, it's borderline on my list of books that sho..."

Hating a book is all right and I'm sure your reasons are well argued, but I'll never understand why you have a problem with people who read something different in the same story and you would wish that book to have never been published. We all bring our own experiences to bear on any story we read and this changes the text, bringing us closer or further away from the message of the author.
Confederancy of Dunces is of course polarizing because the narrator has one of the most unpleasant voices I've ever encountered. Being inside his head is sickening, yet somehow his existential despair resonated to a more universal feeling of alienation with the modern world. Or maybe there's just something wrong with my head, because I liked other disturbing and polarizing books, like The Wasp Factory

I agree that "A Confederacy of Dunces" was a disaster of a book.

Theresa wrote: "A Confederacy of Dunces - the most unreadable book of all time and in my not so humble opinion, totally undeserving of any award. In fact, it's borderline on my list of books that sho..."

Best remark from my F2F book club when we did this book ...
"THIS won the Pulitzer? Was the committee on drugs?"