Hello!
Taking things easy today with another book tag – this time the Book Blogger Memory Challenge which really was a challenge at times! I found this one via Fi’s Bibliofiles and you check out their answers via this link.
Before we get to the challenge itself though I wanted to shout out a short story by Quenby Olson called ‘A Slumbering Fire’ which you can find here. I read it last week and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It’s a wonderful, smouldering (on more than one level) of two women finding one another just as their worlds are attempting to push them out of sight and thought. Plus there’s a dragon. So go and check it out!!
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The Rules:
You must answer these questions without looking anything up on the internet and without looking at your bookshelves!!
The Questions:
1. Name a book written by an author called Michael.
This was an easy one as I was working on a review for the second book in this series earlier today so it’s nice and fresh in my mind. Black Stone Heart was a book that took me completely by surprise the first time I read it, and is one of those books that you find yourself having to sit and read through to the end in one sitting – regardless of how many times you’ve read it before.
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A broken man, Khraen awakens alone and lost. His stone heart has been shattered, littered across the world. With each piece, he regains some small shard of the man he once was.
He follows the trail, fragment by fragment, remembering his terrible past.
There was a woman.
There was a sword.
There was an end to sorrow.
Khraen walks the obsidian path.
2. Name a book with a dragon on the cover.
We recently got another book by Chris Bunch in at work and it reminded me that I wanted to reread this series, one that I had picked up from the Library years ago – mainly because it was about dragons and I had been in the mood for dragons (to be honest, I’m always in the mood for dragons). I don’t remember too much about the series, hence the need for a reread, but I do remember that I enjoyed it a lot.
STORM OF WINGS: When the uneasy peace of the three kingdoms is threatened by war, Hal s dream of riding dragons becomes reality. For this is a conflict like no other. For the first time, wild dragons have become living weapons, ridden by men of cold daring and ruthless ambition. And the greatest of them is Hal Kailas. Dragonmaster.
KNIGHTHOOD OF THE DRAGON: When he first dreamed of riding a dragon to war, Hal Keilas was laughed at. Then the war between the kingdoms of Deraine, Sagene and Roche compelled a solution daring beyond their people’s wildest dreams. But Hal, Dragonmaster, knows that the war and the killing have only begun.
THE LAST BATTLE: As predicted, with the end of the war both dragon fliers and dragons have been cast aside. However, what or who is savaging the dragons in their native lands? Hal embarks on a new crusade, and discovers a threat, not just to the dragons but to man himself.
3. Name a book written by an author with the surname Smith.
One I haven’t read yet, but a recent purchase from a trawl through the local charity shops. Perhaps because I’ve been starting to reread Redwall, the sight of the rabbits on the front had me grabbing this one to give it a go.
My place beside you, my blood for yours. Till the Green Ember rises, or the end of the world.
Heather and Picket are extraordinary rabbits with ordinary lives until calamitous events overtake them, spilling them into a cauldron of misadventures. They discover that their own story is bound up in the tumult threatening to overwhelm the wider world.
Kings fall and kingdoms totter. Tyrants ascend and terrors threaten. Betrayal beckons, and loyalty is a broken road with peril around every bend.
Where will Heather and Picket land? How will they make their stand?
4. Name a book set in Australia.
Another one I haven’t read. However, we were forever getting copies of this one in at the charity shop where I used to work for, and it was one I’d picked up to look at because of the cover (I like that combination of colours).
A small town hides big secrets in this atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by an award-winning new author.
After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.
Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.
5. Name a book with the name of a month in the title.
This one almost had me stumped, and I have to admit this isn’t one I’ve read. However, I do have ‘The Once and Future Witches’ on my shelf and that sparked a moment of inspiration. Even now I can’t think of any other books with months in the name, although I am sure there are more out there.
In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
6. Name a book with a knife on the cover.
I still need to finish this series as I was reminded of when I sorted my bookshelves the other week, but it was this novella that made me immediately go out and buy the entire series.
“Every king must have his heirs, and I will have heirs worthy of my legend…”
Thren Felhorn is a legend of the underworld, the leader of the powerful Spider Guild, father to the Watcher of Veldaren, and the most feared man in a city flooded with crime and death.
Cloak and Spider contains six stories chronicling Thren’s tutelage under the fearsome Darkhand, his bloody rise to fame, the creation of his infamous guild, and the birth of his son, Aaron, who would grow up to be a legend all his own.
7. Name a book with the word ‘one’ in the title.
I fell in love with this book from the moment I heard the premise. I love *anything* to do with Musketeers, and it was an immediate pre-order for me (although I still haven’t sat down and read it – shame on me).
Tania de Batz is most herself with a sword in her hand. Everyone in town thinks her near-constant dizziness makes her weak, nothing but “a sick girl”; even her mother is desperate to marry her off for security. But Tania wants to be strong, independent, a fencer like her father—a former Musketeer and her greatest champion.
Then Papa is brutally, mysteriously murdered. His dying wish? For Tania to attend finishing school. But L’Académie des Mariées, Tania realizes, is no finishing school. It’s a secret training ground for a new kind of Musketeer: women who are socialites on the surface, but strap daggers under their skirts, seduce men into giving up dangerous secrets, and protect France from downfall. And they don’t shy away from a swordfight.
With her newfound sisters at her side, Tania feels for the first time like she has a purpose, like she belongs. But then she meets Étienne, her first target in uncovering a potential assassination plot. He’s kind, charming, and breathlessly attractive—and he might have information about what really happened to her father. Torn between duty and dizzying emotion, Tania will have to lean on her friends, listen to her own body, and decide where her loyalties lie…or risk losing everything she’s ever wanted.
8. Name a book with a eponymous title.
When I was younger I refused to read this book because it had my name (I know it’s a daft reason but there we are, I didn’t like my name and I didn’t want to read a book about a Rebecca). However, it’s one that has crept onto to the TBR in recent years, and just the other week one of the volunteers at work was singing it’s praises (and horrified I hadn’t read it) and I have picked up a copy to read.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .
The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives–presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.
9. Name a book turned into a movie.
The Clive Cussler books are fresh in my mind as I’ve just picked up a few more as I continue to rebuild my collection, and this is a movie adaptation that has always left me with mixed feelings. On it’s own as a film, it’s a fun adventure movie that I enjoy. However, as an adaptation it fails on so many levels – key events, casting, and it just doesn’t do the book (one of my favourites by this author) justice in the slightest.
Deep in the African desert, Pitt discovers that a top science installation is leaking a lethal chemical into the rivers, threatening to kill thousands of people – and to destroy all life in the world. To warn the world of catastrophe, he must escape capture and death and undertake a long journey across the Sahara.
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Consider yourselves tagged if you want to give it a go, and I look forward to seeing what other people’s answers are (also what other books with a month in the title are out there??!)
Rowena
Beneath A Thousand Skies 