The Burrito Bowl Tag was created by Cristina @ Girl in the Pages and Joey @ Thoughts and Afterthoughts. Hannah @ So Obsessed With posted about this tag, and it looked so fun I decided to try it out myself! Here are the rules to participate:

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you to make your own burrito bowl, linking back to their site.
2. Answer the tag questions.
3. Tag 5 others to create their own bowl!
4. Food coma.

The Ingredients

RICE: The Foundation || The book that got you into reading

There were so many books already in my life (Little House series, American Girl, Dear America) that I loved and adored, but it was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that turned me into an active, passionate reader. My grandmother told me to stop turning my nose up at “those boy wizard books” one Thanksgiving and threatened to hold dinner ransom until I read the first chapter. I nearly missed dinner because I was too busy watching Harry, Ron, and Hermione at the Sorting Ceremony.

BEANS: The Filler || The book with a whole lot of nothing

Oh, I feel terrible admitting this, but All the Truth That’s in Me takes the cake. It just didn’t hit me the way it seemed to hit other readers. I’ll admit the second person POV was a nice change of pace, and it had this weird Speak meets The Village feel to it. But at the same time, I was bothered by the second person, bothered by the vague setting, frustrated with everything the character held back from the reader, that it just fell flat for me. Even though I gave it 3 stars.

PROTEIN: The Building Block || A book quote to live by

Jane Eyre is a beautiful story, and my favorite book of all time. So the following quote really speaks to me. I find it empowering, even more so when you take into account the time the book was published. But I’m also a collector of quotes. I’ve got tiny booklets filled with quotes and lines and passages, many of them direct quotes from writers and poets, some of them stanzas of poetry, others lifted from books and movies. All of them speak to me in some way, but Jane Eyre is always the one I’ll go back to.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me:
I am a free human being with an independent will.

FAJITAS: The Crunch of Texture || A book with immaculate world-building

There are so many to choose from — Shadowfell, Night Circus, Uprooted (currently reading and loving) — but I’m deeply impressed with Seraphina. It has that medieval feel, mixed with music and history and culture, and modern conceptions of technology and racism, all with an incredibly relatable character wrestling with mixed identity. I felt like I knew this world, and yet it was all fresh and new.

SALSA: The Dance of Flavor || The book that kept you on your toes

Let’s harken back to my graduate thesis and gush over The Hallowed Ones. Plenty of the gothic novels I read kept me on my toes (Long Lankin, as a close second), but The Hallowed Ones made my skin crawl. I had no idea what would happen to the community, no inkling of what Katie would decide to do next, and the vampire lore turned around on its head and made it incredibly frightening once more in these modern times. I do not want to be near a helicopter crash because of this book.
Another close one for this is Prisoner of Night and Fog.

CORN: The Explosion of Sweetness || A memorable scene with friendship/romance

Daughter of the Forest. All the Red and Sorcha scenes. All of them.

Fine, you want me to narrow it down? The beach scene. The orchard scene. The dress scene. The declaration scene. The love scene. ALL THE SCENES, OKAY? If you haven’t read Marillier yet, do so now. I find her to be one of the best fantasy writers ever, and it’s not just for her knack of incorporating Celtic lore.

CHEESE: The Bond of Calcium || Two characters from different books you wish could be friends

Time to go old school and say Elizabeth Bennet from Pride & Prejudice and Margaret Hale from North & South. Those two stubborn broads would get along smashingly. Lizzie would add more humor to the tense situations, and Margaret would toss in a dose of realism when Lizzie’s mind would jump to conclusions. They have similar personalities, but their differences really compliment one another.

SOUR CREAM: The Tangy Topper || The quirkiest character you’ve ever read (protagonist or supporting)

Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter comes to mind more than many of the others characters I’ve read (including Lola in Lola and the Boy Next Door and Gansey in The Raven Boys). She’s such an oddball. She knows it, she doesn’t care. It’s just who she is. She cares deeply and expresses it creatively. She’s incredibly smart and talented, and while she has some hair-brained ideas, she tends to be right. Luna Lovegood is a character that takes the road less traveled, and I adore that about her.

GUACAMOLE: The Cost of Creaminess || A book you paid too much for

Oh. Well. I feel I shouldn’t say Jane Eyre again (as I paid lots for a particular edition), or Harry Potter (as I paid lots for a special UK collection set). I’ll go with my annotated edition of Wuthering Heights. I’d seen the Austen annotated editions appear on shelves for a while, and was itching for a Brontë one to appear. AND THEN IT DID. And it stared at me. And I stared at it. And then I couldn’t take it anymore and purchased it and haven’t looked back!

LETTUCE: The Handful of Crispness || A refreshing concept/theme in a book

Letters from Skye immediately comes to mind for its epistolary style. Not like most modern “epistolary” books that feature letters, but completely, truly epistolary. Not a diary entry. Not snippets. Letters. A book entirely of letters. And letters that read like letters, rather than letters that read like a book. It’s up to you, as the reader, to fill in the blanks. While parallel structure and WWI/WWII books are quite common, there was something about this that really made it stand out. I truly believe it was because of the entirely epistolary writing.

CHIPS: Le Pièce de Résistance || A must-read rec, if you like…

If you like historical fiction, WWII stories, Russian settings, and books that will inevitably make you cry and/or give you a massive hangover, read Between Shades of Gray. I read every single day, several books and manuscripts a month, and this book gave me a two-week long hangover. No other book got into my head the way this one did. It made me think about the important things in my life, what gives me hope and happiness. In the darkest hours, these characters still found the tiniest sliver of hope. Incredibly moving book!

TABASCO: The Kick to the Face || Your favorite fight/action sequence

This is a difficult one, as most fight/action scenes do not stick out to me. However, the entire Dispossessed trilogy inevitably has a massive action scene at the end of each book, and it’s heart-pounding and detailed and incredibly important to the plot. I quickly learned I shouldn’t breeze through these final scenes because a character will inevitably do something that alters another character’s actions somewhere else in the book, and, by the end of the trilogy, that very first action comes back into play!

~

I’m Tagging…
Jamie @ Perpetual Page-Turner
Sarah @ What Sarah Read
Ashley @ LvsBks
Lauren @ Bookmark Lit
Danielle @ Love at First Page
And anyone else who wants to participate!