Chinese New Year Tag

Happy Lunar New Year!

Every year since I’ve been tagged* (recently by Izzy from Nine Tale Vixen), I keep thinking about doing this, completely forget about what date the Lunar New Year falls on, and decide to skip it. And then repeat the cycle again, so it just adds on to the hoard of tags that I have stashed somewhere collecting dust. Thankfully, however, I remembered to finally take this tag out of the dust a few weeks ago, and here we are. 😆

*Another blogger tagged me as well in 2019, but I think they no longer blog. 😔

Growing up, this has always been one of my favorite holidays (next to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but that’s actually my birthday on the Lunar Calendar). As much as I don’t like calling family members (due to a lot of reasons, and not just because of a language barrier of sorts/I’m just naturally very reserved), I’ve always enjoyed the food. Except I always enjoy food, even when it’s not a holiday. Really, it’s just an excuse for more food at this rate.

Of course, as I grew older and I’m busy with other activities (because the US of course wouldn’t give off days for other cultures) or work, this has gradually altered to fit around everyone’s adulting schedules.

(There was also a giant rift in my family due to reasons I won’t disclose, so I no longer spend time with them, which contributed to the gradual alterations.)

Rules

• Answer the questions and share your zodiac animal (Only if you’re comfortable with it! If you don’t know, you can look it up online based on your birth year!)
• Pingback to the creator of the tag (hammockofbooks) and whoever tagged you so we can read your responses!
• Tag some of your friends! (But not four because that’s unlucky!)

My Zodiac Animal

I’m an ox! Unfortunately, I’m also as stubborn as my zodiac says, which sometimes doesn’t work too well for me. Other times, my stubbornness is handy to have and has gotten me out of situations that wouldn’t have ended well if I weren’t as stubborn.

(This suddenly reminded me of a conversation I had with some coworkers about zodiac animals and someone born in January insisted they were a rat until I informed them they were actually a pig, and they refused to acknowledge that their actual sign was, in fact, a pig despite Googling and finding out I was correct. Fortunately, as someone who is born in September, I don’t actually have to remember that I might the previous year’s sign depending on when the Lunar calendar starts.)

New Year: A book with a phenomenal beginning

Nothing is more iconic than starting a book with someone who asks “am I in heaven?” and the protagonist says with complete and brutal honesty, “no.” Then she sticks her entire hand into their mouth as she reaps their soul.

As much as I say The Keeper of Night feels like an information overload at times, this may be one of my favorite opening scenes in a book.

Chinese New Year: A book by an Asian Author

The Iron Fey series remains dear to me as it was one of the first YA novels I picked up, but perhaps I’m biased since Julie Kagawa is one of my favorite authors. She’s also the very first Asian Author I came across when I ventured into YA and very much was trying to justify going into the arts when my family wanted me to go down the traditional STEM route.

It was also when books like Legend by Marie Lu and others either hadn’t been published, didn’t exist in my library yet, or had yet to be discovered by me (and wouldn’t until way later, like Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon). 😔

Lunar New Year: A book that takes place in space

Les Miserables is one of my favorite musicals despite its length, and as such, I’m always on the lookout for retellings (I’m also just a natural sucker for retellings in general). Perhaps one of my favorites is Sky Without Stars, which is a Les Mis retelling set in space, and I’d like to say the series pay homage to the musical well, but I’ve also never read the whopping 1.5K (approximately) page classic.

I don’t think I ever plan on doing so either, but perhaps that’ll change one day. When I get over all the scars from required reading in school, which definitely sucked any enjoyment from reading classics.

Zodiac/Year of the [Tiger]: An animal sidekick

My brain has gone completely, 100% blank upon trying to choose a book for this. I also just realized, I’ve read very few books with animal sidekicks, at least ones that are favorites and that I remember.

After a few hours of maybe breaking my one remaining brain cell, I’m going to have to go with The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan, when Percy’s pegasus Blackjack begins to make a major appearance in the series.

Lucky Color Red: A book with a red cover

At first, I wanted to choose Jade War, but I think that might have been because I was trying to track down who tagged me and I was snooping on Izzy’s post. I also wanted to feature The Dragon Warrior for the red dragon on the cover, but then decided to go on the hunt for other books with a red cover before I finally decided on Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa.

(If that isn’t an excuse to feature more Julie Kagawa books, I don’t what is. But seriously, she’s underrated and the Shadow of the Fox trilogy is highly recommended.)

Firecrackers: A book exploding with action

This was a close call between Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao and The Green Bone saga by Fonda Lee before I finally decided on Iron Widow (mainly due to the fact I’m featuring that one later on and I didn’t want to use the same book multiple times). Iron Widow was such a fun and entertaining read, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the sequel.

Red Envelope: A book you can’t wait to open

There are a lot of books that I can’t wait to open, but the first book that comes to mind is K-pop Confidential by Stephan Lee, which has been on my TBR since it was first announced.

Delicious Food: A book that made you so hungry

For someone who loves food, I sure don’t remember any book that made me hungry despite the fact there are books that have made me hungry. Every book just seems to have wandered out of my brain until I searched for food in my own reviews and then it just became a competition with my own self on which I remember making my mouth water the most. 🥴

Gathering with Family: An amazing fictional family

The Kauls from The Green Bone saga by Fonda Lee is hands down one of my favorite families in fiction. I honestly can’t think of another fictional family (outside of the Weasleys from Harry Potter, but I really would rather not since JKR isn’t someone I support) that I love more than the family dynamics featured in this saga.

Let’s talk bookwyrms: what are your some of your favorite New Year traditions?