 to the channel today. I have a super exciting video planned. I'm really excited for this video because it's my very first original tag. It is the gingerbread house book tag and I'm super excited. It's really starting to get into the more happy, thankful holiday season Thanksgiving. It's coming up in a couple weeks and the Christmas a month after that and so a great way to prepare for both of these holidays is through gingerbread house making and that is something that I love doing with my family and I think it's a great thing to do for Thanksgiving as well as Christmas so I created a book tag based on some of the essentials for gingerbread house making. Also as a quick side note before we get started I'm sure you can see I put lights on my bookshelf as well as one other little Christmas decoration here. It's a snow globe. I haven't gone too crazy with my decorations and I won't this year but that's why the lighting is a little bit different and it's a little bit weird but trust me I'm gonna work with it. We're gonna figure it out for the future so it's not always this yellow lighting behind me but for now this is what we got. Plus it kind of gives it like that brown kind of cozy atmosphere and I really enjoy that so that's how it's gonna be for this video. The first question on this tag has to do the construction, the very bare bones of the gingerbread house and so for construction it's what's a book that has a great world building or summary or just had a great idea that sounded fascinating to you but then once you finished it was actually kind of plain and not very exciting. The book that I've chosen for this prompt I've talked a lot about in my past book so I'll keep it brief but that's Catherine House by Elizabeth Thomas. I recently read this just about two weeks ago and I was really excited for the concept of it. I loved the excitement of you need to apply to get into Catherine House which is like a school it's like a university but you have to basically give away three years of your life of not contacting the outside world or you know any of your friends and family or anything like that but then when you come out of it a lot of times like they have such a reputation that you're going to get a really good job make lots of money etc and so forth so it sounded extremely fascinating and I was so exciting for this world building but when I ended up reading it it fell kind of flat and where it was just a brown book to build the walls of a gingerbread house there was no actual fun decorations unfortunately for me. Also so sorry if there's like a bunch of blue in my glasses I got my new reading glasses um and they just have this blue reflection and so I'm going to be playing with it all video log so that's fun. Question number two is doorway. Now what is a book that would be a great beginning book for a favorite genre or sub-genre that you love to read and so for example I would say Juliet by Anne Fortier. This I think is a great book to start you off in historical fiction. It's based off of Shakespeare's Juliet Romeo and Juliet however it takes place half in the past half in the present time in Italy this girl finds out that she is the great great great great great great how are many great granddaughters of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet and so she travels to Italy to dig up her family's past while at the same time we are going back in time to find out what happened to them ourselves so I think this is a great doorway into the historical fiction genre as it's not completely historical, but it does get you into the historical mood or kind of give you an understanding of what it's like to read a book where it's historical, but it is fiction. The third question and the final question of the base of our gingerbread house is the roof and the question is what is the best last book in a series that you felt topped off the series? Yes, I went for the pun. Go ahead, let out your anger and frustration below at the fact that I put a pun in my tag. But for this one, I would have to go with Sever by Lauren de Stefano and this is the third book in the chemical garden trilogy and I thought that this book just perfectly tied up the last they're perfectly tied up the trilogy. You know, it was the roof on top of the house. You know, it wrapped up the characters really well wrapped up the plot really well the world building was just amazing. And so I would have to say that this was my favorite last book in a series. Just yeah, I had a hard time picking it but at the same time it was also like, yeah, I like this book. I love the chemical garden trilogy. So what can you do, right? What can you do? The next question in this tag is peppermint candies name a book full of plot twists and turns. You get it because the peppermint candy it kind of swirls around and it's almost like a twist. So like, what's a plot twist almost like plots, right? You get it. You why am I explaining this? You obviously get it. And so the book I have chosen for that is alive by Scott Sigler. I read this this past summer. And this was full of twists and turns in so many different ways. You start off with the characters not knowing what's happening to them. They woke up in a coffin. And last they remember it's their 13th birthday. And so they are trying to find their way out. And it's full of twists and turns in that they're literally walking through corridors just wandering around, finding other people, figuring out what's going on. And then at the end, there's a huge plot twist that I did not see coming. I have not yet read the next book in the series, but I do want to eventually, you know, when I actually sit down and finish any of the series that I start, I start so many series and I never finish them. But that's for another video. So this was a book that I definitely found to have lots of twists and turns and plot points and twisted plot points with ideas that I did not call. I did not think was going to happen. And then they did and it worked. And I was like, mind blown. So this is definitely my peppermint candy. The next candy that we're going to focus on are gum drops. And I feel like gum drops are not very exciting on their own, even if they are pretty good detail on your traditional gingerbread house. So for gum drops, the prompt is, what's a book that wasn't very interesting? Or what is a book that had so many tropes and just wasn't very unique, but it was still entertaining to read. But like there was nothing unique about it, it just followed a bunch of tropes. The one I have chosen for this, I'm not super satisfied with my choice of this book. I feel I maybe have read other books that would represent this better. The thing is, is that for me, contemporary as a genre is or like romance as a genre, both seem like they would fit into this question because they both seem to really rely on different tropes. But I decided to do a book off of my shelf and to push myself. And so I have actually chosen to do The Killing Woods by Lucy Christopher. I chose this book because it is a mystery and it just seems that there was nothing super surprising about it. It was kind of plain, but at the same time I still had to finish the book. And you know, there were plenty of tropes in here of, oh, you know, you need to save this person and she is the hero, but then she falls for the guy that everyone knows that like, or she knows that she shouldn't, but she does. Anyway, like there are just so many points in here that just were not surprising to me. Hi, neighbors. Now were not surprising to me. You know, I still read it and I still enjoyed it, but just like, just like each individual gumdrop, it's like it's not super exciting, but like, you still enjoy them, especially in the context of like an entire gingerbread house, especially in the context of like what other books are. So that made sense. So the last candy for question number six is going to be licorice. And that is what is the longest book you have on your shelf? For me, I believe it's the complete Sherlock Holmes Volume Two by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This thing is ginormous. It is a puppy of 650 pages. And I'm pretty sure it is the thickest book on my shelf. And of course it's an old book too. So like, the writing is very small. And so even if it weren't a larger printing, it would just be bigger. So whoop-de-doo. But yeah, that's my answer to licorice. Very simple, very plain. But what is the longest book you have? Question number seven is the frosting. What is a book that holds things together, aka what is the most underrated book in one of your favorite genres? And for that, I have chosen the candle and the flame by Nafisa Azad. When this came out, I was so excited. But I felt like I did not hear a lot of buzz about it on booktube. Like, I had seen it in some people's halls, but I haven't seen anybody read it or give reviews. But I read it and I absolutely loved it. It plays around with gin and a lot of Middle Eastern mythology related to gin or as most Americans know them as genies. And I just love the magic and all the different kingdoms that are represented and how it all works. I especially, oh my gosh, I loved the Maharaja and the Maharaj. Oh my word, they were some of my favorite characters. I love them so much. So this, I would say, is an underrated book that kind of holds together the fantasy genre a little bit and kind of the mythology genre even a little. So this is my frosting for my gingerbread house. Now the final question on this tag as we're completing our gingerbread house is that a lot of times when I make a gingerbread house, you make little gingerbread men to go with them. Like, you make the cookies to go with them, but that's not the point. The point is to make and decorate a house. So for the last question, it is dedicated to those gingerbread men and women and non-binary confining gingerbread people who live in these houses that we love to build for them. And so for this prompt, I'm asking you, what is a book you love because of either the side characters or because it is a character driven book rather than plot or world building? And I have chosen Invictus by Ryan Groudon. I didn't care much for the plot of this book. It is a time travel book, but I absolutely adored the characters in this book. They definitely have the like group of friends becomes a family vibe. All of them are such strong independent characters and they look and they have so much fun together and they are just so interesting. And so this is definitely a book that I read for the characters and coming out of it. Really, it's the characters that made the book. If it weren't for great characters, this would not be a very good book. And so this is the book that I am dedicating for my gingerbread men, women, and other gingerbread people as some of the best characters in a book. So that is it. That is my very first tag that I made here on BookTube and I'm super excited. It is very holiday themed, but I love that as I'm getting into the holiday spirits right around now. We are starting to decorate our apartment and I love it so much. So yeah, I hope you really enjoyed this tag. Feel free to do it anywhere you want Instagram, YouTube, you know, Facebook, I don't know whatever social media Twitter you guys use. But speaking of social media, follow me on my social media down below to see what I am reading and keep more up-to-date content from me. Also feel free to click the subscribe button. I am making videos every Thursday now. And also feel free to like this video, give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed the tag, if you want me to create other tags, or if you want to do the tag. Seriously, anyone can do it. I may tag some people down below who I really want to see what their answers to these questions are, but that does not mean I'm limiting the tag to those people only. So with that, I'm going to wish you guys a happy reading.