Top Ten Tuesday: Fictional Crushes

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about the characters from books that make our hearts go pitter-patter and give us little fictional crushes. I'm going to split my list and first talk about the characters that I had crushes on as a teenager (when I read the most books that had swoony characters) and then ones that appeal to grown-up me!

Calvin O'Keefe (A Wrinkle In Time): A cute, popular boy who's super into the angry, awkward teenage heroine? Definitely something teenage me hoped (and failed) to find. 

Logan Bruno (The Baby-Sitters Club): This is another one where a cute boy was into the "nerdy one" and I'm starting to see a pattern here.  

Dave the Laugh (On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God): Robbie was the dreamy, older musician, but Dave is the one Georgia actually likes and that makes her, well, laugh. Even teenage me knew that was a better deal than the dude who's super cute but you can't talk to. 

Will Parry (The Amber Spyglass): I have to admit I'm not sure how much of my teenage book crush on Will was related to being all that interested in the character rather than investment in the love story Phillip Pullman tells for him and Lyra, but I definitely got all heart-eyes emoji. 

Edward Cullen (Twilight): I am not proud of this one, but years of watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer primed me to think that an immortal vampire obsessed with a teenage girl is romantic and not creepy! I know better now!

Morozko (The Bear and the Nightingale): These books only came out after I was an adult but I looooved this character even though there is a similar kind of "immortal being obsessed with teenage girl" vibe...except that Vasilisa is given actual agency and I'm not sorry about this!

Eric Northman (Dead to the World): Okay, but these are mostly the closest things I've read to romance novels and the storyline in this book is like, designed to make the reader fall in love with Eric.

Aragorn (The Lord of the Rings): I'm sure this has been influenced by seeing Viggo Mortenson in the movies so many times at this point, but an adult man in literature who is responsible and faithful is pretty hot stuff. 

Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion): I just re-read this recently and while he's a little bland, the romantic letter at the end would many any lady swoon. 

Andrei Bolkonsky (War and Peace): Apparently becoming an adult means that reading about handsome men who are mature and kind-hearted is what makes for a crush!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Fictional Crushes

Top Ten Tuesday: Recent(ish) YA Books My Teenage Self Would Have Loved

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! So, a little while back I made a list of young adult books, published while I was a young adult, I wish I would have read. This list is similar, but with a twist: here are ten YA books I wish had been published when I was a teenager (so, after 2004), because I would have been very into them!

The Hate U Give: I thought this book was a solid read as an adult, but it's really more targeted towards teenagers, and I think teenage me would have been extremely into it!

The Hunger Games: This book and its sequels (haven't read the new prequel yet) are exactly the type of young adult I would have loved, complete with stereotypical love triangle.

Twilight: I read all these books when I was in college, so not too far removed from my teenage years, and I ate them up (I still find them the perfect kind of brain dessert).

Uglies: I very much liked the first one of these that I read off my little sister's bookshelves, but the second one kind of lost me because I was really out of the "teenage dystopia" headspace by that point. 

The Serpent King: I absolutely loved this book even as an adult, but think it would have been even more appealing to me as a small-town nerd in high school.

Shatter Me: Another one I quite liked even as a grown-up, but would have been even more appealing to teen me.

Children of Blood and Bone: This did not do much for me as someone who has come to really enjoy a character-heavy drama instead a plot-driven adventure, but I think I would have appreciated the thrill of it more when I was younger.

Divergent: I read the first two books in this series several years ago, and I think teenage me would have been more tolerant of all the tropes on display there.

The Book Thief: I thought this was moving, enjoyable book when I read it a few years ago and I would have been obsessed with it if I'd first encountered it as a teen.

Delirium: I found this inoffensively fluffy as an adult but I'm pretty sure I would have found it very swoony once upon a time.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Recent(ish) YA Books My Teenage Self Would Have Loved

Top Ten Tuesday: Titles That Would Make Good Band Names

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about book titles that would make good band names. I do enjoy picking out phrases that I hear and thinking they would make good names for musical acts, so this one seemed like fun!

Daisy Jones and the Six: I'm cheating, this is the name of a fictional band already, but there's no denying that it works really well!

There There: Can't you just picture a chart-topping single by a band called There There? I see them as an indie rock style group.

Anthem: This would be a band that did like stadium rock music for sure.

The Black Dahlia: The Black Dahlia would definitely be fronted by a Lana Del Rey-type nostalgic pretty girl with a similar interest in Old Hollywood iconography and throwback-style tunes.

Twilight: A female singer-songwriter type who wants to be mysterious about her real identity.

The Interestings: This would be very self-conciously quirky indie music that would have like one big hit, one minor hit, and then tour small venues forever.

Abhorsen: I could definitely see a European DJ touring under this name.

Speak: A teen pop girl group, right?

Native Son: Native Son would be a rap duo who consciously chose to reference this book because of its message about race relations and makes very socially aware music.

The Lowland: It's been too long since we had a Boyz-II-Men style R&B group and I think this would be a great name for one!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Titles That Would Make Good Band Names

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Books With Single-Word Titles

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl!This week, we're talking about books with one-word titles. I thought about doing my least favorite single-word titled reads, but decided to be positive about it so here are some of my favorites!

Less: I was reluctant to read this when it was a book club pick, but I wound up just adoring this story about a middle-aged man on a trip around the world to escape having to attend his younger ex's wedding.

Wicked: I picked up this book, which tells the "real story" of the Wicked Witch of the West, for the first time in high school and have loved it ever since, through many re-reads. I also love the musical!

Twilight: Shut up, I know this book (and the whole series) are objectively not great. But I found them very enjoyable to read despite my own better instincts, and I've re-read them all more than once.

Musicophilia: I talk pretty often about my love for Oliver Sacks' most famous book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, but I also really enjoy this one, about the ways that music effects the brain.

Blindness: Bleak and kind of depressing and no quotation marks to indicate speech so a little confusing to read at first, but so incredibly good.

Stardust: I love fairy-tale-esque stories and Neil Gaiman's trademark wit makes this one a real treat!

Prep: This book plunged me so powerfully back into adolescence it was almost physically uncomfortable to read but so well-executed.

Gilead: I am not religious, and had previously not cared for a book by Marilynne Robinson, so my expectations going into this book were low. It seemed like I was going to be right through the early going but it eventually cast its spell on me and I found it intensely moving.

Battleborn: I'm not generally into short stories, but this Nevada-centric collection really blew me away!

Americanah: Such an incredible, rich book with amazing characters and powerful themes and beautiful prose.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Books With Single-Word Titles

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Book Covers

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic is All About Visuals. I had a hard time with this initially, since I'm not a graphic novel person, but I decided for this week I'd highlight some of my favorite book covers! A great cover can really make a book stand out...even when I'm browsing through NetGalley and Edelweiss, I find myself drawn to covers when I'm thinking about what I might want to read next, sometimes even more than the authors! And I'm just going through trade editions for this purpose...the fancy special edition hardcovers are just not fair to compete with.

The Great Gatsby: This cover is just iconic. The woman's face superimposed over the city sky, the single tear, the naked ladies inside the eyes...instantly recognizable.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: That statute, which actually existed in the Savannah cemetery, was apparently removed because people were tromping through so much to see it (at least, that's what my husband told me based on a childhood visit to Savannah).

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: So bright, so bold, so eye-catching.

To Kill A Mockingbird: That tree, so symbolic in the story, is a perfect cover. Striking in its simplicity.

Twilight: Two pale hands, offering an apple. The apple and its connotation of falling innocence, gives you a subconscious clue to what you'll find inside. I know there is a lot of disdain for the content of the book, but the cover design is amazing.

Life of Pi: It's so straightforward- a dark skinned boy, curled in the fetal position, in a small boat with a tiger, surrounded by fish. But doesn't it promise one heck of a story within the pages?

The Hunger Games: Considering how deeply the role and power of symbols is explored over the course of this series, that the first cover is essentially just the mockingjay pin, arrow in its beak is perfect.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: A dorky looking boy on a broomstick, with a visible scar on his forehead, trying to catch...something. A unicorn racing by. Three dog faces in the corner. All of this sets you up for a magic story unlike any you've ever read before.

The Handmaid's Tale: Those two figures on the cover are so ambiguous. You can't tell who they're supposed to be, not even if they're boys or girls. It's the kind of thing that makes you look again.

A Million Little Pieces: This was actually the inspiration for the direction I chose this week. Even though it turned out the book was a bunch of crap, that image of teeny sprinkles clinging to fingers is so evocative and intriguing.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Book Covers