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: Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about books we wish we could open for the first time all over again. I'm a big re-reader, but there is something magical about discovering where the narrative is going as you read along, so here are ten books that I'd love to experience for the first time again!

The Secret History: I first read this as a senior in high school and it was so completely unlike anything I'd ever read before, it just blew my mind.

The Bear and the Nightingale: I'd always been interested in Russia, but this book spurred it to a full-blown obsession and it was just so rich and magical and I love it!

The Queen of the Night: I read this as an advance review copy so I had NO idea where it was going and each twist and turn of the plot surprised me.

The Amber Spyglass: I remember how excited I was to read this book, to find out how the story that had been told through the first two books would be wrapped up...and I was not at all disappointed!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: I really wish I could go back to the time before I knew that J.K. Rowling was a transphobe and just enjoy the magic of these books.

1984: I'm pretty sure I was 12 or 13 when I read this for the first time, launching a lifetime love of dystopian stories.

Gone Girl: I did NOT see that twist coming and it completely melted my brain.

Wicked: I read this at some point during high school and it introduced me to the concept of retellings for the first time ever, which has become a mini-genre of books that I really enjoy.

The Remains of the Day: I had no idea how much this book was going to emotionally wreck me until the end and going in blind made it hit that much harder.

A Wrinkle in Time: For me, this book was special because it was the first time I felt like I really saw myself in a work of fiction...as an angry, awkward, smart-but-underachieving middle schooler, Meg Murray was EVERYTHING.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Take Place In Other Worlds

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, it's the annual Halloween-themed freebie. I had a hard time coming up with something I haven't done before, especially considering I don't read a lot of horror (I'm too easily frightened!), but decided to look at books that take place in other worlds.

His Dark Materials: This amazing series takes place in a parallel version of England, called Brytain, which is both quite similar to and very different than our own.

The Old Kingdom: Perhaps my favorite other world, this richly-imagined land has its own magic system and an intricately designed world of Death as well.

Wild Magic: Like many (maybe all?) of Tamora Pierce's books, this series takes place in the medieval-esque, magical world of Tortall.

The Lord of the Rings: Middle Earth may be the most iconic fantasy realm of all!

Oryx and Crake: This is less "another world" and more "a version of what our world could become". Honestly besides her thinking that CD-ROMs were going to be the storage mechanism of the future, this felt eerily prescient.

The Hunger Games: This is another one that is, I think, technically set in the far future, but it's such a different social arrangement that it's basically another place entirely.

A Song of Ice and Fire: These gigantic novels create and explore the rich territory of Westeros, its seven kingdoms, and the larger world beyond. It's loosely inspired by medieval Europe.

Wicked: This one is based on an already-established fantasy world, Oz, which is familiar even to those who haven't read Baum's books because of the enduring popularity of the film. I love the rich politics of the world that Maguire fleshes out!

Stardust: This is a fairy tale, and has both a "real world" and fantasy realm of its own. It's truly magical to read!

A Wrinkle in Time: This series of books is almost more magical realism than anything else...rooted in our world, but with supernatural possibilities for the Murray family (time travel! space travel! angels!) that mean it's not quite our world as we know it after all.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Take Place In Other Worlds

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Book Series

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is a freebie, so I'm going to tell you about my favorite series of books. I don't do a ton of series reading, lately, but some have long-since earned a place in my heart while others are just too good to ignore.

Harry Potter: Of course! I am a millennial, I grew up with these books and I love them and my hot take is that the first four are the best and the back three is where the strain of trying to get them out timely started to show and they could have used more editing.

The Lord of the Rings: I read these as a kid and still love them, but the movies are so great at cutting them down to the most impactful points of the narrative that I often forget how long they really are and how much about trees there is.

A Song of Ice and Fire: Please please please finish this series, George! I love his story-telling and character-building. He goes on as much about meals as Tolkien does about trees though.

The Hunger Games: I think the final book of this trilogy was its weakest, but as a whole there's a reason they're already classics even though they're just over a decade old.

The Plantagenet/Tudor novels: I am not going to pretend these are good. They're not. But they're fun and I'm an absolute sucker for them.

The Old Kingdom: My book backlog is very real so I haven't gotten to the two new books yet but the original trilogy is wonderful. I'm always shocked that these aren't more widely read.

The Southern Vampire Mysteries: These are cheesy and kind of silly and sometimes that's what you need! It was obvious in the last few books that she was starting to be ready to be done with them but they're still delightful brain candy.

A Wrinkle In Time: I'll admit that I tried to read the fifth one and just could not get into it, so I only count the original quartet in my head, but I've read and re-read these over and over and they're magical.

His Dark Materials: I honestly believe literally everyone should read these. The world, the characters, the story...perfection.

The Immortals: Teenage me couldn't really get into The Song of the Lioness, but got ALL the way into Wild Magic and its sequels. Tamora Pierce is a gift.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Book Series

Top Ten Tuesday: Characters That Remind Me of Myself

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're highlighting book characters that remind us of ourselves. So there are a decent contingent of smart, book-nerdy girls on here, but also some that are probably less flattering comparisons.

Hermione Granger (Harry Potter): I know I just used her a couple months back in a similar topic. But is there an overachieving girl who doesn't identify with Hermione?

Emma Woodhouse (Emma): I am not much of a matchmaker, but I do enjoy gossip and drama like our girl here. And Emma does have a brain in her head: we're told she's clever right there in the opening line.

Meg Murray (A Wrinkle in Time): For reasons not worth getting into right now, I was an often-angry little girl. It's rare to find stories that center on a girl who gets mad and makes that part of her heroism.

Francie Nolan (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn): Francie's determination to get an education and love for learning and reading make her a role model for plenty of nerdy girls.

Esther Greenwood (The Bell Jar): I struggled with mental health and depression growing up and still do, honestly. Esther's struggle feels so familiar.

Daine Sarassri (Wild Magic): I tried getting into the Alanna series, but the central character's bravery was never something I could identify with. Daine's love of animals, however, really spoke to me!

Lee Fiora (Prep): I spent quite a bit of time reading this book infuriated at its teenage protagonist...because she made so many of the same mistakes rooted in hyper self-conciousness that I have made and to be honest, continue to make.

Jules Jacobson (The Interestings): Jules's struggle to recognize that her talents and worth may not be in the same place as her friends and deal with the jealousy she feels is all too recognizable.

Briony Tallis (Atonement): Briony's failure to understand what she's seen and desire to be important and listened to lead to tragedy...my own childhood busybody-ness didn't have disastrous consequences, but that was more luck than anything.

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones's Diary): Who can't relate to the refusal to really adult?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Characters That Remind Me of Myself

Top Ten Tuesday: Platonic Relationships In Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! While romances may get the swoons, some of my favorite relationships between characters in books are families and friends. So without further ado, here are ten of my favorite platonic relationships I've read on the page!

Vasya and Dunya (The Bear and the Nightingale): The bond between the old nurse and her wild young charge is so warm and loving that it makes the horror of what happens near the end even worse.

Lyra and Iorek (The Golden Compass): The strange, sober bear king and the clever, high-spirited girl make a great team and develop a geniune closeness.

Elinor and Marianne (Sense and Sensibility): As the older sister myself, I identify with the steady Elinor, and I love her connection with her open-hearted little sister.

Mariam and Laila (A Thousand Splendid Suns): These "sister wives" suffer through an awful husband together and become each other's rock.

Siskel and Ebert (Life Itself): The real love Ebert felt for the co-anchor who was in many ways his opposite and with whom he sparred regularly just shines through the pages of his memoir.

Madeline, Celeste, and Jane (Big Little Lies): The way the friendships between the main women are built, the realism underlying even the more over-the-top aspects of the plot, really make this book work.

Sabriel and Mogget (Sabriel): The tension between these uneasy allies, the way they vacillate between mistrust and fondness, is an enjoyable aspect of this book and its sequels.

Meg and Charles Wallace (A Wrinkle in Time): The fierce, protective love Meg has for her otherworldly little brother, and his love for her, are the emotional core of this whole series.

Matilda and Miss Honey (Matilda): Obviously this book is wonderful, and this relationship is what makes it so great. Two kind-hearted, cruelly treated people who find in each other someone to care for!

Wilbur and Homer (The Cider House Rules): If this surrogate father and son relationship doesn't get you in the feels, you don't have any.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Platonic Relationships In Books

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Vivid Reading Memories

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about books for which we have particularly vivid and detailed reading memories. I don't often have super strong recollections of where I was and who I was with when I read (even if I really like the book!), but for some books, I do, and here are ten of them.

Fifty Shades of Grey: I KNOW, okay? I have very vivid memories of reading these blissfully brain-engagement free books on the boat at my mom's house when I was studying for the bar exam. I raced through them, because goodness knows I needed something easy on the gray matter that summer.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Another memory very tied to the boat...years after their big popularity boom, I read them over the summer after my first year of law school. That year in particular was not great for me in a lot of ways, so I relished getting lost in these twisty, propulsive books.

Never Let Me Go: I can still picture the little purple bookcase in my room my senior year of college that this book sat on after I read it for the first time...and the couch in our living room that I read it on.

The Virgin Suicides: I remember picking this up at the bookstore and starting to read it while sitting in the backseat on the way home with my mom and sister and getting really excited about seeing Bon Secours Hospital, where I was born, turn up in the text.

A Wrinkle In Time: This is very unglamorous, but in the interests of honesty, this book was always sitting in a basket in the bathroom with reading material growing up and so I read and re-read it over and over again in there in little bits at a time.

Bridget Jones' Diary: I remember getting this book in high school and staying up late to read it (my light dim so I could turn it off quickly if my mom came to tell me to go to sleep), trying desperately to stifle the sound of my laughter.

Zodiac: This isn't really honeymoon reading, but that's when I read it. There was one night we were in Chicago that we had a just crazy thunderstorm (the night we were going to go down to the fireworks at the Navy Pier, in fact) and I remember sitting on the little loveseat by the window and just hearing the thunder crash while I read.

A Suitable Boy: This isn't just one memory, because this book is crazy long, but I remember very much living at home after my sophomore year of college and reading this book when I wasn't working my very short-lived stint as a checkout clerk at the local grocery store. I would stay up in my room for hours because it was so absorbing.

The Awakening: We read this book late my senior year of high school in AP English and got these really cheap paperbacks, and I remember very much freaking out because I'd managed to rip off a big chunk of the cover accidentally. Thankfully it was only like $5 to replace it.

Gone With The Wind: My mom once dated a guy who had a cottage in northern Michigan on Torch Lake and I remember that we went up there for a long weekend one summer to open it and this is what I was reading...it's forever linked in my mind with the slightly musty smell of a house that's been shut up all winter.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Vivid Reading Memories

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Worlds I’d Never Want to Live In

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're looking at the worlds books create and whether or not we'd actually want to live there. We did a similar topic late last year about places we would want to go, so this time around I'm going to be talking about places I would not want to find myself!

Westeros (A Song of Ice and Fire): I would love to see a dragon, but Martin does not flinch from the reality of a world which has been in a state of war for years on end. It is gloomy.

Bon Temps (The Southern Vampire Mysteries): The risk of getting killed by a vampire or were-creature or even rogue maenad seems disproportionately high.

Camazotz (A Wrinkle in Time): A conformist world where everyone has outsourced all decision-making to a central authority is not for me. Also the idea of that giant brain totally freaked me out as a kid.

Gilead (The Handmaid's Tale): I like having control of my own reproductive decisions, thanks.

Olandria (The Winged Histories): Another fantasy world riven by war.

Dune (Dune): A desert world so arid that every drop of water your body produces needs to be purified and recycled so you don't die of thirst, populated by giant sandworms? Ick ick.

Oz (Wicked): A rising authoritarian state where some citizens are treated as second class is no place to want to be.

Orisha (Children of Blood and Bone): Again with totalitarian government and a war-ravaged society being a less-than-pleasant destination.

Panem (The Hunger Games): It sounds like life in the capital and the first few districts isn't too bad, but what an awful world overall.

The hospital (Blindness): This book was brilliant but the devolution of society inside the hospital is harrowing.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Worlds I’d Never Want to Live In

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Could Re-Read Forever

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about books that we could re-read again and again. I LOVE a good re-read, so here are books that have really held up for me the second (and third, and fourth, etc) time through.

Lolita: There's so much to this novel that every time I read it I notice a new brilliant bit of wordplay or layer to the story. If you've let its subject matter keep you away, please don't. It's really an amazing book.

The Secret History: I first read this book in my AP English class my senior year of high school and though I've long since known how it all turns out, it sucks me in all over again every time I pick it up.

A Game of Thrones (series): This is cheating (there's another cheat down the list), but I re-read one of these books every year over the holidays and they're so dense and rich and the amount of foreshadowing is just incredible.

The Virgin Suicides: I first read this book at least 15 years ago and re-read it just late last year for my book club and countless times in between and it never fails to give me that very real, very powerful feeling of place that it did on the first time through.

Gone Girl: This is the book on this list I've re-read the least often, only twice. But Flynn's sharp-as-nails evisceration of the ways the world is bullshit to women is so insightful and hard-hitting that it's just as good when you come back to it.

In Cold Blood: Truman Capote's storytelling skills are really top-notch, which is why the pleasure of reading along as he tells the tale of the men who murdered the Clutter family doesn't diminish over time.

A Wrinkle In Time: I read this whole series over and over again as a young teen, but the first one most of all. For such a slim volume, L'Engle really packs it full of not just plot, but themes that resonate for kids and adults too.

Harry Potter (series): My second cheat, because picking just one of these books feels impossible. It's really all together, as the story of Harry (and Ron and Hermione), that they're best and so, so, re-readable.

1984: My sister still has the copy I got when I was like 12 on her bookshelf and it is a book I constantly reference and go back to because it is so prescient and smart.

Bridget Jones' Diary: Pretty much all of these are serious books, so I needed to throw in something funny. This is one of those books that literally makes you laugh out loud reading it and its cleverness is undiminished over time.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Could Re-Read Forever

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I'm Thankful For

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic, with Thanksgiving in two days, is books that we're thankful for. This isn't usually how I think about books (I tend to think about good to bad, not more to less thankful), but I pondered for a bit, and here are ten books that make me grateful.

A Wrinkle In Time: For teaching me it was okay to be a prickly adolescent girl, and that I could still be the hero even if I was.

Anna Karenina: For teaching me that I didn't hate Russian literature (just Dostoyevsky).

Memoirs of a Geisha: For being a wonderful book, and then inspiring me to think more critically about own voices.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: For inspiring in me a lifelong fascination with psychology and the brain.

Lolita: For teaching me that the English language can be playful and unexpected.

To Kill A Mockingbird: For showing and not telling its lessons about injustice and being all the more powerful for it.

Gone With The Wind: For teaching me that sometimes the movie is better.

Harry Potter: For being magical.

The Hunger Games: For reminding me that reading outside of my usual genre lines can be very rewarding indeed.

The Handmaid's Tale: For making the misogyny behind male control of female reproduction blindingly obvious.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I'm Thankful For

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I Want My Future Children to Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week, we're believing that children are our future, and thinking about what books we'd want our own kids, or nieces/nephews, or our friends' kids to read. I do want kids someday, and here are ten books I am going to stock on their bookshelves (arranged, roughly, in order from youngest to oldest).

Greek Myths: This book of Greek myths, rendered as comic strips that kids can understand, inspired in me a lifelong love of these classic stories.

Charlotte's Web: Although I don't plan on raising children vegetarian (I think it should be their choice to make), I would like them to understand where meat comes from and this book is gently upfront about raising animals for slaughter. It also was something that I remember being particularly helpful to me in gaining a more mature understanding of death.

A Wrinkle In Time: I loved this whole series and no matter what gender my future child(ren) may be, I want them to see a girl who doesn't play nice as being a hero.

Harry Potter: OBVIOUSLY.

Speak: Again, regardless of gender, this book explores sexual assault and its aftermath and how hard it can be to make the accusation, and that's something everyone should be aware of.

1984: This book made me question the way information is disseminated and the way the public is expected to consume it even as an eighth grader (even more so now).

Lord of the Flies: It's perhaps a dim view of humanity, especially in groups, but I haven't seen anything in my life to this point to make me think that it's not a fair one.

To Kill A Mockingbird: The lessons here about not judging people without understanding their circumstances are timeless and important.

The Lord of the Rings: This series has its issues (including a horrifying dearth of female characters), but it's a wonderful adventure tale and the basis of a lot of fantasy media.

A People's History of the United States: The version of history we're presented in school is a very sanitized one, and I hope my kids have the intellectual curiosity to investigate past the shiny surface.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I Want My Future Children to Read

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Crushes

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic is book boyfriends/girlfriends...you know, when you're reading a book and get all swoony about one of the characters. This is a bit of a tough one, for me, because I don't read a ton of books with a central romance (which tend to be the type of books that make you all swoony over characters), so I'm splitting it up: five boy crushes, and five girl crushes!

The Dudes:

Captain Wentworth (Persuasion): This was the first Austen I read, and the hero remains my favorite. He's loyal and good-natured and big enough to forgive a foolish spurning means that even though she's an "old maid" (at 27!), the love he and Anne have for each other is just delayed rather than denied and this book is great and so is he.

Kolya (City of Thieves): Rakish and high-spirited, Kolya tends to win over everyone he meets with his charm. Especially women, and it's not hard to understand why: young and handsome and endearing tends to be an easy sell.

Charles O'Keefe (A Wrinkle In Time): This series is so amazing because it has such great characters: prickly Meg, self-possessed Charles Wallace, and brave, kind Charles, who is able to maintain his own stable goodness despite adverse circumstances. It's easy to understand why Meg loves him and it's hard not to love him a bit yourself.

Eric Northman (Dead To The World): This whole series has a rotating cast of love interests for Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone whose favorite isn't Eric, particularly in the fourth book, where he's lost his memory and imperiousness and he's just a tall, handsome sweetheart.

Jean Valjean (Les Miserables): A man who recovers from some previous missteps to live virtuously and devote himself to the loving raising of a child who isn't his? If that's not dreamy to you, we have different ideas of what dreamy is.

The Ladies:

Sabriel (Sabriel): Smart and brave and with powerful magic, Sabriel is enchanting and one of those characters who you can never forget once you've experienced.

Yvaine (Stardust): An actual star, kidnapped by a young man named Tristan to be a present for the girl he pines for, Yvaine is sarcastic and witty and it is no surprise that Tristan eventually realizes that he's actually in love with her after all, because she's great.

Natasha Rostova (War and Peace): If you can read this book and not fall a little bit in love with Natasha, you've got a heart of stone. Her spirit is what holds this enormous epic together, and the way she ends up still doesn't sit quite right with me.

Ellen Cherry Charles (Skinny Legs and All): Tom Robbins is a love-him-or-hate-him writer, and I tend to be in the former group. Ellen is a waitress who wants to be an artist, and her struggle to figure out her relationship with her husband and the world and herself and her pride and vulnerability make her a winning heroine.

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones's Diary): Bridget drinks too much, can't stick to a diet and exercise plan, and speaks before she thinks. She is a delight and I want to be best friends.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Book Crushes

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Original Books I've Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic is original books. When I think of books that are original, I think of books that are kind of the first of their kind or kicked off a trend. I don't tend to read a lot of books that fall into any sort of avant-garde category, so there are the books I've read that I think changed up the landscape for what came after them (and some that are just kind of offbeat).

Lord of the Rings: Forget just books, I think most high fantasy movies and video games owe a significant debt to J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork. My husband loves playing the Elder Scrolls video games, and I couldn't believe he hadn't seen the LOTR movies beforehand because they have so much in common.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: While the book itself is certainly an enjoyable twisty mystery, it's really here for the amazing character of Lisbeth Salander. Usually a slight female is the victim, but she turns all that on its head and is a brutal force to be reckoned with in her own right.

Gone Girl: Besides some genuinely shocking twists and a depiction of a compelling female sociopath (a rare creature indeed), this book propelled a boom in domestic thrillers. How many times have you seen something labeled "the next Gone Girl"? Exactly.

Life of Pi: I can't think of another book that tells a story quite like this one: a teenage boy trapped on a lifeboat with a variety of zoo animals, including a Bengal tiger, floating in the Pacific Ocean. Or was he trapped with any animals at all?

In Cold Blood: Truman Capote's incredible work basically created new genre: the non-fiction novel. Pretty darn original.

Bridget Jones' Diary: This hysterically funny book kicked off a boom in "chick lit" with flawed, quirky heroines. None of them were quite as much fun to spend time with as Bridget.

Moby-Dick: When I read this a few years ago on a classics binge, I was expecting something boring. But it's actually very modern, interspersing its revenge saga with details about whales and whaling that made it surprisingly enjoyable.

American Gods: Gaiman's incredible book manages to juggle multiple threads and characters along with an incredible main story about a clash between the gods people brought to the US from "the Old World" and the ones they've raised in the New. There's nothing quite like it that I've read.

A Wrinkle In Time: Maybe it's not nearly as special as I remember it, but to this day I don't know that I've ever come across as defiantly prickly a character as Meg Murray in a YA book...when I was a prickly girl myself, discovering Meg felt like a revelation.

Flowers for Algernon: I don't think I've ever read another book quite like this one, with its trajectory of genius found and lost. It's a heart-ripper.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Most Original Books I've Read

My Reading Life: What I Wish I Would Have Read In High School

 The title is a bit of a misnomer. There are some books that I read in high school that were amazing: To Kill A Mockingbird (read in 10th grade), The Great Gatsby (read in 11th grade, and which I super hated at the time and think high school is too early to really appreciate it). But there were also some clunkers: Of Mice and Men (read in 9th grade), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (read in 12th grade). High school is such a heady time, hormones and emotions running high, and the right book at the right time can instill a lifelong appreciation for books and the worlds you can explore through them. If I was redesigning the standard-issue high school curriculum (which I know doesn't really exist, my in-laws are teachers), here are the three works I would want everyone to read each year

Freshman Year

Romeo and Juliet: I read this one freshman year, and I think that's the perfect time to read it. Romeo and Juliet is a bonkers play, you guys. Fighting in the streets! Romantic obsession! Sex! Death! It's a story about teenagers being crazy and stupid and perfect for 14 year olds.

1984: In terms of actual reading comprehension level, this is very understandable for a teenager. Some parents would probably freak out because of some very mild sexual situations, but they need to chill out. This is a great novel to inspire kids to start to think critically about political and media manipulation (especially in this new age of "alternative facts")

The Hunger Games: I think recently popular lit gets overlooked on school reading lists, but I think this would actually go great with 1984. The language is a bit more modern but touches on similar themes about government control, and features a badass female heroine.

Sophomore Year

To Kill A Mockingbird: This literary classic was on my own 10th grade reading list, and I think that was a great time to have read it. Scout is a fantastic heroine, and lessons this book imparts about standing up for what's right and empathy for others are powerful at any age, but especially around this time.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower: This story, about the tight bond that develops between flawed teenage outcasts, is sensitive and powerful. As much as parents would love to pretend otherwise, teenagers do have sex lives and sexuality, and this novel speaks to those developments in a way that will ring true for 15 year-olds.

Speak: On the dark side of that idea about teenage sexuality is the reality that sexual assault is a real risk during these years. The book is incisive and witty and can help girls understand that unwanted sexual attention isn't their fault...and boys understand the importance of consent. 

Junior Year

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: The story of Francie Nolan is one about overcoming the odds, mostly because of a love of reading and school. Francie lives through some pretty tough stuff and manages to stick it out, and I know when I was 16, I was pretty sure I had it pretty bad myself, so this book will bring both perspective and an example of triumph over obstacles.

The Catcher In The Rye: I really think this book speaks most powerfully to teenagers, who are obsessed with the idea of being real, the idea that adults are fake. By the time I read it, in my early 20s, I mostly wanted to give Holden a hearty smack across the face and tell him to snap out of it. But for a 16 year-old, the sense of aimlessness and feeling like you should know what you want from your life even though you totally don't is very identifiable.

Fahrenheit 451: Our world today has more easy distractions than ever, making the relevance of this novel, about the importance of books and reading and how easy it is for these things to fall by the wayside, even more obvious. This book will likely not speak to every 11th grade student, but for those who make the effort to understand it, it would be richly rewarding.

Senior Year

In Cold Blood: Truman Capote's masterpiece about a shocking murder in Kansas is a fantastic way to work with 12th graders about style. It was one of the very first non-fiction novels, and is perfectly paced and plotted. The appeal of a story is about the way it's told as much as anything else.

A Brave New World: This fits right in with the 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 suggestions earlier along the way about the ways that the powerful can subdue the masses through social control. This one is, for my money, the most mature of the three I've picked and as you're about to send kids out into the world, one that I'd like to have fresh in their minds.

Lord of the Flies: I think I actually read this in 11th grade, but it works fine here too. Finding and trying to fit into groups is a big part of the teen years, which continue into college, and the power of those groups to influence their members is something that's good to put into 17 and 18 year-olds minds as they get ready to really experience life outside the home for the first time.

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My Reading Life: What I Wish I Would Have Read In High School

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Characters You Would Want As Family Members

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic is a rewind...i.e go back in the archives and find a topic you didn't do the first time around and do it. I picked a way old topic, long before I started book blogging: ten characters I'd want as family members! I love character-driven writing and usually remember more about them than the plot for most books, so this topic spoke to me.



Fred and George Weasley (Harry Potter): I grew up with just one sibling, my sister (who I love and adore), but Fred and George seem like the perfect brothers. Constant pranking would thicken your skin but how could you stay mad when they're so delightful? I'm counting them as one because they're a matched pair.

Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice): Her bright wit and lively personality would make her a great sister. Can you imagine all the fun marathon phone calls you could have with a sister like Lizzy just snarking on everyone?

Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games): On the flip side of the sister coin, Katniss is fiercely protective of her own and would make sure no one ever messed with you.

Lisbeth Salander (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo): She doesn't seem like she makes much of an effort to be super pleasant to a lot of people, so I don't know that I'd want her in the immediate family, but as a cousin that you see maybe once or twice a year? And feel like you could maybe call on for backup in case of emergency? Perfect!

Pi Patel (Life of Pi): A dad who can tell a story like Pi Patel can tell a story would be an awesome dad indeed.

Tom Bombadil (The Fellowship of the Ring): Too irresponsible for a parent, but a whacky uncle who shows up every so often to be charming and lighthearted and sing songs and tell stories? Yes please.

Wilbur Larch (The Cider House Rules): Dr. Larch's fatherly love and empathy for orphaned Homer Wells is so touching, even when Homer spurns him and his work. I've already got a book dad, but how about a grandpa?

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones' Diary): I'm giving myself all kinds of fictional siblings, because it wouldn't be hard to be the good/together sister next to Bridget, and she's really very good natured and would have the BEST stories.

Catlyn Stark (A Game of Thrones): She's flawed, like every single person in George R.R. Martin's world, but she's strong, loves her kids, and raised a bunch of fundamentally decent people. She reminds me of my actual mom, and I'd gladly join Sansa and Arya as one of her daughters!

The whole Murray clan (A Wrinkle In Time): I want to be a part of this entire educated, loving, crazy-adventure having family. Just all of them.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Characters You Would Want As Family Members

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Childhood Characters You'd Love To Revisit As Adults

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic: ten characters from childhood that you'd love to revisit as adults. This was a trip down memory lane, as I spent time thinking about the books I loved growing up, which was a lot of them. Here are the characters I'd most like to connect with:

The Babysitters Club: I read what feels like it was probably close to 100 of these books as a kid. Of course I desperately wanted to start a club of my own, and of course I didn't, but I lived vicariously though the girls' adventures. I wanted to think I was a Claudia, but I was totally a Mary Ann. I'd love to see an adult novel that followed up on their lives...maybe a mystery set at their 10 year reunion? 

Meg Murry (A Wrinkle In Time): After being the main character of the first two novels of the Time Quartet, the focus shifts off of Meg and onto her brothers. We see a little bit of her, but we don't really get to focus on her and her life. We know that she ends up married to Calvin and the mother of a large family, but I want to see a follow up with Meg from her own perspective. It looks like such a novel was in the works when Madeline L'Engle had a stroke and stopped writing, which bums me out. 

Georgia Nicholson (Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging): I loved this silly series and in my head, Georgia grows up to be more-or-less Bridget Jones, but I have a feeling she'd even put Bridget to shame sometimes in terms of getting herself into messes. I'm going to have to keep on with my own ideas, though, because Louise Rennison sadly passed away earlier this year. 

Harry Potter: And the rest of the Potter gang, obviously. We've gotten little glimpses through Rowling's ending of the final book and updates on Pottermore, and I'm hoping Harry Potter and the Cursed Child shows us even more of who Harry, Hermione, and Ron have become as adults. 

Ella (Ella Enchanted): Cinderella may be a classic, but the Disney movie was never a favorite of mine because Cinderella is so boring (I quite liked Drew Barrymore's Ever After, though). This retelling makes our girl a much stronger and more interesting character, and I'd love to see what happens in her happily ever after...I have a feeling it's much more complicated than that. 

Matilda Wormwood (Matilda): I loved this book so much as a kid...probably because I identified hard with its smart, book-loving heroine. I have a whole rant about the movie and how much I hated it, but that's neither here nor there. After a childhood full of abusive parenting and magical powers, I really want to know what a grown-up Matilda is like after her telekinesis vanishes and she gets to live with Miss Honey. You have to think those early experiences would leave some pretty significant scars...

Jess Aarons (Bridge to Terabithia): This book made me ugly-cry as a kid, and after the death of his best friend, I wonder what happened to Jess. Thinking back on it as an adult, imaginative and artistic Jess seems to be written as potentially quietly gay, and I want to read about him going back home to visit small-town Virginia after moving to New York or Chicago or LA and becoming an artist.

Karana (Island of the Blue Dolphins): I'm pretty sure everyone read this in elementary or middle school, right? What we don't think about is what happens when a young woman who has lived alone on an island for years not only re-encounters humanity, but finds herself in a completely different culture. What does she do? How does she live her life? I'd love to read about Karana's post-Island life. 

Miyax (Julie of the Wolves): I remember reading the sequel, which presents Miyax/Julie's life when she leaves her wolf pack and struggles to readjust to a world that's changed in her absence. But she's still just a teenager in Julie, and I'd love to see her continue to learn and grow and see what she decides to make of her life and continue to deal with culture clash 

April and Melanie (The Egypt Game): I know, there are other characters, but these two unlikely friends were my favorite. After a childhood of imagination games, I picture the girls going to college and growing apart, but reuniting in a chance encounter and slowly reconnecting. Anyone else want to read that or just me? 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Childhood Characters You'd Love To Revisit As Adults

So You Miss The Hunger Games?

With the final movie having come out a few months ago, The Hunger Games are officially over. Like most readers, I tore through the trilogy in what felt like no time...more than once even! While Katniss Everdeen inspired her really obvious knockoffs (Divergent, anyone?), nothing has quite lived up to Collins' trilogy. And while they're not all quite the same, obviously, here are some of my favorite YA series led by bad-ass female characters:

The Old Kingdom trilogy: For me, these books are the most similar to Collins' and the most likely to be enjoyed by the Hunger Games crowd. Anyone who loved tough, strong Katniss should love equally tough and strong Sabriel, whose beloved father has disappeared into the realm of Death while fighting a powerful necromancer. She has no choice but to rely on the skills he taught her to find him and save her home from evil. These books are fantasy rather than dystopia, but they've got a similar girl-on-a-quest narrative, and a similar approach to the obligatory "love interest" plot point (in that it's a relatively minor plot point...and bonus for no artificial love triangle!). For me, the second volume of this was the weakest (I didn't like Lirael as a character as much as I liked Sabriel), but the first and third were great. There's actually a fourth one that's come out, and I can't wait to get my hands on it and read it because Garth Nix is amazing.

The Immortals quartet: Anything by Tamora Pierce is a solid choice for a young feminist (she's also got the Young Lioness quartet that's very popular and well-regarded, but that one didn't do nearly as much for me when I read it), but this series is my favorite. Daine Sarassri is an orphaned young woman living in a fantasy kingdom called Tortall who discovers that she has a kind of magic, not of the traditional spells-and-charms kind, but a rarer kind of Wild Magic that allows her to commune with animals. Her gift has always set her apart from people, so she's more comfortable with four-footed than two-footed company. Daine, like Katniss, is proud and private and awkward and uses her strength to protect the ones she loves, and her adventures make for compulsive, entertaining reading.

His Dark Materials trilogy: This one is stretching it farther from The Hunger Games base, but it does feature a headstrong, scrappy girl who fights back against the system. The plot is complicated and gets into some strong theological questions like the nature of sin, so the reading is a little bit slower paced, but don't worry, it's not drudgery by a long shot. Lyra Belacqua is an unforgettable heroine and readers who gobbled up Katniss' fight against the Capitol should enjoy Lyra's push back against authority in her world, too.

A Wrinkle In Time Quintet: If you've read them, you might be wondering how I'd compare them to The Hunger Games, which is fair. But I think you can trace a line from smart, stubborn Meg Murray to smart, stubborn Katniss Everdeen without too much trouble. Neither Madeline L'Engle nor Susan Collins is afraid to let their heroine be prickly and sometimes unlikable. Both Meg and Katniss fiercely love and work to protect their younger sibling at great risk to themselves. Unlike The Hunger Games, we actually get to see later stories from the perspectives of the younger siblings in question, and the part of the story that involve an older Meg make me wish we'd gotten a better look at older Katniss.

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So You Miss The Hunger Games?