Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Teenage Girls

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is a character freebie, and I thought quite a bit about what kind of character I wanted to talk about. I decided to go for one of the types of people the world takes the least seriously: teenage girls. As a culture, we dismiss them and the things they find important. But they make some of the best bookish heroes you could ask for!

Vasilisa Petrovna (The Bear and the Nightingale): Vasya is brave and strong and true and vulnerable and scared and just the best.

Jessica Darling (Sloppy Firsts): Jessica's deprecation of herself and everyone else she goes to high school with are just so true to being that age.

Georgia Nicholson (Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging): She's kind of daft and boy-crazy, but she's hysterically funny.

Francie Nolan (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn): Having been a nerd who loved school, obviously I've got a soft spot for those kind of girls.

Starr Carter (The Hate U Give): Starr is whip-smart and brave even through her fear and I loved reading about her.

Hermione Granger (Harry Potter): We all know who the real hero of this series is, right?

Lyra Belacqua (The Golden Compass): Bold as brass.

Sabriel (Sabriel): There is a type of "strong female character" which basically just means extroverted and ass-kicking and even though Sabriel is more than capable of kicking ass if she needs to, she's not that type of easy heroine and that's why she's great.

Lady Catherine (Catherine, Called Birdy): A true Sass Queen for the (Middle) Ages.

Charlotte Doyle (The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle): The way we get to see Charlotte grow and change and come into her own is awesome.

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Teenage Girls

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? 

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

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

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books That Will Make You Laugh

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic was a struggle for me, honestly. I'm not super into comedy-type books, so this was really hard for me to put together. But I got to ten!



Bossypants: Tina Fey is amazing. Weekend Update, Mean Girls, 30 Rock. She's a total role model: super smart, successful, best friends with Amy Poehler, cute husband and adorable kids...it really doesn't get more #goals than that. Reading her witty prose is about as close as I'm ever going to get to hanging out with her and having her tell me stories, so of course I love it.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?: Mindy Kaling feels like a Tina junior to me. She's not my role model so much, she's more the person I wish was my best friend because she's so relatable and her humor feels so spot on with my life...she's only about five years older than me, so her words resonate with me hard and are usually really applicable to my life. This is more wry chuckling than full-on cackle, but it's wonderful and I really liked it.

My Horizontal Life: My dad actually used to watch Chelsea Lately, and when I was living with him after law school trying to get a job, we'd hang out and watch it together. Which might not have always been the best idea, Chelsea Handler gets pretty bawdy. She's much more so in this, her first book, which I enjoyed enough to buy her second which promptly underwhelmed me. I haven't tried another one of her books since, but if you're into dirty humor, this is great.

Approval Junkie: Like I said in my review, it wasn't a sidebuster, but that Bill O'Reilly chapter and when she talks about her feelings about her husband's dog are both really funny.

My Booky Wook: As a Yank, I was mostly aware of Russell Brand for some MTV VMA hosting, which as I recall fell pretty flat, and of course, his marriage to Katy Perry. But before he came to our shores, he was quite a celebrity in his own right in the UK. His memoirs of his sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll lifestyle before he got clean made me chortle like a crazy person on the airplane when I read this.

Bridget Jones' Diary: Moving out of the realm of "books written by comedians" and into the realm of "books that are just funny". I found the sequel to be a little much and the third book so unpromising that I have no interest at all in reading it, but the O.G. Bridget Jones is a classic for a reason. Helen Fielding's chronicle of Bridget's quest to smoke less, lose weight, and find a man is filled with actual laughing out loud moments.

Angus, Thongs, And Full Frontal Snogging (series): I remember picking up the first one at a bookstore in a mall on vacation with my mom in California. I was 13 or 14, and Georgia Nicholson's exploits made me cry I was laughing so hard. The whole series is a little hit or miss (with the usual decline in quality near the end that seems to happen in an extended series), but there are enough truly hysterical moments to keep on reading!

Lamb: Religion can be a sensitive subject, and if your Christian faith is very meaningful to you, this is probably not the right book. But if you're comfortable laughing about the misadventures that Christopher Moore concocts for Jesus and Biff (the Lord's childhood bestie), this is a delightful and irreverent treat!

Catherine, Called Birdy: This is an older book, and much more middle-grade focused, but that's because I first read it in middle school. It's held a special place in my heart ever since. Catherine is clever, witty, and determined to make sure that her parents plans to marry her off to one of her disgusting prospective suitors don't come to fruition. There's some heart along with the humor, but it's mostly humor and it's really funny.

Hyperbole And A Half: If you've never visited Allie Brosh's website, you need to stop now and go there immediately. After you're done making sure you didn't pee a little because you're laughing so hard, you should think about buying her book. It's mostly repeats of what's online, but it's somehow even better to hold it in your hands while you're shaking with laughter.

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books That Will Make You Laugh