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: Places In Books I’d Love to Live

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about places in books that we'd love to live. Not all of these are necessarily places I'd want to live forever, but would enjoy spending at least a long weekend!

 

Hogwarts (Harry Potter): I mean, of course, right? I think everyone who read these books as a teenager dreamed of their own four-poster bed in the castle!

Pemberley (Pride and Prejudice): Austen is full of covetable houses, and the one so beautiful that it overrides the heroine's reluctance to seriously consider the hero is probably the best one, eh?

Gatsby's mansion (The Great Gatsby): This place hosts a new totally incredible party constantly, I want in on at least one of them!

Highgarden (A Song of Ice and Fire): There hasn't actually been a scene set at the seat of House Tyrell in the books yet as I recall, but it is frequently described as a particularly lovely part of the Seven Kingdoms.

The Abhorsen's House (Sabriel): The Abhorsen's house is where Sabriel meets Mogget (pretty much my favorite character in the series), and I love the idea of the Charter Magic sendings who are so old they just do what they want.

Darlington Hall (The Remains of the Day): The guests that were in attendance there were not ones I'd like to mix with, but the old English country estate itself sounds beautiful.

Rivendell (The Lord of the Rings): It IS the Last Homely House East of the Sea.

Hampden College (The Secret History): I think Ann Arbor was a lovely place to go to school, but there's always been a part of me that wishes I'd gone to a college in the northeast!

Brideshead Castle (Brideshead Revisited): For all of Charles's attachments to the Flyte family, it feels like what he's in love with as much as anything is their beautiful ancestral home of Brideshead Castle, and it's described as so lovely that it's not hard to see why.

Manderley (Rebecca): There's plenty of darkness within, of course, but Manderly was so beautiful to look at that it was on postcards, so I think it would be worth a visit.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Places In Books I’d Love to Live

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Animals in Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is supposed to be characters we'd name a pet after, but I feel like that's basically all of them? I'm very open-minded when it comes to pet names. So I've decided to twist this a big and highlight my favorite animals from books...not all of these are strictly "pets", per se, but they're all animals that are great characters in their own right.

 

Fang (Harry Potter): This series has some great animals, like Hedwig and Crookshanks, but my sentimental favorite was Hagrid's scary-looking but sweet and dim guard dog.

The Disruptable Dog (Lirael): Lirael is desperately lonely when she tries to make a dog out of magic to keep her company and it doesn't quite turn out the way she expects...the Disreputable Dog is no one's pet!

Solovey (The Girl in the Tower): Vasya's beautiful, mystical horse is just as high-spirited and stubborn and she is.

Charlotte (Charlotte's Web): I mean, Wilbur may be some pig but Charlotte is the brains of the operation.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (The Jungle Book): The brave mongoose is one of the first animal characters I can remember really taking a shine to (though I think I was influenced as much or more by the Chuck Jones cartoon than the Kipling story itself).

Cloud (Wild Magic): Daine's stubborn pony has more sense than just about any other character in the series.

Rosie (Water for Elephants): The titular Polish-trained elephant was honestly probably my favorite character in the book.

Richard Parker (Life of Pi): The tense, uneasy relationship between Pi and the tiger, in which they both need and mistrust each other, is beautifully developed.

Shiloh (Shiloh): Another childhood favorite. Shiloh was a good dog.

Iorek Byrneson (The Golden Compass): The ferocious armored bear (and all of the detail Pullman created about their society) is one of the standout aspects of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Animals in Books

Top Ten Tuesday: Super Long Book Titles

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're highlighting the books we've read with super duper long titles. These ones are definitely lengthy! And all of the books themselves are solid reads.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B  

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

On The Bright Side, I'm Now The Girlfriend Of A Sex God

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Top Ten Tuesday: Super Long Book Titles

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Make Me Smile

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This is a challenging one for me! The prompt isn't books that made me laugh (which I would also probably struggle with to be honest), but books that make me smile, which to me means heartwarming. Books that tend to get described as "heartwarming" are books I really do not tend to respond to. But even my cold dead heart responds to some books, so here are ten that did actually make me smile.

Persuasion: If you don't break out into a big grin when the couple gets together at the end (this is not a spoiler in any Jane Austen novel), you probably don't like happiness.

The Red Tent: I really find the depictions of relationships between women in this book so realistic and touching.

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: Francie's life is hard in so many ways, which makes her victories that much sweeter when they do happen.

The Giver: The love Jonas grows to feel for the baby his family takes in, and the bravery he shows in taking the steps he needs to for the baby's protection, gets me in the feelings.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Seeing the wizarding world through Harry's eyes, and reading along as he makes his first friends, is honestly magical.

Ella Enchanted: The sweetness of the first love in this book is quite lovely.

The Wind in the Door: The purity of Meg's love for her little brother Charles Wallace and the measures she's willing to take for him are so moving.

About A Boy: I know, liking books about overgrown white man-children finally maturing makes me part of the problem, but this book has the kind of soft Hornby humor that makes me smile.

Eat Pray Love: It's not really the journey Elizabeth Gilbert takes after her marriage ends that gets me, its her strong, insightful prose.

My Antonia: Antonia is just such a winning character.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Make Me Smile

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Non-Romantic Relationships In Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! As usual for the week of Valentine's Day, this is a love freebie. I've written about couples for the past several years for this prompt, so this time I'm switching it up. Here are ten of my favorite deeply bonded pairs who certainly love each other, but not in that way.

Harry and Ron (Harry Potter): The relationship chronicled over the seven books of the series between our hero and his best friend is complicated and rich and more thoroughly developed than either of their romantic lives.

Meg and Charles Wallace (The Wind in the Door): The connection between these two siblings is beautifully rendered and significant in all the books in the series, but particularly in the second one, where Meg has to save his life.

Vasya and Solovey (The Bear and the Nightingale): We've all heard enough jokes about horse girls to recognize the strength of the bond between young women and their equines, but Solovey isn't just any horse and I really enjoyed the bickering and love between these two.

Joe and Sammy (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay): The artistic partnership between these two cousins has ups and down but is rooted in mutual admiration and care that pays off deeply in the end.

Francie and Johnny (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn): Johnny is a warm-hearted, charismatic addict, which makes him a terrible husband and a bad provider, but the easy, straightforward love he's able to show his sweet, bookish daughter is a lovely thing.

Becky and Amelia (Vanity Fair): Becky is a fascinating character, with her scheming and lack of morals. She's not a good friend in the conventional sense, but she does care about the docile Amelia in her own way, and their friendship is both interesting and of an uncommon sort.

Boris and Popper (The Goldfinch): One of the things I found most delightful about this book was the bond between protagonist Theo's crazy Eastern European best friend and the little dog he ends up liberating from his stepmother. These two were my favorite characters in the book, honestly.

Legolas and Gimli (The Lord of the Rings): The longstanding disdain between elves and dwarves means these two are often at each other's throats in the beginning, but the grudging respect and then genuine friendship that grows between them is often a more light-hearted highlight in an otherwise often serious series.

Annemarie and Helen (Number the Stars): I loved this book growing up, not in the least because of the warm, close friendship between gentile Annemarie and Jewish Helen and how it helps give both of them the strength for the former's family to help the latter's escape.

Lyra and Iorek (The Golden Compass): She's one of my favorite literary characters, and the way she earns the admiration and friendship of the king of the armored bears with her quick wits and bold lies is one of the reasons why.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Non-Romantic Relationships In Books

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: Books I'd Love To Take A Class On

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is a autumny freebie. Since autumn always makes me think about school, I figured this week I'd feature titles I'd love to seriously study. I took a whole class on Dante's Divine Comedy in college, and it was not only an amazing course, but it made me wonder how you could ever really understand the work without getting all that context, because there is SO MUCH Italian history crammed in there. And sometimes I feel that way with books, like I need to really dive into it to understand everything. So here are ten books I'd love to study!

War and Peace: I'd love to know more about Russian life, both among regular people and the aristocracy to which the Rostov family belongs. And then the Napoleonic wars on top of that!

Vanity Fair: Another perspective on the Napoleonic wars! Plus more information about social status/life/etc during the Victorian era would be great.

Midnight's Children: I enjoyed reading this, but felt like if I knew more than what I'd picked up from other novels about the Partition, I would get about 1000% more out of it.

Snow: Turkey has had an interesting history, being neither really Middle Eastern or European, but a little bit of both. I just don't know much about that history, which would have given a lot more richness to the way this wrestles with cultural tensions in Turkey.

Sense and Sensibility (and all of Austen, really): I still have one Austen novel outstanding (Northanger Abbey), but I would love to deconstruct both the class system of Britain and how it has changed/evolved and just really dig into what makes her work so brilliant.

The Age of Innocence: While we certainly know all about the Roaring Twenties, the Gilded Age in America (and particularly New York) isn't as high profile. I'd love to learn more about that world, and compare it with our own, in exploring this wonderful novel.

Great Expectations: I'd really enjoy going into depth on form and structure here, as this was of course originally published as a serial. It's been the most successful, for me, of the Dickens I've read, and how he managed to make each installment interesting while keeping the overall story on track would be fascinating to explore.

The Lord of the Rings: There is a LOT going on in this trilogy, and I'd love to explore how J.R.R. Tolkien's own life experiences/social world impacted the writing of these books, as well as really dive deep into questions I've always had, like what the holy heck is the whole Tom Bombadil thing about?

Harry Potter: I'm sure there actually are classes about this at college these days, but every time I go back and revisit these books I catch another layer in them, and would love the chance to really dig into this world.

Wolf Hall: I've read quite a bit of Tudor-era historical fiction, and most of it is wrapped up in the interpersonal drama of the relationships between the main players. But this one is uniquely rooted in both church and political power structures, which made it hard to get into at first and definitely required outside research to grasp.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I'd Love To Take A Class On

Top Ten Tuesday: Characters I’d Love to Be Besties With

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're highlighting the characters we'd love to be friends with. I decided to challenge myself a little and not list characters that I've talked about extensively already by choosing only age-appropriate friends...I'm in my 30s, so only adults made my list!

Robin Ellacot (The Cuckoo's Calling): I'm not as gung-ho about the Cormoran Strike novels as I wish I was, but Strike's assistant Robin is a wonderful character. Smart, capable...she seems like the kind of person who would be a very solid friend!

Minerva McGonegall (Harry Potter): Definitely my favorite of the adults in the world of Harry Potter. She's kind of terrifying, but in that way where you hope she decides you're worth befriending.

Sayuri (Memoirs of a Geisha): She spends her life training to be a pleasant companion, so obviously her company would be enjoyable to share.

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones's Diary): We all need a hot mess friend who makes us feel a little better about our own choices.

Mrs. Murray (A Wrinkle in Time): Beautiful, smart, and practical enough to recognize that a dinner made over a bunsen burner means your kids get fed and that's really all that matters. Just like we all need a messy friend, we all need an aspirational one too!

Sookie Stackhouse (Dead Until Dark): She has a bad habit of getting involved in potentially deadly situations, but she also values her relationship with her best friend Tara in a way that makes it clear she's willing to put the work into maintaining her relationships.

Ellen Olenska (The Age of Innocence): She seems more like she needs a friend than that she would be an especially great one, but she is a good person.

Iris Chase (The Blind Assassin): Another one that could use a friend...between her own family and the one she married into, she definitely needs someone to vent to.

Vianne Rocher (Chocolat): Being friends with someone who knows how to make delicious food is a solid call.

Selina DeJong (So Big): Her ability to find the beauty in the ordinary and deep inner strength and determination would make her an absolutely fantastic friend to have by your side through thick and thin!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Characters I’d Love to Be Besties With

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.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Teenage Girls

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Would Love To Own A First Edition Of

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week's topic is actually books that you won't let anyone touch. I'm not much for holding my books sacred (though I am pesky about getting them back...I'll actually often buy a secondhand copy of a book and just give that one if someone wants to borrow a book so that I don't have to worry), but if I had first editions of these books, I'd definitely hoard them all to myself! I'm highlighting five of my favorite books I've come to love as an adult, as well as five that meant a lot to me while I was a kid.

The Virgin Suicides: I love this book so much. I do have a signed copy, which no one is allowed to touch, but a first edition would be something special.

Lolita: A masterpiece that inspired me to not just enjoy reading, but to really appreciate the way the English language can be used.

The Secret History: I first read this book at 18 and it is STILL my go-to recommendation if someone hasn't read it yet.

In Cold Blood: Truly one of the greatest non-fiction books I have ever read.

1984: I read this when I was a teenager and it blew my entire mind.

Wild Magic: I was a kid who often felt better connected to animals than to other people, so this book about a teen who literally has a magic bond with animal life was something that spoke to me.

Sabriel: The whole series is good, but the first book is one I've read over and over again and still enjoy every time. I feel like these would have been monster smashes if they'd been written a decade later instead of being cult hits.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: The British original that started it all.

Northern Lights: The title was changed when it came overseas to America, but this series still means so much to me that I want to get my hands on the actual first edition.

Catherine, Called Birdy: As a hard-headed smart-mouthed often-disobedient daughter, Catherine was everything.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Would Love To Own A First Edition Of

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: Characters I’d Like To Switch Places With

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're looking at characters whose lives look pretty good...good enough to switch into for a bit, as long as I got to come back anyways!

Hermione Granger (Harry Potter): Being Harry Potter himself is dangerous and scary. Being Hermione, though, means you get to have all the adventures and be the smartest person in the room at all times, which is the dream.

Emma Woodhouse (Emma): The lessons she learns are fairly gentle, and she's handsome, clever, and rich, which honestly seems like a great way to be.

Daine Sarrasri (Wild Magic): Growing up, her magical connection with animals was something I loved and really wished I had!

Vasya Petrovna (The Bear and the Nightingale): She's brave, smart, beautiful, and magical, and one of my favorite recent series heroines.

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones' Diary): Her life is honestly pretty easy even if her escapades are hilarious.

Professor Maud Bailey (Possession): She's lovely and smart and a feminist scholar and that's not a bad way to find yourself being.

Natasha Rostova (War and Peace): I will never get over what Tolstoy does with her in the end, but right up until then she's got the best, most interesting personality and journey of anyone in the book, and is one of the most unforgettable characters I've ever read.

Astrid Teo (Crazy Rich Asians): Okay, she's got romantical problems. But so does everyone and she's gorgeous and absurdly wealthy.

Cersei Lannister (A Game of Thrones): SHE'S THE WORST. But she's also beautiful, rich, powerful, and utterly (albeit wrongly) convinced of her own intelligence and rightness.

Sookie Stackhouse (Dead Until Dark): Yes, the constant unwanted intrusions of others' thoughts would be stressful, and the frequent murder concerns are a problem, but she also gets to have a bunch of love affairs with hot dudes, so...

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Top Ten Tuesday: Characters I’d Like To Switch Places With

Top Ten Tuesday: Wintry Reads

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! Now that it's December, it's basically wintertime (I know it's not like "official" winter for another couple weeks but it's cold already). So as the weather outside starts to get frightful...here are some books where the weather is also frightful!

The Bear and the Nightingale: The first of the four books on this list that are set in Russia, where I basically assume it's always winter. I've picked books where the wintery-ness is an actual real part of the plot and not just assumed! A frost demon plays a central role here, so winter is very much present.

War and Peace: So much of this book happens during the winter, because...Russia.

City of Thieves: That this book, and its central search for eggs, takes place during the winter. The Siege of Leningrad winter, at that, so a bad one even by Russian standards.

Child 44: I read this several years ago now, so maybe it doesn't mostly take place during the winter? But I feel like I remember a lot of winter-ness and snow.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: All the Harry Potter books have Christmas scenes, but the Yule Ball in this one really makes the winter-ness of it memorable!

Lirael: Like to rest of the Clayr, Lirael lives in a glacier, in a world carved entirely from ice.

The Shining: The Torrances head to the Overlook to take care of the hotel during the long winter off-season, and anyone who's lived in an area where snow is real knows how isolating winter can be when you're snowed in.

In Cold Blood: The murder takes place on November 15th, which is technically fall rather than winter, but we all know mid-November is basically winter and there's something about this true crime classic that feels wintry to me.

Snow Falling On Cedars: The snow's right there in the title, and the image of the island community buried, even isolated under its weight, is resonant.

The Golden Compass: The portions of the book that take place at Svalbard, northern and wintry, are the ones that stick out the most in my memory.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Wintry Reads

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Featuring Ghosts

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! With Halloween tomorrow, this week is a holiday freebie! I did witches last year, so this year I'm going with books that have ghosts!

Beloved: This book is a masterpiece and the way Morrison uses the ghost character is incredible and if you haven't read it already you should immediately.

Sing, Unburied, Sing: This felt very much like it was positioning itself as "in the tradition of" Beloved, for me, but without quite the skill or level of success. It's a good book, and goes into some different places, but a comparison to Morrison's masterpiece is unlikely to be flattering to anyone. 

The Inferno: They're not quite "ghosts" per se, but Virgil as Dante's guide and the shades the two encounter in hell are a huge part of this amazing work.

Lincoln in the Bardo: I felt definitely echoes of Dante in this deeply weird but very good book, especially in the contrapasso-esque disfigurements the spirits were saddled with.

The Shining: I'm not big into horror as a genre usually because I am easily frightened and have a vivid imagination but this book managed to keep the scares relatively low-impact (even the very malevolent ghosts) and told a compelling story about addiction to boot. 

The Lovely Bones: Susie isn't really a ghost, but she's a disembodied spirit and at one point possesses someone so I think that's close enough.

Stardust: The growing collection of ghostly princes of Stormhold are kind of a side plot in this fantasy adventure, but the way the brothers come up with to murder each other are honestly kind of delightful.

Rebecca: The titular first wife of Maxim deWinter does not literally appear during the story, but the way her influence continues to haunt her widower, his home of Manderly, and his new wife is so pervasive as to be effectively present. 

Harry Potter: For something a little more lighthearted, the house ghosts and Peeves the poltergeist and Moaning Myrtle are a vital part of this beloved series.

Spook: And a nonfiction take on ghosties! I love Mary Roach and this exploration of whether there's any scientific evidence for communication with the afterlife has her trademark curiosity and humor.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books Featuring Ghosts

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Character Names

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're looking at the characters with the best names. It would be so easy to go with just girl's names, since it seems like authors often get more creative with them, or stick to the realm of fantasy where there's even more flexibility, but I decided to try to limit myself to one name from any given series and included my favorite five for girls and five for boys!

Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games): Many fantasy-style novels use names that are similar to ones we know and use, but with a twist. This one falls right in line with that, but it's particularly well-done because the rhythm and balance of it is pleasing.

Anna Karenina (Anna Karenina): Maybe it's the repetition of the "n" sound and the "a" vowels that tie it together so well, but this one just flows beautifully.

Georgiana Darcy (Pride and Prejudice): She's only really a bit character, but I've just always loved the elegance of Georgiana as a name. It feels more sophisticated and unexpected than Georgina.

Vianne Rocher (Chocolat): I like the link to the famous Ferrero Rocher chocolates, and Vianne is lovely, and they work really well together.

Daenarys Targaryen (A Game of Thrones): A Song of Ice and Fire had to get in here somewhere, and the distinctive majesty of this name is instantly identifiable with the series.

Philip Pirrip (Great Expectations): Both names come close to being palindromes, and echo each other in a way that should sound cheesy but instead has a bright ring.

Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter): There are so many names from the Harry Potter universe that could have made it on here, but the soft consonants of the headmaster's name, its very old-fashioned first name and to my American ear, very British-sounding surname, make it my favorite.

Tristran Thorn (Stardust): Again with the "fantasy using slightly-changed normal names", but I like the stutter-step of "Tristran" instead of the familiar "Tristan", and both names sound enough alike but are still different that they hang together well.

Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit): This is just such a delightfully hobbit-y name.

Newland Archer (The Age of Innocence): This has the kind of moneyed, old-fashioned aura that fits this Old New York character perfectly.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Best Character Names

Top Ten Tuesday: Books With My Favorite Color On the Cover

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're looking at books with our favorite color on the cover. My favorite color is blue, but since we've got a topic coming up in a couple months that'll include books with blue covers, I'll move to my second favorite: purple!




The Color Purple: This one is obvious, no?

To Kill A Mockingbird: My own hardcover copy is prettier than this, but I think we all read the one with this lavender cover in school.

Pride and Prejudice: This is a blue-r purple but still a lovely cover for a delightful book.

The Stranger Beside Me: The mass market paperback of this true crime classic (which is the edition I own) features Bundy's stare from a purple background.

The Other Boleyn Girl: I feel like I'm talking about this book a lot lately, which I'm not necessarily trying to do, it just keeps coming up.

Dead Until Dark: The first in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries features Sookie Stackhouse and her vampire lover Bill floating against a dark purple sky.

Stay With Me: This debut novel has, well, stayed with me in the months since I read it...and its orange and purple cover is striking.

A Brave New World: This classic of dystopian fiction has an unusual tone of grayish purple in the cover.

Exit West: Beautiful book, gorgeous cover.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: These books get redesigned covers pretty frequently (the originals that I grew up with are my favorites), and honestly I find most of the ones in this series uninspiring, but I love this moody purple-soaked one.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books With My Favorite Color On the Cover

Top Ten Tuesday: Audiobooks I Really Liked

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week we have a total freebie, and I couldn't figure out what to write about until it hit me: I actually do a lot of non-fiction and beloved classics re-reading on audio, so I wanted to share some of my all-time favorite audiobooks!

His Dark Materials: Phillip Pullman, the author, narrates the trilogy with a full voice cast and the magic is just as real in your ears as it was on the page.

Sabriel: If you've ever read these books, you know that Tim Curry's voice is PERFECT for them (especially Mogget!).

Harry Potter: I'll admit I'm a little jealous that I can't find the Stephen Fry narration in the US, but honestly Jim Dale does beautiful work telling these wonderful stories.

The Queen Mother: I confess, I'm a royals junkie. The Queen Mum died before I got really into the British Royal Family, but listening to this was a cool way to be introduced to a very interesting woman.

Basque History of the World: Northern Nevada has a significant population of Basque people, who I knew very little about before I listened to this fascinating book about them.

The Princess Diarist: The world lost a skilled, witty voice when we lost Carrie Fisher, and listening to her tell her story in her own voice is a great experience.

Troublemaker: Scientology is super weird, to put it mildly, and while I keep meaning to catch up with her show about leaving the church, Leah Remini's actual warm, authentic voice telling her story about it is a must-listen.

Believe Me: Eddie Izzard's comedy often rests on the strength of his storytelling and his voice, which is delightful and enlightening in this beautiful, funny memoir.

Nixonland: The Nixon presidency, with its paranoia and division-stoking, seems ever more relevant today and I learned a lot listening to this book about it.

Stardust: I love listening to Neil Gaiman read his own amazing work. His voice is so distinctive and evocative.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Audiobooks I Really Liked

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: Ten Bookish Settings I'd Love to Visit

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week we're talking about book settings we'd love to visit. There are SO many places I've read about that I'd like to go that this was hard to narrow down! I've divided my list into two sections: those from fantasy novels and don't actually exist, and those that are based on/are places in the real world.

Hogwarts (Harry Potter): Obviously. For real, though, I am expecting to see this on just about every list today haha!

Jordan College (The Golden Compass): Philip Pullman creates such a magical place in this grand university that I'd give anything to see it in person!

Abhorsen's House (Sabriel): The ancestral home of the Abhorsens sounds so cozy and lovely! (PS: this book, one of my favorites, is on Kindle sale right now for just $1.99)

Lothlorien (The Fellowship of the Ring): It was so hard to pick just one setting from this book! Because of course I want to visit the Shire, and Tom Bombadil's house, and Elrond's house too. But if I could only see one, it would be the beautiful forest ruled by Celeborn and Galadriel.

The Fairy Market (Stardust): The way Neil Gaiman paints this enchanted festival makes me want to be able to wander the stalls and see the goods for myself!

The unspoiled Nebraska prairie (My Antonia): This would be impossible to actually visit because it's long gone, but the way Willa Cather describes the loveliness of the prairie before widespread settlement makes me wish it was still around to be marveled at.

Napoleonic St. Petersberg (War and Peace): This one goes back in time, because the way that the balls and parties of the old nobility are portrayed seems so exciting!

Charleston (The Lords of Discipline): This book, apart from its primary narrative, also serves as a love letter to Charleston, which made me really want to see the city.

Hampden College (The Secret History): The northeast is packed with beautiful little liberal arts campuses, and while Hampden is technically fictional, it's apparently based heavily on Bennington College.

Hever Castle (The Other Boleyn Girl): The next time I go to England (which is an amazing thing to be able to say), I really want to just go all-out on a royalty binge and visit castles...and I'm particularly eager to see this one, which was the home of the Boleyn family.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Bookish Settings I'd Love to Visit