Top Ten Tuesday: Characters Whose Jobs I'd Love To Have

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about characters with jobs we would want to have. I don't read a lot of books that take place in the workplace, but here is what I came up with! 

  

Emma Woodhouse (Emma): Who doesn't want to be handsome, clever, and rich...and bored enough because you don't need to do anything productive that you start playing matchmaker with your friends?

Margo Manning (Death Prefers Blondes): I mean, I don't know that I would have ever come up with "ringleader of a group of drag queen catburglars" as a job description, but now that I know it's out there I want it. 

Daisy Jones (Daisy Jones and the Six): A beautiful, talented singer developing a slow burn attraction to a hot, talented musician? There are worse jobs to have!

Selin (The Idiot): I sometimes wish I had the chance to go back to college and do it over, I feel like I would pick more interesting classes! Being a college student again, especially at Harvard, would be so interesting.

Georgie McCool (Landline): I don't know that I think I would be any good at it, but working as a TV comedy writer sounds like fun! 

Maud Bailey (Possession): There's a part of me that always wishes I'd gone into academia, which may be one of the reasons I think longingly about being a college student again. Honestly, the idea of getting to research my interests all day every day is the dream!

Tess Durbeyfield (Tess of the D'Urbervilles): It's not so much that I think I have any natural gift or even longing for outdoor work, but the book makes Tess's experience as a shepherdess feel so idyllic that I want to give it a try.

Vianne Rocher (Chocolat): I don't actually have any particular fondness for eating chocolate, though I do love the smell, so I think I might make a good chocolatier. At least I wouldn't be tempted to eat my wares!

Lisbeth Salander (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo): Being a genius hacker helping solve mysteries and take down hateful people wouldn't suck.

Clarice Starling (The Silence of the Lambs): Doing criminal profiling for the FBI was at one point very much my dream job!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Characters Whose Jobs I'd Love To Have

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Could Use Better Titles Than Just A Name

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! While last week we highlighted books with awesome titles, this week we're considering the opposite: books with titles that could use a little more oomph. For me, I've always thought that just naming your book after a person in that book is a little bit of a cop-out (unless, of course, you've written a biography). So here are ten books with names as titles that I think could use an upgrade.

Emma: Austen's most famous works use Ye Olde Ampersand, so how about calling this one Love & Matrimony after the central theme?

Rebecca: It's symbolic that the book is named after a character who, though never alive during the narrative, dominates its events. But I would sort-of cheat and name it after its main character: The Second Mrs. deWinter, which I think creates intrigue about the first.

Lolita: Despite being the title character, young Delores isn't actually the main focus of the book (rather, it's narrator Humbert Humbert). I think No Choice would be a good replacement for this one...Humbert's desperate obsession makes him feel as though he doesn't have one, while she actually doesn't.

Anna Karenina: Anna herself is a fascinating character, but I might call this one instead The Train, paying homage to both the driving passion of the central affair as well as the importance of trains in several scenes.

Jane Eyre: This is a great book about coming of age, with strong gothic overtones and a person locked in an attic. The title coveys none of that. I'd crib an episode title from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and title this Becoming.

Macbeth: Let's just go with the theater tradition and official re-dub this The Scottish Play.

Tess of the D'urbervilles: The subtitle of this book is "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented". That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so how about Purity?

Nefertiti: This novel was a little underwhelming for me, but a title like that isn't going to help it stand out. For all the emphasis the book places on the physical loveliness of the Egyptian queen, For Beauty would make a more intriguing title.

Olive Kitteridge: I've actually always liked it when books that are short story collections (which is very much what this is, "novel" or no) are named after one of the stories within. It's not the strongest entry, but A Little Burst is a story that's both representative of the whole and that makes a good name.

Mildred Pierce: This is a noir, but the name Mildred has always made me think of mildew, which just makes it sound damp. It would be better served leaning into its potboiler style, so I'd call it From Bad to Worse.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Could Use Better Titles Than Just A Name

Top Ten Tuesday: Classics You Shouldn't Be Intimidated By

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! Since I shuffled a bunch of December topics, here's the freebie I was supposed to do like two weeks ago! Since today is Christmas and some of you may have gotten gift cards, and next week is New Years and some of you may be resolving to "read more classics" (a resolution I made for years before I actually started reading them), here are ten that aren't nearly as intimidating as you might think!

Emma: If you've seen Clueless, you know the basic gist of Emma. A wealthy, pretty, smart young woman decides to play matchmaker for a less fortunate friend, and experiences her own romantic complications. It's a great way to get introduced to Austen's sharp satire and wit.

Anna Karenina: Yes, it's super duper long. And yes, there are some boring parts about farming in rural Russia. But this book has a love rhombus that rivals any in a modern-day YA book and tells an absolutely fantastic story.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A modern feminist audience will recognize the slut-shaming, madonna/whore complex, and double standards that Thomas Hardy presents as the nonsense they are.

Great Expectations: Dickens was paid by the word, and it shows in all his work. But this, for me, is his best, and once you read it you'll recognize it as the source for a lot of other literature. It is funny and smart and full of incredible characters.

The Picture of Dorian Grey: This story about the rot that can fester beneath a perfectly curated facade and how people often mistake visual appeal for moral goodness is definitely relevant to our time.

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: Anyone who was a bookish child will likely recognize themselves in Francie Nolan, and her journey towards maturity is a deeply affecting one.

Jane Eyre: I'm not big into Gothic lit, so I avoided this one for a long time, but it turns out it's an amazing story about a young woman determined to make her way in the world despite many obstacles...and there is a truly WTF plot point that's fun to talk about!

1984: There's a reason this one gets referenced all the time lately...in a world where "alternate facts" are trumpeted, this has very real lessons for us all.

Vanity Fair: This book is lengthy and there are some boring-ish bits, but Becky Sharp's scheming her way up the social ladder is entertaining. The OG scammer.

The Age of Innocence: This is truly A+ drama about super rich people in Old New York having romantical problems.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Classics You Shouldn't Be Intimidated By

Dreamcasting: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

It's time for another round of Dreamcasting, my ongoing series about the books I love and the movies I'd want to see made of them! This time around, I'm looking at a classic that I think could actually do well with modern audiences, because the themes around sexual coercion, slut-shaming, and both secretly and not-so-secretly garbage dudes that put you on a pedestal still resonate in today's world. So who would I cast in the lead roles?

Tess Durbeyfield: Sophie Turner

I've tried not to just reflexively go for the Game of Thrones "kids" (they aren't kids anymore really but they're still the kids in my head) when looking for British actors, but sometimes they're right. I don't know if her red or blonde hair is her natural look, but I'd love to see her in the red for this role. I've been impressed with her range over the years on Thrones, and I think she can pull of Tess's fundamental goodness throughout hardship and she's such a classic English rose.

Alec d'Urberville: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is an interesting actor, and I really liked him as Vronsky in what was honestly not an especially great version of Anna Karenina a few years back. He's got the kind of intensity I think works for Alec and I think he could play a sort of simmering malice well.

Angel Clare: Nicholas Hoult

Angel seems like a good dude at first but turns out to be pretty damn problematic (intentionally). Hoult's big blue eyes lend him an innocence that works for his initial presentation, he's both good looking and seems sweet so the appeal for Tess makes sense, and he's got enough edge for the turn Angel's character takes later in the book.

Liza-Lu: Maisie Williams

Liza-Lu's not a huge part, so this feels like a waste of Maisie Williams, but she and Sophie Turner already play sisters on Thrones, so having them play sisters again here just feels right.

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Dreamcasting: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Top Ten Tuesday: Couples I Did NOT Root For

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we've got a "love freebie" in honor of Valentine's Day coming up tomorrow. I'm going to twist this a bit to talk about the couples that a book tried to make happen but I never really bought.

Anna Steele and Christian Grey (50 Shades of Grey): Yes, I read these books. Yes, all three of them. And I never quite figured out what was supposed to be especially romantically compelling about them. I think most of us have had enough good sex with bad partners to know that just banging alone doesn't make a relationship.

Tess Durbeyfield and Angel Clare (Tess of the d'Urbervilles): It's supposed to be tragic when he learns about her past, and instead of understanding because his own past isn't spotless, ditches her. But he basically never saw her as an actual person in the first place. She was always an object. Not romantic.

Romeo and Juliet (Romeo and Juliet): Two teenagers who've known each other for like a second and a half but then of course they get married and then kill themselves over each other. That's not love it's hormones.

Madeline and Leonard (The Marriage Plot): The love triangle in this book has a weak third leg, but honestly even the central relationship didn't really work for me. They never seem suited to each other at all...I know that early-20s-mistaking-drama-for-passion but I couldn't understand what either of them thought they were getting out of their relationship.

Sookie Stackhouse and Quinn (All Together Dead): Sookie has plenty of boyfriends over the course of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, but Quinn was my least favorite. Maybe because their relationship never really gets off the ground? I'm not sure, it just never really worked for me.

Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility): I love this book for the relationship between the sisters, but it felt kind of crappy for the lively, intense Marianne to end up with this much-older, buttoned-up dude. It felt like he was a better match for Elinor, actually.

Rachel Chu and Nick Young (Crazy Rich Asians): For two people super-in-love, they barely seemed to talk about anything important. How can you be dating someone seriously enough to be living together and just never really talked about your family?

Elise Perez and Jamey Hyde (White Fur): Despite some good quality prose, this book fell flat for me because I never really bought into the desperate, crazy, take-no-prisoners love affair that's supposed to hold everything together.

Anne Welles and Lyon Burke (The Valley of the Dolls): These two just want such different things out of life. Also they're both pretty boring.

Natasha Rostova and Pierre Bezukhov (War and Peace): Pierre is such a nerd and Natasha is such a delight and she can do so much better than him I hate that they end up together.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Couples I Did NOT Root For