book chat

This is my twenty-first Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I had to be careful when making my list for this topic to avoid replicating my Top Ten Settings I’d Like To See More Of (Or At All)! Did anyone else have this problem?

1. Quirky – it’s right there in my profile – I love quirky characters, settings, plots, and details. If a book features a character who works in a cute café, or lives in a houseboat, I’m sold.

2. Music – I’ve got to love a book with a soundtrack or with musicians.

3. Theatre – the swish of the curtain, the glare of the lights, the costumes, the dramatics. I love getting behind the scenes of the stage, even if it’s only at summer camp or school.

4. Ballet – see point three. Since reading Bunheads I’ve added tonnes of books about dancers to my wishlist.

5. Fairytale – I find fairytales irresistible in all their forms, as described a couple of months back in another Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Characters in Modern Fairy Tales and Fairy Tale Retellings.

6. Friends – I love books that explore the dynamics of friendship, such as the Ruby Oliver Quartet. Most recently I enjoyed reading about the problems Echo has with her friends in Pushing the Limits.

7. 1920s – there are many books on my wishlist set or written during the twenties or thirties, and it’s all thanks to the course I took at university that required me to read Vile Bodies.

8. Folklore – further to point five, I really like finding new takes on traditional folklore. I’ve always loved mythology but I think that there is so much more untapped potential in local legends from around the world.

9. Parties – I probably like reading about parties more than actually going to them. Bonus if the party is in historical fiction – see point seven!

10. Heroines – I can’t get enough of inspiring girls and women who grow in strength and resolve to overcome the challenges they face.

Do you share any of my bookish addictions?

This is my nineteenth Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I’ve been looking forward to this week’s topic, as I get to talk about both books I that I think are wonderful and some guilty pleasures, as well as some of the books that I just didn’t get on with as well as I thought I would. Here we go!

1. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins – I was sure before reading this that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. After all, so many people raved about Twilight and I thought that was enormously dull (see below). It was awesome.

2. Pushing the Limits, by Katie McGarry – The tagline on the cover of my copy reads ‘A bad boy. A lost girl. An unforgettable love’, which made me roll my eyes. I am not into bad boy/good girl romances, mainly because I don’t find violence attractive. But Pushing the Limits is not corny at all, in fact, I thought it was utterly amazing. I was hooked from the start and it just kept getting better and better! I am more than a little bit in awe of Katie McGarry now.

3. Spellbound, by Cara Lynn Shultz – I was expecting this to be a shallow, frivolous story based on the ‘Gossip Girl with witches’ description from the publishers and the Cinderella-like setup, but I quite liked it in the end. The action scenes had my heart racing!

4. Valiant, by Holly Black – I had a few issues with Tithe, the first in the Modern Faerie Tale series, and I was expecting similar from Valiant, but I thought it was great.

5. The Boyfriend List, by E. Lockhart – I expected this to just be fun, lighthearted teen fiction. I had no idea that it would change my life and the way I see things.

6. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen – I thought this was just a romance. I was not expecting the snark, which I loved.

7. The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett – I put off reading any of the Discworld books for years and only picked this up because a tutor recommended it. It was totally hilarious and I loved it.

8. Diving In, by Kate Cann – I really loved reading some of Kate Cann’s books, including the Hard Cash/Moving trilogy and several of her standalone novels, but although I enjoyed the Coll and Art books, I wasn’t as captivated, and I got a bit bored because they’re so intensely focused on the relationship. It’s a popular trilogy that’s been reprinted several times, so don’t let me put you off.

9. The Queen of Everything, by Deb Caletti – I’d heard good things about Deb Caletti’s more recent novels, so when I saw a copy of  The Queen of Everything, her debut, I decided to give it a try. Unfortuntely, although the central idea was interesting, I really didn’t like the protagonist or the love interest. It’s rare that I have such a negative reaction to the main characters, and I decided that I couldn’t review it fairly, though I still intend to read more books by this author.

10. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer – I didn’t think I’d enjoy it very much but was prepared for it to be a guilty pleasure. It wasn’t even that. Zzzzz.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think?