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Top Ten Tuesday (June 26) – Characters I Think I Know in Real Life

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Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, where the terrific team over at The Broke and the Bookish give us excuses to make lists and indulge our inner OCD tendencies.

I’ve got to be honest, guys. I looked at the topic for this week, and I just about skipped it, because I’ve got nothing.

But then I was sad, because Top Ten Tuesday is my favorite meme, and I always enjoy coming up with my lists and seeing what others come up with. Plus, I’ve seen Galaxy Quest enough times that “Never give up, never surrender” is kind of emblazoned on my psyche, so admitting defeat wasn’t really an option.

The good news is that my psyche is apparently not opposed to a bit of cheating, so I decided to tweak the topic to one I could do.

So here’s the topic I was supposed to do:

Top Ten Characters Who Remind Me Of Myself Or Someone I Know In Real Life

Yup, complete blank. Part of the problem is that most of what I read is YA, and I am just…A. But even if I think of myself and my friends from back when I was in the YA age bracket, I still came up blank. Not a lot of authors tend to write books featuring characters who enjoy Star Trek and Scrabble. Comic books, maybe, but that’s probably because characters in books are on the verge of developing superpowers, and my friends and I never developed superpowers. So. This topic wasn’t going to work for me.

Here’s the one I’ve decided to do instead:

Top Ten Characters I Think I’d Have Been Friends With If We Went to High School Together

(That’s close enough, right?)

1. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter. I was a big nerd and a squeaky clean kid. So was Hermione. We would either have been BFFs or arch nemeses, because that’s the way it works with smart kids.

2. Simon, The Mortal Instruments. I have only read the first book in this series, but Simon was my favorite and I could totally see us hanging out and not wanting to go to clubs together.

3. Kent McFuller, Before I Fall. I can’t say anyone I was friends with in high school actually wore a bowler hat, but I still think that Kent would have fit right in.

4. Angela, Twilight. She’s sweet and soft-spoken and kind of hangs back while her friends arm wrestle for attention. I can relate to that.

5. Peeta, The Hunger Games. Okay, it’s highly probable that Peeta would be too cool to be my friend because he’d probably be on the football team or something like that, and not in the marching band with me, but I’m going to hold out hope that we’d be buds.

 6. Chuck, The Maze Runner. Granted, we will probably never know what Chuck was like before the Maze, but he seems like the kind of kid I would have joked with in study hall.

7. Kate, Die For Me. Assuming her parents never died and she never moved to Paris and never fell for the undead Vincent, we’d probably have gotten along pretty well. She’s quiet and bookish and not one for large groups of people, and that was pretty much me in high school.

8. Beth, Little Women. I love Jo and all, but Beth is the one I think I would have clicked with. She was probably the type that was quiet in groups, especially when there were strong personalities present (like, you know, every other member of her family), but was lots of fun one-on-one. Some of my best friends are like that.

9. Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride. I’ll admit this one is probably just wishful thinking, but wouldn’t it be great to be friends with teenage Inigo? Maybe he’d have been an exchange student. I never actually befriended any exchange students, but I probably would have if Inigo was one.

10. Marlee, The Selection. Because honestly, Marlee would have been friends with everyone in high school.

So there you go. Sorry I cheated.

Feature & Follow (June 22) – Book I’d “Unread”

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re new to my blog, welcome! I’d love it if you could follow via one of the options in my sidebar (LinkyFollowers, Networked Blogs, email or RSS). Be sure to let me know your follow method in the comments so I can return the favor!

I’ve also got a snazzy button you can grab. If you wanted to put it on your blog, that’d be groovy.

Today’s question is:

If you could “unread” a book, which one would it be? Is it because you want to start over and experience it again for the first time? Or because it was THAT bad?

Okay, this question was oddly hard for me. I started to approach it from the “book that was so bad I’d want to unread it” angle, but honestly, I’m pretty picky in what I read. I don’t read a lot of bad books. And those I do read are not so bad that I completely regret the time I spent reading them. Normally, even when I don’t like a book, I’m still glad that I read it to know I didn’t like it.

So I’m going to come at it from the angle of awesome. What book was just so amazing that I wish I could re-read it again, for the first time? (BTW: The obvious answer here is Harry Potter, but I’m going to try to think outside the box).

I tried to think of a book that I not only thoroughly enjoyed the first time through, but that contained an element that simply could not be experienced the same way in a re-read. A book that managed to knock my socks off and make me yell or jump or stay up way past my bedtime because I needed to finish.

And this is a pretty recent release, but it meets all of the above qualifications. In spades.

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen is the first book of the Ascendance Trilogy. It’s a mid-grade fantasy about a group of boys reluctantly training to impersonate a prince. And it’s phenomenal.

I was happily enjoying this book the first time I read it, and then all of a sudden it blew my mind. And while I wanted to re-read it again immediately after finishing, the experience wouldn’t have been the same as that first time.

[VAGUE SPOILERS FROM RANDOM OLD MOVIES TO FOLLOW]

 

 

 

It’s like knowing that Malcolm was dead the whole time.

It’s like knowing why Andy wanted the rock hammer and the poster.

It’s like knowing who Keyser Söze is.

It’s like knowing what’s in the box???

It’s like knowing he never left the bank.

It’s like knowing that he is Tyler Durden.

 

 

 

[END VAGUE SPOILERS]

It’s just not the same the second time.

For my full (glowing) review of The False Prince, go here.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’m excited to see what you picked as your “unread” book (either so I can have the awesome first-time reading experience, or so I can avoid it like the plague, depending on how you approached the question).

(Bonus points if you can name all those movies)

Throwback Thursday (June 21): A Time to Kill

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Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books!

It’s the nature of book blogging to focus mainly on new releases, but there are thousands of great books out there that haven’t seen the “New Releases” shelf in years. We hope to be able to bring attention to some older titles that may not be at the top of the current bestseller list, but still deserve a spot in your To-Be-Read pile.

You don’t have to be a book blogger to participate! You can put up a Throwback Thursday post on your non-bookish blog; or if you don’t have a blog at all, just use the comments to tell us about a book you remember fondly.

Here’s how it works:
1. Pick any book released more than 5 years ago. Adult, YA, Children’s; doesn’t matter. Any great book will do.
2. Write up a short summary of the book (include the title, author, and cover art) and an explanation of why you love it. Make sure to link back to The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books in your post.
3. Link up your post at The Housework Can Wait or Never Too Fond of Books.
4. Visit as many blogs as you can, reminisce about books you loved, and discover some “new” books for your TBR list!

Feel free to grab the Throwback Thursday button code from the sidebar to use in your posts.

Thanks for participating, and we look forward to seeing which books you choose to remember!

My Throwback this week is…

A Time to Kill by John Grisham.

As you may have figured out by now, my reading habits did not follow the normal pattern. I started with early readers and progressed to beginner chapter books, but then I skipped over the entire YA category and went straight to adult fiction. I read pretty much exclusively adult fiction from the time I was 10 until I was about to graduate college. And it was only then, when I was technically “too old” for YA, that I discovered it.

Therefore, most of the books I remember from my younger years are adult books. And one of the authors I absolutely adored while I was in high school was John Grisham.

As you’re probably aware, Grisham writes primarily legal thrillers, a genre I’ve always been strangely drawn to. I love the logic, the detail, and the methodology.

A Time to Kill is one of the least action-driven, but most poignant of Grisham’s novels (it was also Grisham’s debut novel). It follows Jake Brigance, a young lawyer in small town Mississippi. Jake takes on the case of Carl Lee Hailey, an African-American man who murdered the two KKK members that raped, beat, and attempted to murder his 10-year-old daughter.

The town splits as the black community advocates for the release of Carl Lee, and the KKK and white supremacists argue for his execution. And as a young white man, Jake finds himself with few allies, and pitted against the most powerful lawyer in the state, battling overwhelming odds as he fights for Carl Lee both in and out of the courtroom.

This book is incredibly moving. The brutal attack on 10-year-old Tonya at the beginning of the book will chill you to the bone. And the rest of the book doesn’t shy away from difficult questions. How is a father supposed to react when his daughter’s attackers look like they will go free? When is revenge justified? How do our own perceptions of race sway our opinions of right and wrong? Nothing in this book is simple or easy, and Jake and Carl Lee both run the gamut of emotions and morality.

I’d recommend this book even if you don’t think legal thrillers are your thing. The characters it introduces and the questions it raises are worth the read.

(This book was also adapted into a film, which, in my opinion, is the best of the Grisham film adaptations.)

This is a blog hop! Link up your Throwback Thursday post below!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (June 18)

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? post, hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Last week I skipped my Monday post because I was so dreadfully behind. But I’m finally catching up to where I want to be. So here’s what I want to attempt for this week, keeping in mind that my anniversary (NINE YEARS SAY WHAAAAA????) is on Wednesday and so I may not have quite as much time as I think I do.

We’re going to go to Chili’s, because although there’s absolutely nothing cool about Chili’s, for some reason we really like it. I think it’s the chips.

And we are going to go see Snow White and the Huntsman, because although it’s receiving kinda lukewarm reviews, it is my husband’s most anticipated movie this year, other than The Hobbit. Yes, I am married to a man who anticipates Snow White and the Huntsman more than The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Spiderman, The Bourne Legacy, and all the other comicy/actiony/geeky movies that I personally am excited about this year.

Don’t get me wrong, he still wants to see those too. But the Snow White and the Huntsman trailer has gotten into his blood, and there is no cure other than seeing it in all its CGI and K-Stew glory. (Disclaimer: he in no way wants to see it because of K-Stew.)

Anyway, I think I just digressed quite a bit. So. Here’s the books on my plate for this week:

First up, finishing Graceling and Fire by Kristin Cashore. I’m enjoying Graceling so far and am guessing that Fire will go pretty quickly once I get to it. I don’t have Bitterblue or the means to acquire it yet, so I’ll just have to wait on that one.

Once those are finished, I am going to exercise some self discipline (fancy that!) and start hacking away at my NetGalley list. I have a bunch of books waiting for me to read, and I keep putting them off, not because I don’t want to read them, but because I tend to give precedence to physical books. I just enjoy the reading experience more with paper.

I don’t know why. It’s just how I roll.

But release dates are creeping up, so I need to get a bunch of these NetGalley titles knocked out. So first up will be:

One Moment by Kristina McBride. This is a contemporary YA, which is not my usual fare, but the synopsis intrigued me. A mysterious death and a case of amnesia? I want to know what’s going on!

The Girl in the Clockwork Collar by Kady Cross. Okay, I’m going out on a limb with this one, because I have not read The Girl in the Steel Corset, which is the first book in this series. I don’t normally plunge into Book 2 without reading Book 1 (actually, to my recollection, I have never done this), but I’ve heard such good things about these books and the cover is so pretty and the book was right there and I couldn’t resist.  I do have TGitSC on hold at my library, so I will eventually get the whole story. I just didn’t want to put this one off any more, since it’s already been released.

So that’s my week! We’ll see how I do 🙂 What are you reading?

A Myra-culous signing + some a-Paul-ing service

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Okay, my sincere apologies for the awful punnage in the title. I just couldn’t resist.

Today I got to see the fabulous Myra McEntire again, when she came to a branch of the Nashville Public Library to celebrate the launch of her new book, Timepiece. (My review is here, but if you don’t want to read a whole review, I’ll just save you some time. Timepiece rocks my world, and it should rock yours too.)

I saw Myra once before, which was an amazing experience. But this time was a bit more intimate. Her husband and kids were there. She brought cupcakes. We pulled our chairs into a circle and talked about all sorts of stuff, some of it related to the Hourglass world, and much of it…not. We discussed Kaleb and Lily and Michael and Emerson, to be sure, but also Vampire Diaries and dementia and 50…um, “Something” of “Something”…and whether or not we think Stephenie Meyer will ever write another book.

I have nothing much new to report from Myra and the Hourglass crew, since most of what she was allowed to reveal was already discussed at the last signing. Or when I interviewed her. Or was something she wasn’t supposed to say, but accidentally let slip. So I’m not going to break confidence and report it.

Sorry.

I am going to start a rumor that Myra’s next book is going to be about mermaids, based entirely on the fact that the cupcakes she brought were decorated with little cartoonish plastic sea creatures. I told her I was going to start this rumor, and she laughed at me, so I’ve decided to take this as confirmation that I am 100% CORRECT. You can take that to the bank.

Um, the third book is going to be called Infinityglass. At least that much is true.

But anyway, it was lots of fun. Myra held firm to her status as one of my absolute favorite authors/people I wish I could hang out with all the time. But I will settle for the occasional local author event.

And she signed my book in a fancy glittery Sharpie.

AND we re-took the picture my camera ate. So now I have proof that we have indeed met.

This event was also fun because I got to meet up with some other Southern bloggers again. I had met Shalena from Writer Quirk and Marla from Starting the Next Chapter at the last event, and today I had the pleasure of meeting Shannon from Stalking the Bookshelves.

I need to go to more events with Shannon. She introduced herself, then promptly pulled out a bag and started giving me presents. Seriously. This has never happened to me before. It was like meeting Santa, if Santa was tiny and female and gave out ARCs and swag.

So that was pretty rad.

LtR: Marla, Elizabeth (an avid reader), Shalena, Myra, Elizabeth's mom Debbie, Shannon, Me

After the signing (Myra and her family hurried out yelling something about Little League), Shannon, Shalena, Marla and I decided to go grab a late lunch/early dinner at Applebee’s before they all started their hour+ drives home and I braved my 15-minute drive.

And at Applebee’s, our waiter was Paul.

The worst. Waiter. Ever.

Okay, I’ve had bad service before. I’ve had waiters and waitresses who didn’t seem to care, who were rude, who were kind of dumb. I even had a racist waiter once, which was real pleasant.

But Paul…well, Paul was different.

First, it took Paul about half an hour to remember to stop by our table at all. So for the first 30 minutes of our Applebee’s experience, we couldn’t have told you that Paul was our waiter. Because he didn’t introduce himself.

Then once he did decide to stop by, he acted like he had just noticed us. No mention of the fact that it took him forever to come to our table.

I should probably mention that Applebee’s was mostly empty, and Paul had spent that 30 minutes waiting on the table right next to us. So I’m not sure how he didn’t see us. It was like we were rips.

(Sorry, that was an Hourglass joke, to tie into the Myra signing).

And when Paul introduced himself, we pretty quickly deduced that he was probably high. And I don’t mean high on life.

I could try to explain to you the wondrous shortcomings of Paul, but my narrative can’t do it justice. So I’m going to write a (bad) sonnet. (And a loose sonnet. Because I don’t feel like worrying about iambic pentameter.)

Longing for Paul

Oh Paul, how we longed for your service

While we sat and discussed YA fiction

and you disappeared into the kitchen.

Your long absences made us nervous.

Your eyes seemed clouded and glassy

Your mouth always slightly ajar

Your words were slurred and bizarre,

Had you been smoking some grass…y?

We thought it was odd when you’d take a long phone call,

Or only refill one of our drinks.

We were confused and nothing made sense.

It was all part of the experience of Paul.

As a waiter, quite frankly, you stink.

Hence your tip of only eighteen cents.

Ta-da! Obviously, if this blogging thing doesn’t work out, I have a very promising future in poetry.

Paul aside, it was a fun day. I love having such awesome blogging friends that live relatively close. And actually, Paul doesn’t have to be aside. Paul’s service was so bad, it was kind of hilarious.  And truthfully, Paul’s frequent mysterious absences gave us a lot more time to talk and laugh and get to know each other. Otherwise we would have left much sooner, to return home to husbands and children and responsibilities.

But we couldn’t because Paul was holding us hostage, and our moral fortitude was keeping us from dining and dashing.

So thanks, Paul. Thank you for making our Applebee’s experience extremely memorable, and for giving us something to look back on and laugh about. Extensively.

And of course, thanks to the person who brought us together in the first place, Myra McEntire. For writing two amazing books. For being hilarious and fabulous to the extent that you make people want to drive multiple hours to hang out with you. And for picking a location really close to that Applebee’s, so that we could discover Paul.