Top Ten Tuesday: Books & Music

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Books and Music. These are two of my favourite things, but I rarely put them together (except for the thing I wrote here). So I’ve decided to make a list of songs that are based on literature/authors and/or make literary references.

I know there are a lot more out there – especially David Bowie and Radiohead and The Cure and whatnot – but I limited the list to songs I’m really familiar with.

1) “Resistance” – Muse; based on George Orwell’s 1984

2) “Time to Dance” – Panic! at the Disco; based on Chuck Palahuick’s Invisible Monsters

3) “Legendary” – The Summer Set; references J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan

4) “Painting Flowers” – All Time Low; references Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

5) “Weight of Living (Pt. 1)” – Bastille; based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

6) “To the End” – My Chemical Romance; based on William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily

7) “Win Some, Lose Some” – You Me At Six; references Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games

8) “Back to Life” – Paradise Fears; references S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders

9) “Bukowski” – Moose Blood; refers to the author, Charles Bukowski

10) “Sowing Season” – Brand New; the second verse is inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”, and the title of the song comes from Stephen King’s Secret Window, Secret Garden

I’m positive I’m missing really obvious ones from my music collection, but those were the ones I came up with (of course, there would have been more if I repeated artists, such as All Time Low’s “Somewhere in Neverland”, Bastille’s “Icarus”, and Paradise Fears’ “Stories in the Dark”, etc).

Let me know in the comments if you think of other songs that could make this list!

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I Wouldn’t Mind Santa Leaving Under My Tree This Year

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Top Ten Books I Wouldn’t Mind Santa Leaving Under My Tree This Year. I have an extensive list of books I want, so it was hard to narrow it down to just ten, but these are the ones I’m most interested in.

  1. Dreams of Gods and Monsters – Laini Taylor
  2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – illustrated by Anna Bond
  3. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
  4. Art of Neil Gaiman: The Story of a Writer – Hayley Campbell
  5. Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell
  6. Throne of Glass – Sarah J. Maas (or any SJM book, to be honest)
  7. The Raven Boys – Maggie Stiefvater
  8. Everything, Everything – Nicola Yoon
  9. Calvin – Martine Leavitt
  10. The Imaginary – A.F. Harrold, illustrated by Emily Gravett

Have you read any of these books? What’s on your wishlist?

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Best Books I Read In 2015

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Top Ten Best Books I Read In 2015. I’ve narrowed it down to the best books I’ve read this year that were released in 2015 (I read some good ones that are at least a year old!).

Each one is linked to my review (the first three are in order).

  1. Every Word – Ellie Marney
  2. The Hollow Boy – Jonathan Stroud
  3. The Wondrous and the Wicked – Page Morgan
  4. Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky Albertali
  5. Nimona – Noelle Stevenson
  6. Mad Miss Mimic – Sarah Henstra
  7. The Singular and Extraordinary Tale of Mirror and Goliath / The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl – Ishbelle Bee
  8. Dumplin’ – Julie Murphy
  9. Library of Souls – Ransom Riggs
  10. Alice Takes Back Wonderland – David D. Hammons

BONUS
Here are another five books that I rated 5 interrobangs that weren’t released in 2015 (and that don’t include any re-reads!):

  1. Daughter of Smoke and Bone – Laini Taylor (review coming soon!)
  2. The Universe Versus Alex Woods – Gavin Extence
  3. The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen – Susin Nielsen
  4. Soulless – Gail Carriger
  5. Outlander – Diana Gabaldon

What were your top ten books this year?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Book to Movie Adaptations

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

It’s been forever since I did a TTT, but I finally carved out some time to put this together!

This week’s prompt is Top Ten Book To Movie Adaptations I’m Looking Forward To or Ten Book To Movie Adaptations I Still Need To Watch. I’ve tweaked it slightly, so I’m doing Ten Book to Movie Adaptations I Own.

  1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: Yes, I know, a lot of stuff was missing from the movies, and I’ll never get over how Ginny’s character was treated, but they were still enjoyable and rank among my favourite films ever!
  2. The Princess Bride: “Hello, my name is Inigio Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Enough said.
  3. Northanger Abbey: My friends and I swooned over Henry Tilney when we watched this for our Austen course in university. And it’s my favourite Austen novel (sorry, Pride & Prejudice, you’re a close third – after Persuasion).
  4. Stardust: Mostly, I just remember Robert de Niro as a gay pirate, but as a Neil Gaiman fan, I love everything about this.
  5. Coraline: Ditto (minus the gay pirate, of course).
  6. A Series of Unfortunate Events: Again, there’s a lot missing from this adaptation and they gave it a whole different ending, but visually, it’s so much fun.
  7. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: While I didn’t love the sequel (because it skipped the middle books and changed the story lines a lot), this first one is girly fun at its best!
  8. The Princess Diaries: One of the rare times I saw a movie before reading the books, the only thing that makes me sad is how Grandmere is not nearly as sweet as Julie Andrews makes her out to be (also the fact that it took THREE BOOKS for Mia and Michael to get together!!).
  9. Beautiful Creatures: I enjoyed the books (though after hating the sequel series, I’m not sure if I can re-read them), and while the movie deviated somewhat, it was still cute.
  10. The Great Gatsby: Visually gorgeous. Plus who can resist the always-charming Leo DiCaprio??

cheers_leonardo_dicaprio

BONUS:

  • 10 Things I Hate About You: Based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, this teen romcom is one of the greatest things to exist. Come for a young Joseph-Gordon Levitt, stay for Heath Ledger-with-his-Australia-accent (RIP, Heath).
  • Easy A: Based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. I’ve said it before: the only unbelievable aspect is the idea that someone as gorgeous as Emma Stone could be invisible to her classmates.
  • She’s the Man: Also based on Shakespeare (Twelfth Night), this was Amanda Bynes at her funniest. Also a then relatively unknown chap by the name of Channing Tatum who sticks a tampon up his nose. Hilarious.

All three of these bonus movies are high on my list of favourites; I’ve always loved retellings!

What adaptations made your list? Are there any I should check out immediately?

Top Ten Tuesday: UK in YA 101

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Top Ten Books That Would Be On Your Syllabus If You Taught X 101. Up until about half an hour ago, I was fully prepared to write “YA URBAN FANTASY 101”, but then I thought about how much I love the UK and books that take place in the UK and, well, here we are.

A couple of these are technically middle grade, but they work as transitional pieces.

Required reading (in no particular order):

1) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll (London; Oxford to be precise); read my review here!
2) Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling (London and some magical place in Scotland)
3) Gemma Doyle trilogy – Libba Bray (Victorian London); read my review of book 1 here!
4) Stardust – Neil Gaiman (“rural England”; though technically “adult”, I’ve seen it on YA lists)
5) Lockwood & Co series – Jonathan Stroud (alternate England full of ghosts!!!!) (also highly recommend his other series, The Bartimaeus Sequence); read my review of book 2 here!
6) Mad Miss Mimic – Sarah Henstra (Victorian London); read my review here!
7) Sorcery and Cecelia – Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (Victorian London)
8) Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs (Wales); read my review for books 1 and 2!
9) The Secret of Platform 13 – Eva Ibbotson (London)
10) Sally Lockhart series – Philip Pullman (Victorian London)

Recommended reading:

Every Word – Ellie Marney (takes places mostly in London, but you have to read the FANTASTIC first book, Every Breath, before tackling this one)
Artemis Fowl series – Eoin Colfer (I know Ireland isn’t actually part of the UK, but it’s close)

I really enjoy Victorian England, if you haven’t noticed. I can’t think of any YA or MG books that take place in Scotland (though technically Hogwarts is in Scotland). Does anyone have any suggestions/recommendations? What other UK-based books have I missed?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Fairytale Retellings

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Ten Fairytale Retellings I’ve Read/Want To Read. I absolutely love fairytale retellings, and there are a ton on my TBR list, so I’ve split the list into five that I’ve read and five that I want to read.

Note: I’ve definitely read more than these five, but they’re the first ones I could think of!

Five Retellings I’ve Read

1) Ella Enchanted – Gail Carson Levine (retelling: Cinderella) (aka one of my favourite books EVER)
2) Another Pan – Daniel & Dina Nayeri (retelling: Peter Pan) (you can read an old review here!)
3) Snow – Tracy Lynn (retelling: Snow White)
4) Spinners – Donna Jo Napoli (retellling: Rumpelstiltskin)
5) Masque of the Red Death – Bethany Griffin (retelling: Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death) (you can read my review here!)

Five Retellings I Want to Read

1) A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas (retelling: Beauty and the Beast) (actually, I want to read all of her books, but this cover kills me)
2) Cinder – Marissa Meyer (retelling: Cinderella) (I’m including the rest of the Lunar Chronicles in this list, of course!)
3) Mechanica – Betsy Cornwell (retelling: Cinderella)
4) Splintered – A.G. Howard (retelling: Alice in Wonderland)
5) Dorothy Must Die – Danielle Paige (retelling: The Wizard of Oz)

Bonus: Five Retellings I’ve Reviewed on this blog

1) Spelled (ARC) – Betsy Schow (retelling: The Wizard of Oz and others)
2) A Whole New World (ARC) – Liz Braswell (retelling: Aladdin)
3) A Curse of Ash and Iron (ARC) – Christine Norris (retelling: Cinderella)
4) Dust City – Robert Paul Weston (retelling: Little Red Riding Hood and others)
5) The Fairest of Them All – Carolyn Turgeon (retelling: Rapunzel/Snow White)

What are some of your favourite fairytale retellings? Which ones should I check out?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds. A couple of these characters are more “word nerds” (or writers) than “book nerds”, but I think all book nerds have an appreciation for words in general.

1) Matilda from Roald Dahl’s Matilda
2) Daphne de Luce from Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series
3) Hermione Granger from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
4) Catherine Morland from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey
5) Sadie from Sara O’Leary/Julie Morstad’s This is Sadie
6) Vander Burke from Page Morgan’s The Dispossessed series
7) Liesel Meminger from Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

186233b18c7f878bc8771e0875b34f4d

Word Nerds/Writers
8) Ambrose Bukowski from Susin Nielsen’s Word Nerd
9) Mia Thermopolis from Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries series
10) Lydia Jaackson-Oberman from Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Year of Secret Assignments

Those were the ones I could think of, though I’m sure I’m missing someone obvious. Who made it onto your lists?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Celebrate Diversity/Diverse Characters

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Ten Books That Celebrate Diversity/Diverse Characters. I went with five because I honestly couldn’t think of ten! Obviously I need to expand my reading pool. Of course, there have also been books with diverse characters that I didn’t like, so I didn’t include those (I don’t care if Zoey’s part Cherokee or whatever, I think the House of Night books are awful and they do not deserve a place on this list).

1) Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky Albertali

One of my favourite books of 2015, Simon is not-yet-out-of-the-closet but someone may be trying to blackmail him. I adored Simon – add this to your list right now if you haven’t already!

2) Nimona – Noelle Stevenson

Not only is Nimona herself not your typical heroine, but the hint of a relationship between Blackheart and Goldenloin is precious.

3) When Everything Feels Like the Movies – Raziel Reid

While this book may not be to everyone’s taste, I think it’s an important read and I love that it was part of Canada Reads because it brought LGBTQ issues (and YA novels!) into mainstream media for at least a little while.

4) Every Breath – Ellie Marney

Am I just obsessed with Every Breath? Maybe. But the secondary characters are diverse and fleshed out, not just stereotypes thrown in to mix things up (Mai is Vietnamese, Gus is Sudanese).

5) The Rearranged Life – Annika Sharma

I wasn’t in the right mood for this book when I originally read it, but I like that the protagonist was from a traditional Indian family. A interesting look at a culture that’s so very different from your typical “North American” household.

Top Ten Tuesday: Last Ten Books That Came Into My Possession

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Last Ten Books That Came Into My Possession (bought, library, review copies, etc). My list is split in half: the first five are physical books I bought while on vacation in Scotland, the last five are ARCs from NetGalley/authors/etc.

1) The Nowhere Emporium – Ross MacKenzie
2) Man at the Helm – Nina Stibbe
3) The Monster’s Wife – Kate Horsley
4) The Mermaid Bride and Other Orkney Folk Tales – Tom Muir
5) The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow – Katherine Woodfine (which I technically bought for my 9 year old niece, but I want to read it first!)
6) A Curse of Ash and Iron – Christine Norris (look for my review on Friday)
7) Alice Takes Back Wonderland – David D. Hammons
8) The Dream Engine – Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant
9) Hawthorn – Jamie Cassidy
10) Vengeance Road – Erin Bowman

What have you bought/borrowed/been given recently? Anything in particular I should look out for?

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Hyped Books I’ve Never Read

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week’s prompt is Top Ten Hyped Books I’ve Never Read. This is somewhat similar to the other topic from a few months ago, Top Ten Books I Will Never Read (or at least, that’s how it ended up for me).

1) 50 Shades of Grey – E.L. James
I imagine this is one several lists today

2) Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
I know this is like sacrilege since I’m a YA fan, but dystopia really isn’t my thing.

3) Insurgent/Allegiant – Veronica Roth
I read Divergent shortly after meeting Veronica Roth (at work), but I haven’t gotten around to reading the rest of the trilogy, and I’m not in a rush (I already guessed how it ends).

4) Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
Meh.

5) The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins
Also meh.

6) The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
Again, sacrilege, but I haven’t gotten around to reading any of John Green’s books, and again, I’m not in a rush.

7) The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
I’m not even sure what this one is about, but it was all over the place last year.

8) The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
I’ll get to this one eventually, but honestly, I have a very long TBR list, so this one isn’t really a priority.

9) The Queen of the Tearling – Erika Johansen
I’ve heard mixed reviews about this one, but I’ll probably read it before it becomes a movie.

10) The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
I almost want to read it because of this piece of fanart, but I’m not actually interested in it.

life of pi

What’s on your list?