Lydia Schoch

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I love this week’s topic. Let’s see how many answers I can come up with for it.

None of these sites have compensated me for mentioning them in any way. I simply included ones I’ve used or think sound cool.

1.  DailyLit 

Imagine being emailed a short passage from a book every day. Each instalment can be read in about 15 minutes, and you’ll eventually receive the entire book that way.

2. Project Gutenberg 

This was the first site to ever offer free ebooks! They have a huge selection of titles to choose from.

3. Your Local Library

Assuming you live in a country that has a free public library system, you might be surprised at what they have to offer!

Aside from the usual ebooks and audiobooks, mine offers online courses and events in all sorts of bookish topics. It also has digital subscriptions to hundreds of newspapers, literary journals, magazines, and more on just about any topic you can imagine and a few I never would have thought would have such big followings!

4. Indie Bookstore Finder 

I don’t know about you all, but I’m all about supporting local businesses as much as possible. This is a fantastic resource for finding that special book you’ve been wanting to buy while helping your local bookstore stay in business.

5. AddALL 

This site helps visitors compare prices for the books they want to buy among multiple possible sellers. I wish I’d had access to this when I was in college and was scrounging around to afford textbooks! It works for regular types of books, too.

6. Book-a-Minute 

Imagine reading a concise but accurate summary of that book you’re thinking about reading but not sure if you want to dive into. I think there’s definitely something to be said for giving people a few spoilers if they need them to decide whether a particular book is the right one for them.

7. The Great Canadian Sox Shop

This quirky little shop is located right here in Toronto, Ontario. It caters to those of us who love finding that perfect pair of socks to express ourselves, whether it’s a conservative pair of business socks for an office job or something funky and bookish for less formal events.

8. LAMBDA Literary 

A fantastic resource for LGBT+ writers and readers.

9. Little Free Library

Want to find a local Little Free Library in your community? Or maybe you want to find out how to build your own? This site has all of the details you need…and then some.

10. Leio 

A reading log app to help you keep track of what you’re reading and what you might dive into next.

***Bonus*** 11. Literature Map

If you type in the name of your favourite author into this site, it will recommend other authors that are also highly read by fans of the author you first mentioned.

I’ve been playing around with this site a lot and already have a list of new authors to try!

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I could talk about this topic for ages! Let’s see if I can keep my list down to a reasonable 10 or so answers.

I will expound on some, but not all, of my responses.

1. Anywhere that has a cozy fireplace.

Yes, I know it isn’t healthy to breathe in the particulates from wood smoke over the long term, but I still find the crackle of a fireplace to be so relaxing. It’s also sometimes the beginning of wonderful adventures in certain stories!

2. Libraries.

3. Cemeteries.

4. Old buildings, haunted or otherwise. 

5. Boarding schools.

I’d never want to attend one or send my (totally hypothetical) children to one, but I do like reading about them.

6. Mostly quiet beaches.

Completely deserted beaches frighten me a little, and loud, crowded beaches aren’t much fun at all. The mostly quiet ones are where it’s at!

7. Museums, especially after hours. 

8. Funerals.

One of the benefits of being a preacher’s kid is that I got to spend a lot of time attending funerals for people who weren’t related to me. There are memorable and even occasionally beautiful moments to be found within all of that grief.

9. Kitchens.

They’re a very underrated setting if you ask me! Not only are kitchens (hopefully) filled with amazing food for everyone to share, they’re often the part of the house where the most intimate and memorable conversations happen.

I can think of a few different relatives of mine who announced exciting news like a new pregnancy in someone’s kitchen. Reading about characters cooking meals or cleaning up after them always makes me hope someone in that scene is about to share thrilling news.

10. Cold, snowy woods.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe taught me that all sorts of wonderful things can happen in them.

11. Any forest where the seasons are changing.

The first subtle announcements of an impending spring or autumn are probably the most striking, but there’s something memorable to be found every time we begin to say goodbye to one season and hello to the next.

I think 11 answers is a pretty decent number, so I’ll stop writing here.

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I generally write short introductions to Top Ten Tuesday posts, but I think this time my list will speak for itself.

1. Film Covers for Books.

They often tend to look dated after a few years. I’d also rather not have actors as my point of reference for how characters look. It’s more fun to imagine those things for yourself while reading the author’s descriptions in my opinion.

2. Films that Dramatically Change Themes or Endings.

Look, I totally understand why some plot twists might need to be altered so they come across more clearly on the big screen, but I don’t like it when directors change the essence of a story to appeal to a wider selection of viewers. This leads into my third point.

3. Bonus Genres Shoehorned Into Plots That Don’t Want Them.

I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. The genres that tend to be shoehorned into these tales most often in my experience are romance, action/adventure, horror, and mystery. While I also enjoy reading stories that include multiple genres and have absolutely nothing against these particular genres…not every story needs to be written to appeal to multiple audiences. It really is okay to write in just one or two genres at a time, and some stories flow much more smoothly with a narrower focus.

4. Spoilers.

While I appreciate content warnings for potentially triggering material, I otherwise abhor spoilers.

5. Too-Similar Character Names.

This is something I see most often in the fantasy genre. If you have an Odin, an Orin, and an Ordin* in your story, I am really going to struggle to keep those three characters apart unless the character development for all three is superb and begins happening in the first chapter. Honestly, I prefer it when most characters have names that start with totally different letters of the alphabet, are of various lengths, sound nothing alike,  etc.

*Not a real example.

6. Books in a Series that Are Different Sizes or Shapes.

. Obviously, this is irrelevant for ebooks, but it feels weird to me to line up paper books in a series and have one that’s much taller, wider, or thicker than the others. I do not know why this irritates me as it doesn’t affect the storylines themselves at all. It simply feels slightly wrong.

7. Stickers on Book Covers.

If only they were easier to remove without permanently damaging the cover!

8. Unexamined Stereotypes.

It’s one thing to include a stereotype in a storyline in order to make fun of it or turn it on it’s head.

It’s quite another to include one in order to say that everyone from group X must like (or be) Y. I’d much rather meet genuine characters who are well-developed and whose hobbies, interests, and passions are not limited by what others assume someone of their sex, race, age, etc. would be like.

That is to say, maybe a woman in a story might love to sew, and that’s totally okay. But maybe the men in her life enjoy it just as much!

9. Is It Part of a Series? Must They Be Read in Order? 

I like series, and I don’t mind jumping in the middle of them if the author takes the time to explain a few things. I do not like discovering that what I’m reading is #5 in a series several chapters in and that you really need to read the first several books to have any idea what’s going on. If you ask me, blurbs should always be crystal clear about both of these things.

10. Too Predictable.

Yes, there are tropes in every genre. It would be quite difficult to write a story that didn’t rely on any of them at all!

With that being said, I will lose interest in a story if I finish the first scene or even the first chapter and can already guess exactly how it’s going to end and what all of the major plot twists will be along the way.

Surprises are a good thing. I’d much rather be slightly annoyed by an unconventional plot twist than have everything figured out in advance.