Tag Archives: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Fictional Animals I’d Want to Meet


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Photo of an blond English Cocker Spaniel puppy sitting on a dirt trail in a forest. She is looking up lovingly at the human who is holding her leash just out of view and to the right of this photo. The forest is lush and looks as green and vibrant as it should in July or August when summer is peaking and everything is growing furiously. You can barely see anything of the sky because of how tall the trees are!If only it were possible to meet all of them!

1. Enzo from The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

2. Wilbur and Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web
by E.B. White

3. All of the friendly rabbits from Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams

4. The Velveteen Rabbit from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco

5. Mole, Water Rat, Badger, and maybe even Toad from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

6. Bambi from Bambi (Bambi, #1) by Felix Salten

As some of these answers included multiple characters, I think this will suffice.

Which fictional animals would you want to meet?

 

 

 

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books About Trains


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Photo of train tracks going through a forest. There isn’t currently a train on them, but you can see the sun setting in the distance and the dark, evergreen forest on either side of the tracks. It’s a quiet and thoughtful moment. Thank you to Cathy @ What Cathy Read Next for this topic idea. I’m narrowing down “Planes, Trains & Automobiles/Books Featuring Travel” to just books about trains as I think travelling by train is just about the nicest ways to get around. 

Canada doesn’t have as much train service as I wish we had, but you can still travel between most of the larger cities this way. It’s so relaxing to sit in a soft, comfortable seat and surf the Internet, eat some tasty food, or watch the countryside fly by. I much prefer it to driving or flying!

Here are some books about trains. Interestingly enough, they are all for children.

1. The Boxcar Children (The Boxcar Children, #1) by Gertrude Chandler Warner

2.The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg

3. Ghost Train by Paul Yee
4. Bear on the Train by Julie Lawson
5 .A Sea So Far by Jean Thesman
6. The Runaway Train by Jane Flory
8. Bob the Railway Dog by Corinne Fenton
10. Lackawanna: A Novel by Chester Aaron

What is the train system like where you live? Can you hop on a nearby train when you need to travel, or do they only carry stuff like livestock or bulky goods?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Favorite Books from Ten Series


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There is a stack of about five books sitting with their spines faced away from the viewer on a white desk and in front of a white wall. Only the edges of their pages are visible, and these give no clues about their contents.<br /> On top of the books are three toy wooden dinosaurs: a white brontosaurus, a brown stegosaurus with red horns, and a third orange dinosaur with a green spine on its back whose proper name I can’t identify. It is standing on its hind legs.

Thank you to A Hot Cup of Pleasure for submitting this theme!

Here are ten of my favourite books from series I’ve read. I had to dig deeply to come up with a sufficient number of answers because I almost never read series these days and only read them occasionally when I was younger.

That is to say, most of these titles were published many years ago.

For the sheer fun of it, I will include a brief, spoiler-free description of why I picked each one in this post.

1. The Giver (The Giver, #1) by Lois Lowry

Why: The world-building left readers plenty of room to come up with our own theories about what happened next.

 

2. The Girl with All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1) by M.R. Carey

Why: There is a fantastic twist in this book that takes a little while to fully reveal itself to the readers.

 

3. Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1) by V.C. Andrews

Why: This series begins with a wild premise that I will allow other readers to discover for themselves. I thought it worked best when it was first introduced because of how unusual it was.

 

4. The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

Why: There are a lot of Easter eggs here about things that were discussed in books #1-5 – especially The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – so that is why I strongly recommend reading this series in publication order instead of chronologically. You need that previous knowledge to fully understand why certain scenes are so thrilling.  This is my favourite Narnia story because of its beautiful descriptions of how Narnia was created and how many different ways characters could find themselves in that magical land.

 

5. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Why: It worked perfectly nicely as a standalone story, but it also sets up and foreshadows so many important elements of the Lord of the Rings trilogies. I also thought the pacing in this one was much stronger than later instalments in this series.

 

6. Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, #1) by Charlaine Harris

Why: Look, I adored Sookie and though this was a fun universe…but she also tended to make the same mistakes over and over again. This became repetitive later on, but it was endearing when I first met her. If you’re in the market for vampire romance novels, the first few books in this universe are the best ones.

 

7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Why: It was such a zany introduction to these characters!

 

8. Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery

Why: This was a period of Anne’s life when so many of her dreams began coming true. I loved seeing her finally have the chance to attend college and enjoy her youth.

 

I’d say eight answers is pretty good considering my strong preference for standalone novels!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish Had Fewer Pages


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Several hardcover books have been opened and left in an overgrown grassy field. Their pages are spreading open as the sun shines down upon this scene. One of the interesting ways my reading habits have changed since I was a kid or a teenager is that I’m much less interesting in reading long books these days. If something is more than 200 to maybe 250 pages, it generally needs to be a story I think will be a five-star read for me in order for me to finish it.

I’m glad I read much longer books when I was younger and had more time for such doorstoppers as some of them did have excellent storylines, but I can also see the value in trimming down side quests and lengthy descriptive passages in order to make the reading experience a faster one.

Here are some books that I think would have been better if they were shorter. Some of them are classics as books from roughly 100+ years ago were often more verbose than what is published today due to how English has evolved since then.

1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (as well as the sequels, of course!)

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

3. The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1) by Ken Follett

4. The Stand by Stephen King

5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

7. The House of the Seven Gables  by Nathaniel Hawthorne

8. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

9. Paradise Lost by John Milton

10. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Debut Novels I Enjoyed


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A photo looking down at a pair of black and white running shoes. The person’s feet (and shoes) are standing on a grey surface where the word “start” has been written in chalk. This is such a fun topic! I had to do a lot of searching online to find enough books I’d read to fit it, so I’m hoping the lists I found online were all accurate.

All of these were good reads, and I’d recommend them to anyone who finds their blurbs interesting. As is typical for me, the links in this post are to the Goodreads pages of the books I include. As isn’t typical for me, I have more than ten answers this time!

1.The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

2.The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

3.Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams

4. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

5. Still Alice by Lisa Genova

6. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

7. The Martian by Andy Weir

8. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

9. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

10. The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1) by Mary Doria Russell

11. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1) by Gregory Maguire

12. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

13. Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson

 

 

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Things I Loved About Shepherd’s Sight


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Thank you for suggesting this week’s topic,Cathy @ WhatCathyReadNext!

My selection is Shepherd’s Sight: A Farming Life by Barbara McLean. It’s a nonfiction book about a year in the life of the author and her farm as she goes through the typical routines of each month of the year.

I left a five-star review for it on Goodreads back in March, so keep an eye out for it if you click on the link.

Book cover for Shepherd’s Sight: A Farming Life by Barbara McLean. Image on cover is a drawing of a ewe standing and looking to the left. The rest of the book is adorned with a drawing of red plants that have pretty little oval leaves. This is what I loved about this book:

1) Nothing was sugarcoated. Just like anything else in life, rural living has positive and negative aspects to it. The author included both of them in her book in vivid detail, from the delicious meals her family cooked made from the many different types of food their farm grew to the difficult aspects of choosing this lifestyle like needing to put sick livestock down.

2) The food descriptions. They made me so hungry.

3) How the weather influenced everything the author and her family did. Travelling on rural roads during ice storms is still pretty dangerous, to give one example, so they always had enough food and other supplies to stay home for a week or two if the roads were all iced over or it was otherwise unsafe to go into town.

4) Balancing the needs of nature, humans, and animals was constantly on the author’s mind. She might want to start planting her garden on a specific date, but the weather may or may not actually cooperate that day! The same can be said for lambing season, harvesting the large garden on this farm, and so much more.

5) The author’s memories of how rundown and rustic the farm was in the 1970s when she and her husband moved in. They really made this a nice property!

6) Family reunions. My grandparents’ are farmers, too, so I know how special it is for all of that work to be put aside for the day so the kids and grandkids can visit.

7) Neighbourly behaviour. When you live on a farm or in a rural and isolated area, you never know when you might need the assistance of a neighbour or when they might need your assistance. Building good relationships with those who live nearby can mean the difference between life and death in an emergency.

8) Baby lambs. There are so many adorable stories about them in this book.

9) Losing skills. Whether it’s due to disability, chronic illness, or as a part of growing older,  nearly everyone will eventually realize that they are no longer capable of things they could easily do in the past. The author was in her 70s or 80s when she wrote this book and had reached a stage in life when she simply didn’t have the strength or endurance she did 50 years ago.

10) The question of retirement and when it should happen. Many jobs can still be safely done by senior citizens, but the sheer physicality of farm work can make it really hard for older people  to keep going as long as they could if they were, say, an accountant or a paediatrician who didn’t need to throw hay bales around or chase mischievous sheep around in the rocky and uneven soil of the pasture all day at work. (And some seniors can still do a lot of that stuff, of course! I’m related to one of them 😉 )

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I Was “Forced” to Read


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I’m going all the way back to 2013 for this freebie throwback topic. Top Ten Books I Was “Forced” to Read is about books one was assigned to read in book clubs, English classes, the workplace, and similar places. 

Photo of an opened book sitting on a desk in a sunny room. The book has about a half dozen little coloured pieces of paper stuck in it as bookmarks, perhaps to make studying easier?Other than a few rare exceptions (ahem, see #3 on this list which is something I will never revisit), I found something enjoyable about every book I was assigned to read from Elementary school all the way up through university. Some of them even became favourite titles and/or authors of mine!

Here is an assortment of titles my teachers included in their syllabi:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

3.The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

5.Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

6. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

7. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

8. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

9.Beowulf by Unknown

10. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

How did you feel about your assigned reads in school?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books with My Favorite Color on the Cover


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Purple crocuses growing in a grassy field. They are gorgeous and vibrant little flowers. Purple is my favourite colour. Specifically, I prefer the darker and richer shades of this colour, although light purple can be pretty as well.

I originally tried to whittle down this list to books I’ve read that have purple covers, but there weren’t enough of them to continue down that path.

Therefore, I’m including books I have not read yet as well.

If you’ve read any of them, I’d love to hear your thoughts on them!

 

 

Book cover for King Lear by William Shakespeare. Image on cover is dark purple and contains abstract lines that vaguely look like the edges of an antique book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. King Lear by William Shakespeare

 

Book cover for Swoon (Swoon, #1) by Nina Malkin. Image on cover shows a portion of the face of a young white woman who is lying down and looking up at something. Her eyes are shut and her lips are barely parted as if she were about to say something. The top three-quarters of this image shows a leafless tree against a dark purple background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Swoon (Swoon, #1) by Nina Malkin

 

Book cover for Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse, #4) by Charlaine Harris. Image on cover shows a drawing of the main character, a young blonde white woman, being carried through the night sky by a Flying Vampire as a gigantic full moon looms behind them. They are floating over a graveyard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse, #4) by Charlaine Harris

 

Book cover for Caribbean Cruising by Rachel Hawthorne. Image on cover shows a drawing of a cruise ship in the distance. There is also a series of white dots that have been arranged into the shape of a heart on the lower portion of the cover. The heart covers most of the space and is the first thing the eye is drawn to when looking at this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Caribbean Cruising by Rachel Hawthorne

 

Book cover for The Alchymist's Cat (The Deptford Histories, #1) by Robin Jarvis. Image on cover show a drawing of a spirit grabbing the shoulders of an irritated orange cat. The cat is looking behind itself in shock that will probably soon turn to grumpiness. Beware, spirit!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. The Alchymist’s Cat (The Deptford Histories, #1) by Robin Jarvis

 

Book cover for .Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath. Image on cover shows a drawing of a gold-covered object that has a purple crown carved into it. The edges of the object are curled into loops and swirls. The background of this piece is the same colour as the little crown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.Rejected Princesses: Tales of History’s Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath

 

Book cover for I See/You Mean by Lucy R. Lippard. Image on cover is a drawing of dozens of little golden wavy lines against a dark purple background. They remind me of ripples in a pond or of how some tree branches stick out in various directions from the tree. I do not know if either of these interpretations are what the artist intended viewers to think about, though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. I See/You Mean by Lucy R. Lippard

 

Book cover for The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Image on cover shows a drawing of a young black girl wearing a red sweater and sitting next to a window. Her back is a little hunched as if she were sad or uncertain. She is not looking out the window but straight ahead of her at the wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

 

Book cover for Loveless by Alice Oseman. Image on cover is a black and white drawing of a person with chin-length straight har looking down at a heart in their hands. The heart is releasing dozens of tiny little hearts into the world. This is set against a light purple background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Loveless by Alice Oseman

 

Book cover for The Amateurs (The Amateurs, #1) by Sara Shepard. Image on cover shows drawing of two people looking down at the purple ground beneath them. The shadow of a third person looms into the scene as well. The title is shaped to look like fingerprints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. The Amateurs (The Amateurs, #1) by Sara Shepard

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Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2024


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Closeup photo of a pale-skinned woman with long, black, straight hair reading a book. She’s sitting outdoors next to grass that is partially green and partially brown and dry. It looks like grass that has gone dormant in the summer heat!It looks like this week’s list will be shorter than last week’s list was.

Here are some books I’m looking forward to that are coming out in the second half of this year.

While researching this post, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be as many books to choose from as usual.

Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe there will be some real treasures popping up in a month or two that just haven’t quite been announced yet.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

 

Book cover for Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks by Yuval Noah Harari. Image on cover shows a drawing of a pigeon-like bird standing still and facing to the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari

Publication Date: September 10
Why I’m Interested: I love reading about how information spreads around as well as how it can change over time depending on the medium involved.

Book cover for The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister. Image on cover shows a drawing of the face, neck, and trunk of a young, pale, white woman who has a small pile of dirt on her neck. She does not look dead, just very pale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister

 

Publication Date: October 1
Why I’m Interested: Occasionally, well-preserved bodies from a few thousand years ago will be found in the bogs in Europe. I find it so interesting to read about the things scientists have discovered about these societies and am interested in reading a fictional account of something that seems sort of related to this phenomena.

 

Book cover for Sally's Lament (A Twisted Tale) by Mari Mancusi. Image on cover shows a drawing of a young girl standing in a forest. She is bathed in shadow and only a dim outline of her body can be seen. At the bottom of the image you can see a small drawing from The Nightmare Before Christmas where the ground slowly unfurled as the protagonist walked on it. It was an iconic scene in that film that happened during one of the songs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sally’s Lament (A Twisted Tale) by Mari Mancusi

Publication Date: October 8
Why I’m Interested: I liked The Nightmare Before Christmas when I was a kid and am curious to see what this retelling of it is like.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Summer 2024 To-Read List


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A adorable little figurine of a yellow rubber ducky who is sitting in a beach chair and reading a book. This figurine has been placed on a beach, and you can see a wave gently reaching the shore in the distance on this calm and sunny day. Look how many answers I came up with for this seasonal TBR post!

I often struggle with them due to being a mood reader and relying on my local library for the majority of what I read, so I was thrilled to see how long my list was this time.

Last summer was very smoky here in Ontario due to the massive wildfires burning across our country, and there were quite a few days when we were strongly encouraged to remain indoors due to the poor air quality. It’s been better so far this year, but thank goodness for books on days that are smoky!

I’m writing this post in advance while hoping that this June will have much cleaner air. Fingers crossed.

Book cover for The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez. Image on cover shows a series of seven images that look like stained glass windows. They show a skeleton doing things like dancing, singing, playing a trombone, and, at the top image, talking to someone who is still alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez

Why I’m Interested: I love ghost stories in general and enjoy them even more when they’re written from the perspective of the ghost herself.

Book cover for querade by O.O. Sangoyomi. Image on cover shows a drawing of a gorgeous African woman wearing a red dress and red headdress. She’s surrounded by large golden flowers. There is an elephant behind her, and its trunk is lightly hugging her legs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.  Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi

Publication Date: July 2

Why I’m Interested: A retelling of Persephone set in Africa in the fifteenth century sounds amazing to me.

Book cover for querade by O.O. Sangoyomi. Image on cover is a comic-style drawing of a little orange cat who has a speech bubble above her head with the title written in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair (Library Binding) by Lucy Knisley

Publication Date: July 2
Why I’m Interested: Cats are fascinating to me. I can never be around them due to how terribly allergic I am to them, so books about them must suffice.

Book cover for We Carry the Sea in Our Hands by Janie Kim. Image on cover shows a stylized, oceanic-themed drawing of a pair of blue hands attempting to clasp a liquid swirl of gold and blue matter as it drains and disappears from view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. We Carry the Sea in Our Hands by Janie Kim

Publication Date: July 9

Why I’m Interested: I’m interested in books about foster care, adoption, and race. This book covers all three topics.

Book cover for  Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch by Andrea Freeman. Image on cover shows a close-up photo of two ears of corn that have black kernels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.  Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch by Andrea Freeman

Publication Date: July 16

Why I’m Interested: It sounds fascinating.

Book cover for The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement by Susannah Gibson. Image on cover shows part of an old painting of a wealthy white woman who is wearing a flowing blue gown and holding a book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement by Susannah Gibson

Publication Date: July 23

Why I’m Interested: This is a slice of history I don’t know much about.

Book cover for She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi Okorafor. Image on cover shows a drawing of an African woman who is wearing an animal skull and vertebrae as a hat. Golden light is shining on her face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7.  She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi Okorafor

Publication Date: August 20

Why I’m Interested: Ms. Okorafor has written some incredible stories, so I always check out her new stuff.

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