Top Ten Tuesday #16

This week's Top Ten is a really fun one.  The theme is book settings, but it's a kind of 'make up your own list' as you can choose your setting, and other people's will be very different.  I've had great fun reading other people's lists, so much so that I nearly forgot to post my own!! 

Read more for yourself via the Host site at The Broke and The Bookish

My selection is...  My Top Ten Nine favourite books set in an alternate Earth.  The idea is that the setting is the same as our Earth except for one difference.  Here's my list...

Fatherland by Robert Harris - The difference between that world and ours is that Hitler and the Nazi's won the second world war.

Rivers of London - The PC Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch.  The difference here is that Magic is real and present, and PC Peter Grant is a trainee Wizard in a London redolent with Ghosts and all manner of strange goings on.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, An alternate underground London, who knows - maybe it is real :-)

Stardust, also by Neil Gaiman.  Somewhere in the Victorian English countryside there's a wall and on the other side of the wall is a land of magic and mystery.  Most of the story takes place in the land of Faerie, but some is in England.  Again, the delight with Gaiman is in imagining that it could be real.

Northern Lights - His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman.  The trilogy starts with Northern Lights, and begins in an Oxford where human souls take the form of animals.

Harry Potter books by JK Rowling.  Can't pick a favourite, they're all fabl!  Another world where magic exists alongside our own muggle-lives.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.  OK, so technically it is meant to be our Earth, but even though this book really was very disturbing for me (personal reasons), I loved the otherworldliness of Susie Salmon's afterlife.

It would hardly be a list of mine without some mention of the following author's alternate versions of England...

The Eyre Affair from The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde (start with The Eyre Affair, but for heaven's sake don't stop there as they get better and better!).  The Eyre Affair starts in an alternate Swindon of 1985 where literature dominates our culture, the Crimean War lasted much longer, cheese is illegal, Wales is not part of the UK and time travel is possible on the basis that at some point in the future someone has probably invented it.

The Fourth Bear from The Nursery Crime series by Jasper Fforde.  This is set in another alternate 1985, this time in Reading where PDR's (Persons of Dubious Reality) are alive and well and living among us.  DCI Jack Spratt and his faithful assistant Mary Mary investigate various Nursery Rhyme related Crimes... in The Fourth Bear Jack is investigating the mysterious disappearance of a blonde news reporter called Goldilocks who went missing near the three Bears house.  In the other book in the series The Big Over Easy, Jack investigates the apparent suicide of Mr H Dumpty who jumped off a wall, but Jack thinks he was pushed.  The Gingerbread Man features in both books as a particularly evil character who can run really fast.

Top Ten Tuesday #15

This week's Top Ten Theme is Books That Need Sequels.

It's all about those books that were complete stories in their own right but I'm not ready to let go and really want to spend more time in that world.  Or maybe the author didn't finish it the way I wanted, and another book would just tie up those loose ends properly.

I realised that I've been reading a fair amount of books from series lately, and it's hard to think back over the stand alone's.  I'm not sure I've really got my true favourites but here's the nine that first came to mind...

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.  I don't necessarily need to know what happened to Liesel after she left Himmel St, but I would dearly love to know who else has made Death take notice.

The Howling Miller by Arto Paasilinna.  I loved it, but I would have liked a little more or another book.  I just would dearly love to see the village accept Gunnar for the eccentric but harmless sweetie he is.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.  Please please please give us the 'Director's Cut' edition and deal with the ending in a better way.  I'd also like a Prequel I think, or maybe a few of them!  I have so many questions!  How did North America become Panem... what happened in earlier Games, especially the first games... The rebellion of District 13,  so many ways this world could be expanded.

The Host by Stephenie Meyer.  Well?  What happened next?  What's the story with the other rebels?  How did Wanderers species arrive on the planet and take it over?

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I think this one will have made a few lists.  I'd like to see Scout grown up and working as a human rights lawyer, what cases she works on etc... Atticus as an old man giving sage words of advice as always.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  What happened to Lizzie and Darcy after they were married?  Georgiana, Jane and Bingley, Even Lizzie's other sisters?  Did Lady Catherine De Bourgh get over herself yet?  Did Charlotte in fact totally lose control and bash Mr Collins' head in with a garden spade?  These are the kinds of thing I want to know.

Nightfall by Isaac Asmiov and Robert Silverberg.  How did the planet and the surviving Kalgashians recover?  Were they able to learn anything at all from the experience?  What about next time?  Is there already a sequel?  Dean McLaughlin's novel 'Dawn' is apparently a more optimistic version of Nightfall... maybe I'll line that up to read sometime.

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch.  Admittedly I've cheated the list a little here, as this is the second in the Gentlemen Bastards series, it just needs the promised sequel (The Republic of Thieves) not to slip it's publication date!  Currently scheduled for October this year.  Can't Wait!!

The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway.  Again a bit of a cheat.  I confess I'm a time travel junkie, and another book is apparently on it's way.  Phew!

The small print:  The Top Ten Tuesday meme originates at The Broke and The Bookish, check out their site for more information.

Where in the literary world are you today?

This is a lovely idea I saw on my friend's book blog at Fennell Books, and every now and then I choose to follow her excellent example and post my own entry..

This week I am not on Earth.  I am on a world investigating the possibility that the six suns that orbit my planet are due to be eclipsed for the first time in over 2000 years, the likely result - Apocalypse.

Top Ten Tuesday # 14

Here we go again...  This weeks TTT is all about Beginnings and Endings.  Mostly I have featured endings, as those are the things that stay with me, good or bad.  A book may have a great beginning but if the middle and end don't live up to it you can forget that it had a good start, but you rarely forget how a book made you feel at it's conclusion.

So here's my list of Top Ten Beginnings and Endings...

Beginnings

The hundred year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.  Excellent start, little bit of a damp squib for an ending but really fun story to read.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."  As a single woman without a fortune I can wholeheartedly agree.  Nice ending too, if you're a romantic like me.

Endings

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  Probably also would sit the Beginnings section as well.  I love this story, and it's a must in our house when we feel the need to get into the Christmas spirit...

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.  This builds up and up and up the whole way through, the clues were there, but it was such a huge surprise.  Brilliant!

My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult.  I read a lot of her books around the same time as this, and I thought I had the ending all figured out.  I was only part right.  I imagine this will make a few people's lists.

Catching Fire Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.  I'm expecting this to be a popular appearance on lists.  This was the third in the Hunger Games triolgy and as such was the culmination of a brilliant series, and such a let down.  EDIT: Goshdarnit I got my books mixed up.

Animal Farm by George Orwell.  And in the end the pigs are indistinguishable from the humans they'd deposed.

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.  Technically a play, not a novel, but worthy of inclusion.  Great opener, brilliant story but it's his inevitable demise which makes this incredible.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  It was good all the way through, but the ending is truly wonderful.  Have a full box of tissues at the ready.  The great and wonderful Helen at Fennell Books got to meet Rachel Joyce at an Author event (I'm emerald with envy) and was able to tell us that Ms Joyce wrote this book while her father was dying of cancer.  The significance of Harold's journey across Britain is particularly poignant when you know that the author was afraid her father would pass away on her journey's to and from his bedside.  If you haven't read this book yet DO IT NOW!! Probably the best book of 2012, and right there at the top of my all time favourites!

The small print:  The Top Ten Tuesday meme originates at The Broke and The Bookish, check out their site for more information.

Absences and Excuses

I just looked back on the last few weeks and realised how lax I've been at keeping this blog up to date.  Lately I've been ill, and also had some bad news in my personal life which has seriously impacted my reading...  I don't seem to have been able to read much, or concentrate on a book for long, so I haven't had much to blog about.

I half read Dissolution by CJ Sansom for the book club.  I gave up half way through as I didn't care about the victims, the investigator, the suspects or anything else.  Others thought it was OK, but it just wasn't for me.

I did read The Greenwitch (book 3 in the Dark is Rising sequence), and do plan to post a review for it soon.  Also the great and wise and far-better-read-than-I Helen from Fennell Books and are still discussing our joint blog post about Harold Fry (featured in todays TTT) and I hope to have that for you sometime soon.

On the plus side I have one of my favourite books of all time as this month's book club read... The book that got me interested in Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverbergs collaboration on Asimov's short story 'Nightfall'.  I'm hoping this book is as great as I remember and inspires me to read again.