Top Ten Characters I'd switch places with for 24 hours

I'm addicted to top tens.  I was only going to this a couple times a month, but this Top Ten Tuesday was another irresistible one! This meme comes from The Broke and the Bookish blog with a different top ten list theme (all related to books) every Tuesday (see the full list here).  

10. Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the Little House series by herself

Because I'm re-reading these books again with my daughters, and falling in love with them all over again. 24 hours isn't nearly long enough because I'd want to visit every hand-built home Laura ever lived in. Though I might skip the Long Winter.

9. Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Because I'd love to wave my wand and proclaim "wingardia leviosa!" and  pack an entire library and a tent into a small backpack.

8. Princess Sylvi in Pegasus by Robin McKinley

Because she has a winged horse for a best friend. Duh.

7. Princess Leia in Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi

Because I have not yet found a book about a girl flying around in space ships that is even a fraction as memorable as Leia in these movies. Has anyone else????

6. Lessa in the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey

Because she has a winged dragon for a best friend. Duh.

5. Alec Ramsey in the Black Stallion series by Walter Farley

Because he has the coolest and fastest horse in the world, ever.

4. Carey Marsh, in the Green Grass of Wyoming by Mary O'Hara

Oh wait, was that just "24 hours"?? Because I've been living her life for years now ever since I moved to Wyoming and fell in love with a cowboy and have horses in my backyard and a great open range to ride across. I'm living my childhood dreams inspired by My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, and this book especially.

3. Harry Crewe, in the Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

I know, I know. This book ends up on every top ten list of mine. But Harry has the coolest magic, ever. She went from a corsetted spinster-in-the-making to a wild, sword-wielding warrior who can take on an army of demons, a pseudo-British Empire, and her own proud, fire-eyed king.

2. Lucy Pevensie, in the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Because she has a lion as a best friend. Duh.
And a faun. And a Prince. And a talking horse.

1. Eowyn or Legolas, in Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. 

This book always ends up in my top ten lists too. Proudly. Defiantly. Game of Thrones, hah!
So tough to choose a character though to switch places with. Definitely not Frodo; I prefer my Mordor from a safe distance, thank you very much. I wanted to pick the character that gave me the most exposure to the amazing places in Middle Earth, and that was a toss up between Gandalf and Legolas, both very long-lived. But Gandalf (I love him dearly!) had a bit too much baggage, so Legolas it is. Then again, Eowyn! Maybe she misses out on the adventures in the first book, but oh, she gets to be the very best hero of the three books, at least in my opinion.

What character from a book or movie would you most want to switch places with?

Enter my giveaway for a chance to win either Cinder or For Darkness Shows the Stars, open until midnight August 1st.

Lazy Days of Summer Giveaway

Your chance to win either:  For Darkness Shows the Stars, by Diana Peterfreund 
or Cinder, by Marissa Meyer (both with main male characters named Kai - one a prince, and one a pauper-turned-self-made-millionaire).  

CONTEST CLOSED - congrats to Devan @ Book Strings and and Suz Reads!

Just follow my blog and leave a comment telling me which one you'd like to win  - there will be two winners. Open until midnight August 1st. 

This giveaway is hosted by Colorimety & I Am A Reader, Not A Writer, with over 150 other participants and lots of chances to win good books!

I've seen a lot of buzz about Cinder (and with good reason, it's a great book), but I haven't seen anyone talk about For Darkness Shows the Stars yet. So here's my take on it:

5 out 5 stars!

A beautiful, haunting retelling of  Persuasion, by Jane Austen. It made me want to go back and re-read the classic Jane Austen version, but I loved this version because of its setting: an un-named island that isolated from the rest of the world after a genetic apocalypse. Previous generations had played around too much with genetic manipulation, and their offspring were born "reduced" - a kinder word for retarded, still functional but barely able to speak. The Luddites, in this story, were those that refused genetic manipulation and therefore became the ruling class over the reduced. The story begins at the point where a new generation has been born from the reduced that has normal intelligence again, the Posts. The Luddites aren't quite sure what to do with them. They still treat them as second-class citizens. So the parallels to Persuasion begin with Elliot who is Luddite, and has grown up friends with Kai, a Post. Her father, like the father in Persuasion, is a lord and a terrible snob. So is her older sister, and they forbid Elliot's friendship with Kai. So they resort to secretly exchanging letters. The bulk of the story is set 4 years after Elliot and Kai had a falling out and stopped exchanging letters. He went off to find his fortune, hurt that Elliot wouldn't leave her family's land to join him. Elliot was heartbroken, but she couldn't leave her land because her father and sister, Tatiana, were irresponsible and if left to their own devices would bankrupt the estate, which would result in starvation for all their Reduced farm workers. Elliot rents out part of the estate to the Cloud Fleet so they can build a new ship. Enter some more familiar Persuasion characters: the Admiral and his wife, and Kai - now Captain Wentforth, who is cool and almost scornful of Elliot. The book continues in present day painful interactions between Elliot and Wentforth, interspersed with letters from their childhood and adolescence, which I loved because that's one major thing missing from Persuasion: any sense of what Anne and Wentworth's relationship was like prior to their falling out. Here's an example of one letter that caught my breath: Dear Kai, I don't need to see the trail to know you're at the end of it. My grandfather's compass may not work, but mine is still true. Yours, Elliot The two other captains in Persuasion also play a role in this version - but one is a lady, which is an interesting twist. I also delighted to recognize several other Persuasion characters... one of which I had forgotten his role, so that lent some mystery to the story. There are also a couple new, non-Persuasion characters that add some extra tension and complications to the story, such as Elliot's grandfather (the Boatwright- I loved his title!) and Ro, Elliot's Reduced friend. The mystery and tension of the story is grounded in the falling out between Elliot and Kai, but the genetic manipulation - is it truly as destructive as the Luddites believe? I loved the plot elements and questions it raises, and it blended so well with the love story and family elements. Captain Wentworth writes a letter to Anne at the end of Persuasion - it's perhaps one of the most famous love letters ever composed.  Through the whole book I was curious to see if Wentforth would write a similar letter to Elliot, and how it would match up. Of course, they wrote each other many secret letters, but as for the final one - well, I can't say, that would be too much of a spoiler. But I will say that the end was very, very satisfying - both similar to Persuasion and also quite different.

Top Ten Most Vivid Worlds/Settings

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish blog with a different top ten list theme (all related to books) every Tuesday (see the full list here).  

10. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
A circus that is a world in itself, coming alive only at night and only in black and white, where you can lose your way among the tents.

Regular circuses don't intrigue me, but I could become a devoted follower of this one: with Thiessen's marvelous moving clock, the ice garden, the labyrinth, the pool of tears, the cloud maze, the stargazer, the tent of bedtime stories/anthologies of memories, the wishing tree, the ship of books in an ocean of ink.  

9. Dune, by Frank Herbert
Stillsuits, sandworms, spice, weather-control, space-folding, the voice, thumpers...

8. Leviathan and its sequels, by Scott Westerfeld. 
The most bizarre and wonderful steampunk yet contrived. All the fantastic creatures and machines, and sometimes you can't tell which is a creature or machine!

7. Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis
A vividly imagined habitable planet Venus, with floating islands, serpents and marvelous sea creatures.

Just try to picture this!!!! "...an exquisite haze like vaporized amethyst and emerald and gold... the edge of this haze rose as he rose, and became at last the horizon of the sea, high lifted above the hills. And the sea grew ever larger and the mountains less, and the horizon of the sea rose and rose till all the lower mountains behind him seemed to be lying at the bottom of a great bowl of sea."


6. Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean Auel
Our own primeval world during the Ice Age, with mammoths and giant cave lions and glaciers and neanderthals. I've re-read this book and some of its sequels at least 10 times. It was really hard to find an image that did justice to the setting, so I had to settle for this striking movie poster.

5. Fablehaven, series by Brandon Mull
The setting starts out as an ordinary farm, with an unusual number of butterflies. But those who have drunk a magical milk can see it as it truly is: a secret haven for all things magic and mythical. This brief description doesn't do it justice! This may be cheating since it's the creatures that inhabit Fablehaven that make it memorable, but they are such a part of the setting, I had to include this one!

4. The Iron Fey, series by Julie Kagawa
A creepy and beautiful blend of steampunk and dark faery world. 

3. Earthsea, series by Ursula Le Guin.
Just the name itself is evocative, isn't it? The second book, Tombs of Atuan, and the third, The Farthest Shore, are the best of the series with the most creepy and haunting settings. Bonus: here there be dragons.

2. The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley
The Riders of Rohan meets Dune meets Victorian-era British Empire, Damar is a country caught between two warring realms, protected by a strange capricious magic. And it has wonderful creatures like Narknon.

1. Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien
Still the reigning king of all worlds because it encompasses so many different settings and such a vast breadth and depth of history and mythology. 


What's your most favorite vivid setting? 

Hook with humor and 6 other first chapter hooks

A first chapter has to hook you, and there's lots of different ways to do it.  A Spy Like Me, by Laura Pauling, hooks with humor - it's the funniest first chapter I think I've ever read.

The first two pages hook with the setting and character. Saavy is an American teenager in Paris, on a date with a cute French waiter. He asks her to close her eyes as he sets her up for a surprise. 

There's no humor yet, but this a great set-up. 

1) Saavy's thinking to herself, I'm not a surprise-me kind of girl, so we get a taste for her character. 

2) With her eyes closed she has to rely on her other senses: smell, sound, feel - which really draws you into the setting.  Malcolm surprises her with a gourmet picnic, all set up ready and waiting in a park by the Seine river. 

3) Then there's a twist. This isn't the romantic date she was tricked into thinking. Malcolm is actually just interested in getting a job with her father's business, Spy Games. 

In my fantasies, this date was about me. Not about a cute boy using me to supplement his income. 

Ouch! This is another great way to hook your reader. Set them up to expect one thing, then hit them with something else entirely. 

Saavy's a little hurt, but she disguises it well. And here's where it gets humorous:

4) the main character puts on a familiar act - in this case, a lawyer cross-examining at a mock trial - with some hyperbole, which is the foundation for humor. 

“Well, I don’t know. Espionage is a serious crime.” I paced in front of the quilt.  

Malcolm lifted his hands, palms out, in an act of surrender. “Guilty as charged.” 

I spoke in my sternest most lawyer-like voice. “I want to believe you liked me for me. That you waited on our table because you thought I was cute and you liked the way I laughed.” 

“Why do you think—” 

“Whoops.” I put a finger to my lips. “The defense is not allowed to speak.  You’ll get your turn later. Maybe.” 

Malcolm sipped his sparkling cider, which I promptly whipped away from him. Some of is splashed out on his jeans. “No cider while on trial.” 

He snorted, trying to hold back his laugh. 

I stifled a grin and continued my interrogation.

5) The character is putting on a show, but she's using it to cover up some real emotion: 

“I’d hoped for days you’d been building up the courage to ask me out with sweaty palms and an out-of-control heartbeat. The whole shebang.” 

It’s how I felt waiting for him to ask me out. Once I’d admitted it, I couldn’t look him in the face. He reached for a strawberry tart, but I slapped his hand.  

“No, no, no. No indulging until proven innocent.” I spied the cloth napkins. Perfect. “Hands behind your back.” 

He complied with a silly grin. “Do I get my one phone call and a lawyer?” 

My heart fluttered, but I stayed on task. Using my famous Spy Games knots, I tied the napkins around his wrists, tightly. My hostages could never escape. I grabbed a strawberry torte, because prosecuting a spy makes one hungry, and continued my attack. [another humorous technique: contrast. Serious =  handcuffing a criminal. Total opposite = craving sweets] 

“When asking a girl out on a date, especially in Paris, certain expectations are involved. The boy should spend hours planning the date and picking out the perfect desserts and the right clothes to wear to impress her.”  [spend hours planning = more hyperbole] 

“I object!” Malcolm blurted out. “Hours? That’s ridiculous.” 

I stomped my foot and shouted. “Order in the court room!” 

6)  Add something that'll make the reader gasp. Something that, secretly, most people wish they had the nerve to do. 

I cleared my throat in a judicial sort of way. “You are hereby sentenced to fifteen minutes of intense embarrassment by sitting in your underwear in public.” 

His face turned a bit pale as he realized I meant what I said. I felt only slightly bad.

Can you believe it??? After tying Malcolm's hands behind his back as a mock punishment, Saavy pulls his shirt over head and pulls off his pants - in public! Seriously gutsy!

7) End the scene with a surprise or a question that you have the find the answer to:  

About two steps away and one bite into the tart, I heard a groan. Was he okay? Would his circulation get cut off? Maybe I should loosen the ties. 

I turned. Malcolm lay in the grass. Just like I left him. Except for the blood running in rivulets down his arm.

What happened??? How did he get hurt? Ha! You'll have to read the next chapter to find out. 

Masterful.

I highly recommend A Spy Like Me, because there's more masterful scenes like this, great combinations of Saavy's impulsive attitude mixed with insecurity, the fun idea of Spy Games mixed with serious intrigue, and Malcolm who always keeps you guessing. And the ending - is - wow. Comes full circle in a truly brilliant way!

Any recommendations for other laugh-out-loud and gasp kind of books?