Top Ten Tuesday - Characters I liked That Were In Non-Favorite/Disliked Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish-meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and each week she assigns a new topic. This week the topic is characters I liked that were in non-favorite/disliked books.

This was a hard topic this week. When it comes to books that I dislike I tend not to pay as much attention to them as I could, so I don't have many characters that I like from them because I don't remember them well enough. However, there are some non-favorite books where I liked a character, so I managed to find a few characters for this topic. So, here are my top four characters I liked in non-favorite books.

1. Maxon from The Selection series by Kiera Cass - This series was one of the most frustrating series I've ever read. The main character, America, was constantly making poor decisions and could be, again, frustrating. However, there was one character in the book that helped keep me reading, and that was Maxon. Maxon is a prince in this world and is one of the love interests of America. He is kind and funny and just an enjoyable character to read about. 


2. Beth from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - I definitely enjoyed reading this book, but I wouldn't say it was one of my favorite books, so Beth makes the list. Beth is one of the main characters in the book, and I felt like I could really relate to her. I wish the book focused a little more on her than they did.


3. The Darkling from the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo - While I loved her Six of Crows Duology, I didn't love the Grisha Trilogy. There were many parts I liked, but also a lot that frustrated me. Oddly enough, my favorite character was the Darkling. He was just a fascinating character to read about and I would have liked to have learned even more about his background and how he came to be the way that he is in the books.


4. Fanny Price from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - Fanny is the main character in Mansfield Park. I thought she was a great character, however I hated just about every other character in that book. Fanny was a kind girl who's relatives walked all over her whenever they felt like and practically ignored her otherwise. I think she deserved so much better than what she got.

Top Ten Tuesday - Books That Take Place In Another Country

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish-meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and each week she assigns a new topic. This week the topic is books that take place in another country.

This wasn't an easy list to make. I had trouble finding books that I had read that took place in another country (unless you count fantasy worlds!), so I had to put a few on here from my TBR and look for a couple that I hadn't heard of before. Doing this list makes me realize that I need to read more books that take place outside the US.

England

Wales

Scotland

France

 Canada

Top Ten Tuesday - Books On My Spring TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish-meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and each week she assigns a new topic. This week the topic is books on my spring TBR.

I don't usually plan out what I'm going to read very much, so here is a list of some of the books I would like to read this spring.

                                        

Top Ten Tuesday - Books That Surprised Me

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish-meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and each week she assigns a new topic. This week the topic is books that surprised me. I couldn’t think of ten, but I was able to get five. So, here are the top five books that surprised me.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff - I've mentioned this book many times already because it is definitely one of my favorite books, but I actually avoided this book for a couple of years before I finally read it. For some reason I was just not interested in it at all. One day I was wondering a bookstore and I saw it on the shelf. The cover was pretty, so on a whim I bought it. I read it and found myself needing to buy the second one before I was even done with the first because I knew that I would need it!

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - I read Leigh Bardugo's first series, the Grisha Trilogy, before I read Six of Crows and, while I liked reading it, it wasn't one of my favorite series. Then I read Six of Crows, I thought that it would be similar to the Grisha Trilogy, since it was set in the same world, but I got a story that was very different than what I was expecting. And I loved it. The characters are awesome. The story line was awesome. Just everything about the story just drew me in. It was amazing!


  
Stardust by Neil Gaiman – The movie Stardust, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, is my favorite movie. It has everything I could want in a movie. Magic, pirates, fighting, romance, everything. The book, however, was very disappointing. I saw the movie for the first time when I was about 9 years old and had no idea that it was based on a book until several years later. Once I did, I had to read it as soon as I could since the movie was so amazing. Unfortunately, it was so different from the movie, it was practically an entirely different story! The story itself was fine, but it was nowhere near as good as the movie.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – The first book I tried reading by Maggie Stiefvater was Shiver. I didn’t like it. I tried to read it a couple of times, but it just wasn’t working. Then I did a reading challenge a few years later which made me give an author I didn’t really like a second chance. I decided to read the Raven Boys for this challenge, and I went into it not expecting to like it. However, I ended up loving the story. It was so interesting, and so different from Shiver, I did not expect it at all, but I was very happy that the book ended up being so much fun to read.

The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes – This book is a mystery/thriller book. Typically, I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but I picked up this one impulsively. It ended up being amazing. I’ve actually read the series at least twice now. It is definitely one of my favorites, and I highly recommend it.

Choosing Books for the Library

 Somewhat recently I have been given permission to choose books for different sections of the library I intern at. First,it was the YA and youth sections, then the children's section, and then, more recently, the adult section. My dream is to become a YA/youth librarian, so getting to choose books for that section was a lot of fun and great practice for the future, although it definitely had it's challenges. I started by going through the books and seeing what books are popular in that section. I quickly learned that those reading books in the YA and youth sections don't take out a lot of contemporary novels and prefer reading science fiction and fantasy. So, I made sure the order had a decent amount of those genres. I searched various book selling websites like Ingram, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., as well as lists on Goodreads and other websites that reviewed books. It could be difficult sometimes when deciding what books to add to the list and which ones I shouldn't. Mainly because I might find a book that sounds amazing to me, but might not do well in the library. Or the exact opposite; I would find a book that sounds unappealing to me, but it would probably go out a lot if it was put in the collection. The adult and children's sections were more difficult for me than the YA and youth sections, since I was less familiar with the books in those age groups and what is popular in those sections. It was an interesting experience doing this, and I'm looking forward to doing this more in the future. Hopefully, the library users like the books I chose!

Women's History Month Library Display

In honor of Women's History Month, the library I'm interning at had me put together a display. We don't have a lot of display space in our library, so we have to get creative with what we do have. For this display, I spent some time researching what other libraries had done. I had few ideas about what I might want to do, but I wasn't entirely sure yet. I found a display that another library did for book characters, where they put some information about the character and had people guess who it is. I decided to do something similar to that, except I would replace the book characters with important women in history.

         

I made cards for 20 different women throughout history. Each has a description of what they have done on the outside, and a picture with their name and the years they lived on the inside. After I made those, I went are the library and found books for the display about important events and people in women's history. I enjoyed making this display, and I feel like I've learned about a lot of different important women in history by doing this. I'm looking forward to making more displays like this in the future!

Top Ten Tuesday - Favorite Book Quotes

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish-meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and each week she assigns a new topic. This week the topic is favorite book quotes.

So, here are ten of my favorite book quotes! (In no particular order)

1. “You have me. Until every last star in the galaxy dies. You have me.”
   ― Amie Kaufman, Illuminae


2. “So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”― Roald Dahl, Matilda


3. “Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars, points of light and reason. ...And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason, for anything."― Stephenie Meyer, New Moon


4. “No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?"  "They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.    "And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"  "A pit full of fire."   "And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"  "No, sir."  "What must you do to avoid it?"  I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die.”― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre


5. “This life is a dance, not a battle. We are all part of this world, not masters of it.”― Kate Constable, The Waterless Sea


6. “One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel


7. “With great power... comes great need to take a nap. Wake me up later.”― Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian


8. “I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.”― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom


9. “I can communicate in 6,909 living and dead languages. I can have more than fifteen billion simultaneous conversations, and be fully engaged in every single one. I can be eloquent, and charming, funny, and endearing, speaking the words you most need to hear, at the exact moment you need to hear them.Yet even so, there are unthinkable moments where I can find no words, in any language, living or dead.And in those moments, if I had a mouth, I might open it to scream.”― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead


10. “You see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled - not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it as the boy did.”― Leigh Bardugo, The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic