Top Ten Tuesday: places books have made me want to visit (fictional or real)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new topic that the participants come up with a top ten list for.

Sorry for the lack of posts last week! I was sick and just didn't feel up to it. But I'm back this week! I want to post at least one review and I have a giveaway scheduled for later tonight :)

On to the TTT. This week's topic is places books have made me want to visit, whether they're real or not. What an awesome topic!!



Prague: Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor / Book of Blood and Shadows - Robin Wasserman
I read DoS&B before I went to Prague and it definitely influenced the way I looked at the city! It's such a beautiful, mysterious place. All the alchemy, the magic, but also the blood and violence. It was also cool to visit the place where Kafka used to live and write.



New York City: The Mortal Instruments - Cassandra Clare
I'd never really longed to go to NYC that much before I read those books. But then, I wanted to walk around Brooklyn and ride on the subway and maybe get a glimpse of that world behind the world. That didn't end up happening when I finally went, but it was great anyway :)



Venice: Venom - Fiona Paul / City of Masks - Mary Hoffmann
Renaissance Venice or Florence would be so great to visit! I've been to Florence and it was beautiful but haven't made it to Venice yet. And either way, it's different now. To be at a masquerade or drive in a gondola through the city after midnight with my beau - that would've been something! (What? I can romanticize stuff too, every once in a while)



The Hollows / Cincinnati: world of Kim Harrsion's Hollows series
This was my gateway to Urban Fantasy and still one of my favorite worlds ever. I'd love to take a trip across the river to the Hollows and have pizza at Piscary's. Maybe get a glimpse of Rachel, Ivy, Kisten, and Jenks.


Alternative world of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Seriously, a world where everyone goes nuts about books? Dodos as pets? To be able to read yourself into a book? Yes, please.


The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
I'd love to go there for a night. Where a read scarf. Walk the tents. See the wonders.



New Orleans: The Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice / Darkness Becomes Her - Kelly Keaton / Drawing Blood - Poppy Z. Brite
Okay, my conception of New Orleans has been heavily influenced by vampire and horror novels. But I'm telling you, when I actually sat in Café du Monde last June, knowing that some of my favorite characters had had their coffee there, it felt great. This city is a blend of so many different influences and I loved it. I also think Kelly Keaton's re-invention of it as New 2 in her series is amazing.



Seattle: Richelle Mead's Succubus series
I didn't make it to Seattle during my trip across the US last summer but I definitely want to go there in the future. I loved the way Mead described the city and its bookstores and coffee shops in the series. Also, grunge music. Can't forget that.



Japan: all the manga I've ever read, plus books by Federica de Cesco, and Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor series
I've been wanting to go to Japan since I was about 11. Haven't made it yet, but hopefully in the next 1-2 years. I want to see Tokyo and Kyoto but I'd also like to travel cross-country and see more rural areas.

Hogwarts
Duh. I actually didn't come up with this one, my sister did. But obviously I want to go there. When I was 9 or 10 and first reading the books, knowing that I never would was akin to a physical pain.

I'm sure I could have come up with many more places, but sometimes it's hard to tell what was first: the book, or the wish to go there. For example with Paris and London, the way I see those cities is completely tangled up with books I read that are set there, both before and after I went.
Do we have any places in common? And link me to your own post! I want to find more places to go to :)

Top Ten Tuesday: books I would like to see made into a movie

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new topic that the participants come up with a top ten list for.

This week's topic is the top ten books we would like to see made into a movie... in a world where movie studios don't butcher our precious books.


Honestly? I'm not even so crazy about books I like being made into movies. Not because of casting choices and the like but because when I read, that already is like a movie in my head. I also never imagine characters modeled on certain actors - they look a certain way in my head, but it's not like any real people I know.
That being said, here are ten books/series I would like to see made into a movie or TV series, in no particular order.

Laini Taylor - Daughter of Smoke and Bone
There actually is talk of a movie! But anyway, it'll probably be years until it comes out. The world building here is just so amazing - I would love to see Karou's Prague and the exotic places she goes to, as well as Eretz of course! The special effects/make-up would have to be out of this world amazing to pull it off though.

Kendare Blake - Anna Dressed in Blood
This would actually be cool as a series! It would mean more time to develop characters, plus new episodes could be written, for instance about some of the ghosts Cas hunted before he met Anna. It would be awesomely creepy!

Cassandra Clare - The Infernal Devices
I know it's been optioned with the same studio that made City of Bones, but again, it'll take forever until there's a movie - if there is. I would love to see it though! I'm a sucker for Victorian London :)

Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus
Okay, this is pretty much impossible to make into a movie, partly due to the narrative style and how much it relies on language as a medium, but wouldn't it be epic? It would be like 12 hours but whatever - while I was reading, I so wished I could see the circus for real and walk among the tents!

Holly Black - The Curse Workers trilogy
I know I feature this series all the time in my top ten lists! But it just somehow has a cinematic quality to it. It would have to be sharp, with quick cuts, an a lot of light and shadows - sort of in the style of old film noir movies!

Stephen King - The Dark Tower series
Definitely would have to be a series, this is a couple thousand pages too long for movies. But god it would be soooo amazing! But Stephen King would have to have a lot of say on the set or it wouldn't work. Or maybe the scope is too big and the series is better off staying a book? Hm...

Kim Harrison: The Hollows series
Too epic for a movie - this would have a to be a series! I'd love to see Jenks, Rachel, and Ivy on the screen! And Kisten *gets all nostalgic* I don't think it'll happen though. I remember Kim Harrison saying a few years back that so far she always declined offers from producers and the like.

Lia Habel - Dearly, Departed
Steampunk costumes, airships, and zombie battles! I would love to see this amazing mixture of Victorian and digital age! It's somehow like being in the future and in the past at the same time. And it would be great visually!

Melissa Marr - Wicked Lovely series
There's also been talk of a movie or TV series but I have no idea where that's at. It's one of my top favorite fairie series though so I'd love to see it on the screen! The characters are some of my top favorites :)

Anonymous - The Book with No Name (the Bourbon Kid series)
This simply because it would be batshit crazy. Quentin Tarantino would have to direct it. It would be funny and gruesome at the same time.

I'm not sure that those are the top most amazing-est picks I could have made. In fact, I bet that I'll check out other blogs and think 'damn, how could I forget?!' - so link me up, and let me know what you think of my picks :)

Top Ten Tuesday: books I recommend the most

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week the participants post their top ten to a specific topic.

This week's topic asks the impossibility of me to choose the top ten books I recommend the most

Like seriously how should I choose?! I think sometimes I'll have to resort to just giving you authors. I'll also try to focus on books that maybe not everyone has already read and aren't that well-known. However, I'm currently lying propped up in bed with a fever so I might not be fully coherent...

1. Nevermore, by Kelly Creagh
   Yup, because her writing is just that beautiful. And Varen is my favorite book boyfriend. The way Creagh weaves Poe into her story is magnificent! You can check out my review here. It's the first one I ever wrote though so beware...


2. Anything by Holly Black really, but why not start with White Cat, the first book in the Curseworkers series? There you've got a type of Urban Fantasy I haven't ever seen anywhere like this. It's part noir, part fantasy, part gangster thing, and features lots of cons and twists and amazing characters and reader-heartbreak! I'd link you to my review, but I've only done book 3 so there'd be spoilers...


3. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
   I know, I said no super well-known books. But seriously just pick this one up. It's magic enclosed in paper.


4. The Replacement, by Breanna Yovanoff
   It was so great I still haven't found the right words to review it. It tore out my heart and I lost count of how many times I cried at the beauty and the sadness and how often my chest ached for Mackie.


5. Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series
   To this day my favorite fairy series ever. I read the last of the spin-off mangas today and was reminded of just how amazing her characters and world-building are!


6. The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
   Another book that will put you through the emotional wringer, but it's sooo good! It's also theoretically New Adult, even though back then it wasn't marketed as such. It's about an ex-foster-home-girl trying to make a living in San Francisco.


7. Anything by Ralf Isau, especially his Kreis der Dämmerung (Circle of the Dawn) books. I'm not sure if you can find them in English though, but he's a fairly well-known German YA, MG and adult author. I know his work's been translated into other languages... Many of his stories and characters are still with me and helped me through rough patches in my teens.


8. Generation X, by Douglas Coupland
   Simply an amazing book! What he writes about the 90s generation is still fairly applicable today, IMO.


9. Kate Griffin's Matthew Swift books, starting with A Madness of Angels (not god-like angels, they're the remnants of our voices in the telephone wires). Seriously THE best Urban Fantasy/Urban Magic series I have read. EVER.


10. Finally, I feel like I should list a classic. Hm. Maybe Virginia Woolf's Orlando? Wilkie Collins' Woman in White?

I could have listed so many more books you guys!! Neil Gaiman. Gayle Forman. The Infernal Devices. Kim Harrison. Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy. Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Ugh >.<
Have you read any of them? And what can you recommend? Link me up in the comments :)

Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews to showcase what books we got, traded or bought to clutter those ever-expanding bookshelves.

Bought but not yet read:

Born at Midnight, by C. C. Hunter
Demonglass, by Rachel Hawkins
The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
A Beautiful Evil, by Kelly Keaton

I'm really late in buying The Night Circus, but I'm excited to finally read it! I've had A Beautiful Evil on the pile for a couple weeks but somehow haven't picked it up yet... I think I'll have to re-read the second half of Darkness Becomes Her first to get into the that world again. Same goes for Demonglass. I'm also curious for Born at Midnight because I'm a sucker for books set in boarding schools.

Books I won:

The Immortal Rules, by Julie Kagawa

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, by Holly Black

Witch Eyes, by Scott Tracey

Blood Bound, by Rachel Vincent

Hunger, by Jackie Morse Kessler

Yup, I was lucky enough to win the Participation Post giveaway in Fiktshun 's Soul Screamers Reading Challenge :D I just got them in the mail today and now I'm really in a pinch for what to read first... ironically, the one book that I asked for and that didn't arrive yet is Before I Wake, the new Soul Screamers novel whose book birthday is today of all days...

In case you missed the SSRC, Rachel is also hosting a BIW mini-challenge on her blog! You can sign up for that here.

Finally, my current read:

I'm more than halfway in and probably gonna finish today. It's hilarious XD I love it! It's got some of my favorite comparisons and turns of the phrase ever. Not to mention the many death related puns ^^ I love funny morbid.


Have you read any of these books? What's new on your shelves?