Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Worlds I'd Never Want To Live In

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. For more info about the meme and how to participate, click here.

This is way late because I forgot to publish my list and I meant to elaborate more but before it gets even later here's my list of worlds I wouldn't want to live in.

1. The Handmaid's Tale - Gilead

A world in which women are used as breeding machines? No, no, no!

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four

There is just so much going on in this world that it's probably the scariest vision of future I have ever read. Nobody would want to live in this kind of world, yet sometimes it seems like our world is coming scarily close in certain instances.

3. The Hunger Games - Panem

Sacrificing children for the sake of oppression and entertainment is not okay to start with but the whole way this world is built and the people have to live to get by is not a place I want to ever live in.

4. Delirium

A world in which you're not allowed to love anybody and are not allowed to have any feelings does not seem like one I'd like to live in.

5. Matched

Being assigned a partner and a job and only having a counted number of books, paintings etc doesn't sound like a nice way to live your life.

6. Enclave 

Either living underground, in gangs, or in settlements that are in constant fear of being attacked by  Freaks is a scary vision of the world. It's maybe more dangerous than worlds in other books I mentioned but I think a world that is basically like we know it now with less freedoms is maybe scarier than a world in which survival is the most important thing...

7. Legend - The Republic

Another oppressed society but with lots of military and fighting, a deadly virus and all kinds of things going on that we wouldn't want to endure.

8. Feed

I haven't read the whole series yet, actually I haven't finished the first book yet but while it doesn't seem like a world I'd want to live in but at least it seems relatively safe in a way.

9. Bumped

Another world in which women, or well teenage girls in this case, are used as breeding machines. A big NO! It's either getting pregnant in your teens or living in a religious community where people get babies early in life as well. Doesn't seem like a place I'd want to live in.

10. Fahrenheit 451

A world in which books are burned?! That alone should be enough to not want to live in this world but the whole question of censorship is scary.

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Top Ten Tuesday: 2014 Debuts I'm Excited For

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. For more info about the meme and how to participate, click here.

 

I went crazy the other day and added all the 2014 debuts that seemed interesting to my Goodreads shelves and ended up with way too many to choose from. Somehow I managed to narrow it down to the ten that seem the most fun. These are in no particular order, just as I came across them on my shelf. I'm excited to discover new writers and stories!

1. A Death-Struck Year - Makiia Lucier

For Cleo Berry, the people dying of the Spanish Influenza in cities like New York and Philadelphia may as well be in another country--that's how far away they feel from the safety of Portland, Oregon. And then cases start being reported in the Pacific Northwest. Schools, churches, and theaters shut down. The entire city is thrust into survival mode--and into a panic. Headstrong and foolish, seventeen-year-old Cleo is determined to ride out the pandemic in the comfort of her own home, rather than in her quarantined boarding school dorms. But when the Red Cross pleads for volunteers, she can't ignore the call. As Cleo struggles to navigate the world around her, she is surprised by how much she finds herself caring about near-strangers. Strangers like Edmund, a handsome medical student and war vet. Strangers who could be gone tomorrow. And as the bodies begin to pile up, Cleo can't help but wonder: when will her own luck run out?
Riveting and well-researched, A Death-Struck Year is based on the real-life pandemic considered the most devastating in recorded world history. Readers will be captured by the suspenseful storytelling and the lingering questions of: what would I do for a neighbor? At what risk to myself?




2. Nil - Lynne Matson

On the mysterious island of Nil, the rules are set. You have one year. Exactly 365 days--to escape, or you die.

Seventeen-year-old Charley doesn’t know the rules. She doesn’t even know where she is. The last thing she remembers is blacking out, and when she wakes up, she’s lying naked in an empty rock field.

Lost and alone, Charley finds no sign of other people until she meets Thad, the gorgeous leader of a clan of teenage refugees. Soon Charley learns that leaving the island is harder than she thought . . . and so is falling in love. With Thad’s time running out, Charley realizes that to save their future, Charley must first save him. And on an island rife with dangers, their greatest threat is time.









3. Lies We Tell Ourselves - Robin Talley


In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.

Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.

Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept “separate but equal.”

Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.

4. The Secret Side of Empty - Maria E. Andreu

As a straight-A student with a budding romance and loyal best friend, M.T.’s life seems as apple-pie American as her blondish hair and pale skin. But M.T. hides two facts to the contrary: her full name of Monserrat Thalia and her status as an undocumented immigrant.

But it’s harder to hide now that M.T.’s a senior. Her school’s National Honor Society wants her to plan their trip abroad, her best friend won’t stop bugging her to get her driver’s license, and all everyone talks about is where they want to go to college. M.T. is pretty sure she can’t go to college, and with high school ending and her family life unraveling, she’s staring down a future that just seems empty. In the end, M.T. will need to trust herself and others to stake a claim in the life that she wants.

5. Prisoner of Night and Fog - Anne Blankman


In 1930s Munich, danger lurks behind dark corners, and secrets are buried deep within the city. But Gretchen Müller, who grew up in the National Socialist Party under the wing of her "uncle" Dolf, has been shielded from that side of society ever since her father traded his life for Dolf's, and Gretchen is his favorite, his pet.

Uncle Dolf is none other than Adolf Hitler.

And Gretchen follows his every command.

Until she meets a fearless and handsome young Jewish reporter named Daniel Cohen. Gretchen should despise Daniel, yet she can't stop herself from listening to his story: that her father, the adored Nazi martyr, was actually murdered by an unknown comrade. She also can't help the fierce attraction brewing between them, despite everything she's been taught to believe about Jews.

As Gretchen investigates the very people she's always considered friends, she must decide where her loyalties lie. Will she choose the safety of her former life as a Nazi darling, or will she dare to dig up the truth—even if it could get her and Daniel killed?

6. Providence - Lisa Colozza Cocca

The eldest of ten children on a dirt-poor farm, Becky trudges through life as a full-time babysitter, trying to avoid her father's periodic violent rages. When the family's barn burns down, her father lays the blame on Becky, and her own mother tells her to run for it. Run she does, hopping into an empty freight car. There, in a duffel bag, Becky finds an abandoned baby girl, only hours old. After years of tending to her siblings, sixteen-year-old Becky knows just what a baby needs. This baby needs a mother. With no mother around, Becky decides, at least temporarily, this baby needs her. When Becky hops off the train in a small Georgia town, it's with baby "Georgia" in her arms. When she meets Rosie, an eccentric thrift-shop owner, who comes to value and love Becky as no one ever has, Becky rashly claims the baby as her own. Not everyone in town is as welcoming as Rosie, though. Many suspect Becky and her baby are not what they seem. Among the doubters is a beautiful, reclusive woman with her own terrible loss and a long history with Rosie. As Becky's life becomes entangled with the lives of the people in town, including a handsome boy who suspects Becky is hiding something from her past, she finds her secrets more difficult to keep. Becky should grab the baby and run, but her newfound home and job with Rosie have given Becky the family she's never known. Despite her guilt over leaving her mother alone, she is happy for the first time. But it's a happiness not meant to last. When the truth comes out, Becky has the biggest decision of her life to make. Should she run away again? Should she stay--and fight? Or lie? What does the future hold for Becky and Georgia?

7. Something Real - Heather Demetrios


There’s nothing real about reality TV.

Seventeen-year-old Bonnie™ Baker has grown up on TV—she and her twelve siblings are the stars of one-time hit reality show Baker’s Dozen. Since the show’s cancellation and the scandal surrounding it, Bonnie™ has tried to live a normal life, under the radar and out of the spotlight. But it’s about to fall apart…because Baker’s Dozen is going back on the air. Bonnie™’s mom and the show’s producers won’t let her quit and soon the life she has so carefully built for herself, with real friends (and maybe even a real boyfriend), is in danger of being destroyed by the show. Bonnie™ needs to do something drastic if her life is ever going to be her own—even if it means being more exposed than ever before.









8. Rites of Passage - Joy Hensley

Sam McKenna’s never turned down a dare. And she's not going to start with the last one her brother gave her before he died.

So Sam joins the first-ever class of girls at the prestigious Denmark Military Academy. She’s expecting push-ups and long runs, rope climbing and mud-crawling. As a military brat, she can handle an obstacle course just as well as the boys. She's even expecting the hostility she gets from some of the cadets who don’t think girls belong there. What’s she’s not expecting is her fiery attraction to her drill sergeant. But dating is strictly forbidden and Sam won't risk her future, or the dare, on something so petty...no matter how much she wants him.
As Sam struggles to prove herself, she discovers that some of the boys don’t just want her gone—they will stop at nothing to drive her out. When their petty threats turn to brutal hazing, bleeding into every corner of her life, she realizes they are not acting alone. A decades-old secret society is alive and active… and determined to force her out.
At any cost.

Now time's running short. Sam must decide who she can trust...and choosing the wrong person could have deadly consequences.

9. Creed - Trisha Leaver


Dee Langley is seventeen and mere months away from total freedom and a life where state social workers, counselors, and foster parents don’t dictate her every move. She has spent years trying to eke out a normal existence, hiding from her past and walking the tenuous line between denial and self-preservation. A weekend away with her boyfriend, Luke, and his brother, Mike, seems like the perfect opportunity to forget and start over. Little does Dee know that she's just trading one hell for another.

When an unexpected storm and a lack of gas force their car off the road, Dee, Luke, and Mike find themselves with no other choice but to wander into the nearby town of Purity Springs for help. But it’s not good Samaritans they find, but rather complete and utter silence, every store and every house abandoned. Forced to seek shelter in one of the deserted homes, they uncover a disturbing book with explicit instructions on how to correctly rear a child, complete with a hand written record of its use. It’s not until the next morning, however, that they discover the alarming truth – the town isn’t abandoned; it is populated by a deadly cult, and the leader, Elijah Hawkins, has plans for the three of them. The group’s only hope for survival lies in the hands of Elijah’s son, Joseph. But is Joseph really their ticket to freedom or is his game just as deadly as his father’s?

Three went in, and three will come out, but not a single one will ever be a shadow of who they once were.

10. Love Letters to the Dead - Ava Dellaira

It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more; though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was; lovely and amazing and deeply flawed; can she begin to discover her own path.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Resolutions

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. For more info about the meme and how to participate, click here.

I'm super late but I only thought about the ten resolutions now so here we go.

Bookish Resolutions 2014

1. Read 75 books
I managed this last year, I hope I can do it again!

2. Participate in the Debut Author Challenge.
I had a lot of fun with this last year so I'm going to do it again. It's a great way to discover new authors and books.

3. Participate in the Back to Classics Challenge.
I decided to read some more classics this year. I was aiming for 5 but then I found this challenge and it seemed like a fun way to read some more diverse classics than just randomly choosing them so I upped my number to 10.

4. Collect the Literary Merit Badges at I Believe in Story.
Some of these are for books I'll read anyway, others are fun ways to branch out my reading a bit.

5. Write reviews shortly after I finish a book.
I have been getting better at this so let's keep it up.

6. Read and review galleys and books I won.
I don't have a whole lot of these that I have to review but it would be nice to finally read and review the ones I do have.

7. Read the four remaining books from my ten books I resolved to read in 2013
Two of 

8. Clear my to-read shelf.
Either by actually reading them or deleting them because I'll never read them anyway.

9. Participate in Bon's Book Club.
I don't think I'll be reading all the books because some aren't really something I'd enjoy but I want to participate in some of the discussions because there are some that I want to read anyway or others that seem interesting.

10. Keep my resolutions.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I read in 2013

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. For more info about the meme and how to participate, click here.

 

Top Ten Books I read in 2013

1. Harmonic Feedback - Tara Kelly

2. Vain (The Seven Deadly Sins #1) - Fisher Amelie

3. Through the Ever Night (Under the Never Sky #2) - Veronica Rossi

4. Unravel Me (Shatter Me #2) - Tahereh Mafi

5. Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits #1) - Katie McGarry

6. OCD, The Dude, and Me - Lauren Roedy Vaughn

7. Requiem (Delirium #3) - Lauren Oliver 

8. Horde (Razorland #3) - Ann Aguire

9. Saving Francesca - Melina Marchetta

10. Flat-Out Love (Flat-Out Love #1) - Jessica Park

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Top Ten Tuesday: 2014 Releases

 

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. For more info about the meme and how to participate, click here.

Top Ten 2014 Releases

A very late list but I was just looking at some releases for 2014 on Goodreads.

 

1. Into the Still Blue (Under the Never Sky #3) - Veronica Rossi

2. Ignite Me (Shatter Me #3) - Tahereh Mafi

3. Renegade (Mila #2) - Debra Driza 

4. Fairwil (Wilfair #4) - Alysia Gray Painter

5. Panic - Lauren Oliver

6. Isla and the Happily Ever After (Anna and the French Kiss #3) - Stephanie Perkins

7. Kissing in Italian (Flirting in Italian #2) - Lauren Henderson

8. Encore (Amplified #2) - Tara Kelly

9. All the Rage - Courtney Summers

10. Chasing Before (The Memory Chronicles #2) - Lenore Appelhans

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Forced to Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. For more info about the meme and how to participate, click here.

 

Top Ten Books I Was 'Forced' to Read

I ended up looking back at some of my favorite reads at university. At first I intended to divide this into 5 likes and 5 dislikes but I ended up with 10 likes instead. I simply couldn't leave any of these out!

1. The Diviners - Margaret Laurence 

This books basically changed my life, my now PhD supervisor assigned it to me for my term paper after I took my first class with him back in 2002 (I think). It was my first class about Post-Colonial Literature and my first venture into Canadian Literature. And I never looked back. Now I'm doing a PhD in Canadian Literature and he's my supervisor, and I couldn't wish for a better one than him. It's funny because I just realized that he probably has no idea how much he and this book geared my way during my studies.








2. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

A course about utopian and dystopian literature and my first read of Atwood. Another life changer, a couple of years later, I fell in love with her writing and I'm now doing my PhD on Margaret Atwood.











3. 1984 - George Orwell

 Read this for the same class as The Handmaid's Tale and it's still one of my favorites. It's so scary and haunting and something that never seems to be not relevant.

4. The Great Gatsby - Scott F. Fitzgerald

Read this for an exam and I really liked it, I should reread it sometime.













5. Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner

I honestly don't remember what I liked about this but I do remember that I liked a lot. Read it for an American Literature class but I don't remember at the moment what exactly was the topic of the class.











6. As For Me And My House - Ross Sinclair

Read this for a American and Canadian Literature comparative class, I absolutely loved the imagery in the book. So haunting. I also want to recommend Ross Sinclair's wonderful short story collection, The Lamp At Noon and Other Stories.











7. Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner

This was one was also part of the comparative class and as it was paired with my favorite, The Diviners, it was what I took on as my presentation and term paper topic. Faulkner is definitely not an easy read but it's an intriguing one.











8. Who's Afraid of Virigina Woolf - Edward Albee

This one I read for the same exam, I read The Great Gatsby for, and I really liked it as well but it's too long ago to properly say something about why I liked it.












9. The Heidi Chronicles - Wendy Wasserstein

One of my final oral exams was about American plays and this was one of them, granted I was allowed to compile my own list of plays but there were some I enjoyed more than others, and this one I really liked which is probably no surprise since it's a female coming of age story.











10. My Mortal Enemy - Willa Cather

Read this for a class on Willa Cather and again, it's too long ago to remember why but I did like it.

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