Top 5 Wednesday: Fictional Items I Want

 

This week's Top 5 Wednesday is all about the fictional items we would love to own. I anticipate seeing a lot of Harry Potter items on other people's lists and not just because I have two on mine. 

5) A Babel fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

After Arthur gets a Babel fish shoved into his ear, he's able to understand every language in the entire universe. My own personal Babel fish would certainly come in handy when traveling abroad. 

4) A Firebird from A Thousand Pieces of You 

A Firebird is a device that allows its wearer to jump to alternate dimensions. How cool would it be to travel to infinite alternative realities?

3) OASIS from Ready Player One

OASIS is an ultra-realistic virtual reality console. Not only does it allow the player to explore multiple worlds and go on quests, it also stores every book, movie, television show, and song ever made. Like the majority of the characters in the book, I'd probably spend the majority of my life in OASIS. (Which is probably not healthy.)

2) A Firebolt from the Harry Potter series

I almost decided to put the Invisibility Cloak on this list but then I thought about it some more and realized I would rather have the ability to fly than become invisible.

1) A wand from the Harry Potter series

What kid, after reading Harry Potter, did not wish for their own Ollivander wand? Hell, I'm an adult now and I still wish I had a magic wand - if nothing else I could use it to organize my bookshelf.

Top 5 Wednesday is an original bookish meme created by Lainey at gingerreadslainey.

You can find the Top 5 Wednesday Goodreads Group here.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books on My Spring TBR

 

I am always adding new books to my TBR list so to keep this list simple, I am focusing on 2016 spring releases that I am excited to read. 

10) United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas

Release Date: March 1

I love the concept of this alternate history - Japan was victorious in World War II and now the United States is patrolled by giant robots.

9) The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Release Date: March 8

A short story collection that is getting rave reviews, Ken Liu is definitely an author I'm excited to read for the first time. 

8) Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Release Date: March 8

This desert-based fantasy originally caught by eye because of the gorgeous cover. But after reading the intriguing synopsis about a girl desperate to escape from her small desert town, I'm excited to see what's between the covers.

7) Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston

Release Date: March 15

I read Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale last year and loved how different and fantastical it was. I'm curious to see how this young adult contemporary novel retells the story.

6) The Winner's Kiss by Marie Rutkoski

Release Date: March 29

The final book in the Winner's trilogy. I am so sad to see the series end but I cannot wait to find out what happens to Kestrel and Arin! 

5) When We Collided by Emery Lord

Release Date: April 5

I read Lord's The Start of Me and You just last month and absolutely adored it. Now that she has become one of my auto-buy authors, I just have to check out her new book.

4) The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead

Release Date: April 5

It will be interesting to see how Richelle Mead, who penned the Vampire Academy series, handles writing a completely different genre of fantasy.

3) The Last Star by Rick Yancey

Release Date: May 24

The third and final book in The Fifth Wave series, I'm really excited to see how this epic series ends.

2) The Problem with Forever by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Release Date: May 17

I loved the Lux series that featured super-sexy aliens and am excited to read Jennifer L. Armentrout's new standalone contemporary romance. I'll miss Damon Black, though.

1) A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

Release Date: May 3

My most anticipated read of the year, I am counting down the days to this sequel to A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Top Ten Tuesday is an original bookish meme created by The Broke and the Bookish.

Suicide Reviews: A Cold Season by Alison Littlewood

 

Summary: After the battlefront loss of her husband, a soldier, in the sands of the Middle East, a distraught Cass moves to the bucolic, picture-perfect village of Darnshaw with her young son. Since Cass's website design business can be run from anywhere with an internet connection and Ben could benefit from a change of scenery, a move to the highlands village seems like just the thing. 

But the locals aren't as friendly as she had hoped and the internet connection isn't as reliable as her business requires. And when Ben begins to display a hostility that is completely unlike his usual gentle nature, Cass begins to despair. Finally, the blizzards thunder through, marooning Darnshaw in a sea of snow.

When things look their blackest, Cass finds a sympathetic ear in the person of Mr.Remick, the substitute headmaster at Ben's school. But Remick's attentions can't put to rest her growing anxiety about her son and her business. And soon, she finds herself pitted against dark forces she can barely comprehend. The cold season has begun.

Date Published: January 1, 2012

Published By: Jo Fletcher

Number of Pages: 290

Rating: 3.5/5

A Cold Season is the kind of story that will discourage you from ever moving to a small town. Or going outside during winter. Or just going outside, period. 

Cass and her son Ben find themselves stranded in Darnshaw after a snowstorm makes all the roads impassable. This gives the book an incredibly claustrophobic atmosphere - the feeling of being smothered by snow leeches out of the pages and into the reader's brain. The gnawing sense of isolation and paranoia continues to build as ominous things keep happening. Twice, Cass tries to escape - and both times, she fails. You get the sense that she is trapped there and it's pretty darn freaky.

There are a lot of disturbing moments in the book but they're never in-your-face terrifying - it's a more subtle kind of uneasiness. Something strange will happen and it will kind of sit there in the back of your head, and then the next thing will happen, and the next - so the tension slowly builds and builds until all of a sudden you find yourself gripping the pages, overwhelmed by dread. It's incredibly effective - more so, I would say, than splattering guts and gore all over the place. 

I will say I found the climax to be a little underwhelming and predictable, but the author makes up for it by delivering a truly chilling final page. Once I finished reading it, I had to go snuggle with my cat for awhile to make myself feel better. 

A Cold Season reads like a mash-up of The Shining and The Exorcist. I wouldn't say it's a must-read, but fans of occult horror will probably enjoy it. Or, if you like horror but not gore, this book is perfect for you.

Suicide Reviews: Animal Farm by George Orwell

 

Summary: Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organized to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges...

Date Published: August 17, 1945

Published By: Penguin (This Edition)

Number of Pages: 95

Rating: 5/5

What can be said about Animal Farm that hasn't been said already? This is why I find classics so hard to review but I'll do my best.

I read Animal Farm years ago for high school and really loved it. Reading it today, I still love it but because I wasn't studying the Russian Revolution simultaneously this time around, I forgot who some of the characters were supposed to represent. If anything this book is successful at, it does make me want to go back and study the Russian Revolution just so I can get a clearer picture of the allegory.

Animal Farm is subtitled A Fairy Story, which is entirely appropriate as the book reads like a modern-day fairy tale. There are no nuanced characterizations or complex plot details to be found. But that doesn't mean the story doesn't serve as a brilliant allegory and a scathing criticism of the failed ideals of the Revolution. It shows, little by little, how noble ideas can be swiftly corrupted by power and greed.

Animal Farm is still a great read after 71 years of being in print. But what's sobering is how relevant it still is to today's world. 

Suicide Reviews: Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection by Marissa Meyer

  

Summary: The universe of the Lunar Chronicles holds stories - and secrets - that are wondrous, vicious, and romantic. How did Cinder first arrive in New Beijing? How did the brooding soldier Wolf transform from young man to killer? When did Princess Winter and the palace guard Jacin realize their destinies? 

With nine stories - five of which have never before been published - and a special bonus excerpt from Marissa Meyer's upcoming novel, Heartless, about the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, Stars Above is essential for fans of the bestselling and beloved Lunar Chronicles.

Date Published: February 2, 2016

Published By: Feiwel & Friends

Number of Pages: 369

Rating: 5/5

This is the perfect companion of short stories to the Lunar Chronicles. I love how it's not just a collection of previously published material - we get FIVE new stories! (Including a wedding between two of the major characters!)

It's no surprise that I loved each and every single story in this collection but there were a few standouts: 'Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky' shows us what our favorite rogue captain was like during his schoolboy days; 'The Princess and the Guard' is a heartbreaking story about the relationship between Winter and Jacin and reveals why Winter stopped using her Lunar gift; 'The Little Android' is a remarkable retelling of 'The Little Mermaid' about an android who wishes to become human; and 'Something Old, Something New' is the aforementioned wedding story.

I love how the stories are arranged chronologically and 'Something Old, Something New' serves as the perfect epilogue to the series. I had a big, stupid grin on my face after I finished reading it. It was almost too cute. But what would the Lunar Chronicles be without those gush-worthy moments?

This is a must read for Lunartics if you (like me) had serious withdrawals after reading Winter. Now I just have to wait for Heartless and the graphic novels featuring Iko! 

Suicide Reviews: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Summary: Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

Date Published: 1969

Published By: Dial Press

Number of Pages: 275

Rating: 5/5 

Slaughterhouse-Five is both incredibly funny and terribly sad. It's as if Douglas Adams wrote an anti-war novel.

The book is written in a style that is very dream-like. It reads almost like a fairy-tale. There are bizarre situations featuring aliens and time travel yet it's not science fiction in the traditional sense. Vonnegut uses this fable-like style to drive home the point just how absurd and futile war is.

Billy Pilgrim is such a down-to-earth and endearing character. He's sort of an Everyman who is thrust into these crazy adventures. His ability to time travel to different points of his life just kind of happens naturally and his abduction by aliens is completely random. These fantastical events aren't really treated as unbelievable or extraordinary - they just happen. It ties in so well to the book's oft-repeated phrase 'So it goes.'

The phrase 'So it goes' is often put at the end of a description of a horrible event, like a bombing or suicide. It's used to highlight how human beings treat these tragedies as inevitable - even though we are the species that is responsible for perpetuating them. It has a remarkably sobering effect upon the reader.

Slaughterhouse-Five deserves its place among the classics and the great anti-war novels. I think it should be read by everybody at least once in their lives. 

Top 5 Wednesday: Books that Feature Time Travel

 

Some of my favorite books feature time travel. If used well, time travel is one of the most interesting plot devices. So, without further ado, here are my Top 5 Books that Feature Time Travel.

5) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 

I just read Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time last week and I'm so glad I read it in time for this topic because it blew me away! Billy Pilgrim is a POW in World War II but he keeps getting 'unstuck' in time and traveling to different points in his past and future. The 'how' of the time travel is never really explained but I don't think that's important to the story. Billy Pilgrim's travels through time are used to explore the very nature of what 'time' is and how humans misunderstand it. 

4) All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

This was one of my favorite reads last year. A great action-packed sci-fi, this book is about a soldier, Keiji Kiriya, who is battling invading aliens but time keeps resetting itself so he keeps having to fight the same battle over and over again. It's basically like that movie Groundhog Day but with aliens. If you've seen the film version, I still recommend that you read the novel because the endings are completely different.

3) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Time travel is a tricky plot device to pull off but J.K. Rowling handles it well in the third installment in the Harry Potter series. On the surface, Hermione's Time Turner seems to be too convenient until you realize that the time travel is integral to the climax of the book. Time travel is seen more often in science fiction than fantasy but it works perfectly in this book. 

2) The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

The Shining Girls features a serial killer that travels through time and one of his surviving victims sets out to stop him. It is creepy, disturbing, and the time travel is handled perfectly. The ending is particularly masterful and gave me chills. I once pitched it to a friend as something Stephen King might write. And speaking of King...

1) 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Hands down, my favorite time travel novel ever, 11/22/63 is about a 21st century man who travels back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. Truly epic in scope, this is one of King's masterpieces. If anyone can make time travel downright terrifying, it's the Master of Horror himself.

So you've heard my time travel recommendations, now I'd love to hear yours! If you've done a Top 5 Wednesday for this topic, either on a blog or on Youtube, please let me know! I'd love to see your Top 5 Books that Feature Time Travel! 

Top 5 Wednesday is an original book meme started by Lainey at gingerreadslainey/

The Top 5 Wednesday Goodreads Group can be found here.