Tag Archives: harry potter

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books When I Need Something Light and Fun

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Top 10 Tuesday newTop Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week.

This week’s theme is Top Ten Books When You Need Something Light and Fun. This was a harder list to put together than I’d anticipated! I now realize that most of my go-to books for re-reading, straight from my shelf of favorites, are not at all light and fun. Dark, sad, dramatic, intense — yes. Light and fun? Not so much.

With a bit of struggle, here’s what I’ve come up with for my top 10 this week:

Soulless (Parasol Protectorate, #1)

1) Soulless by Gail Carriger: The first book in the Parasol Protectorate series is full of quippy dialogue, romance, supernatural hijinks, and is a Victorian comedy of manners to boot. Even when the characters are in peril, it’s light-hearted and humorous.

Bloodsucking Fiends (A Love Story, #1)

2) Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore: Or really, anything by Christopher Moore. Lust lizards? Stupidest angels? Sequined love nuns? Talking fruit bats? He cracks me up, every time.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)

3) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling: II’ve read the entire Harry Potter series about a gazillion times by now, and these books always make me smile. Of course, there are a lot of dark and terrible times ahead for Harry, but especially in book one (and really, throughout the series), the darkness is offset by the wonder of it all. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are adorable as younger children, and wonderful heroes as they grow up. I can’t imagine ever getting tired of this world.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

4) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.The adorableness of this series cannot be overrated. Besides, 42!

The Princess Bride

5) The Princess Bride by William Goldman: I love the movie and I love the book. Either one will cheer me up on a bad day. It’s all about the twu wuv, people.

Pride and Prejudice

6) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: The Regency-era snarkiness, the sass and spine of Elizabeth Bennet, and the idiocy of the various other Bennet women are worth revisiting, time after time.

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1)

7) The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher: Look, bad stuff happens in this series, to be sure. And yet, Harry Dresden — Chicago’s only professional wizard — is just a total smart-ass of a bad-ass, and is so much fun to hang out with. This is one series that has not overstayed its welcome (cough *Sookie* cough). No matter how the plot twists and turns, it’s always great to spend time with Harry.

The Sleep Book

8) The works of Dr. Seuss: This may be more for my 10-year-old than for me, although I confess to being a total fan. Whenever my son, who considers himself quite grown-up these days, has a tough day or feels a bit sick, out comes the Dr. Seuss. Our go-to favorites are The Sleep Book and Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?, but really, you just can’t go wrong with a good dose of Seuss on a bad day.

Tempest Rising (Jane True, #1)

9) The Jane True series by Nicole Peeler.  As with #7, bad stuff does indeed happen in this urban fantasy series, but Jane is just such an amazing heroine that these book can totally cheer me up and make me laugh.

The Hobbit (Middle-earth Universe)

10) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien: I love the Lord of the Rings books (oh, Aragorn…), but The Hobbit is a winner in terms of light, fun reading. Nothing like a thrilling quest, with good guys, questionable guys, wizards, dashing heroics, and piles of gold to brighten up a day!

Trying to put together this list has shown me that I need to read more happy books. Any suggestions? Let me know the books you can count on when you need a big serving of cheer!

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News for bookslovers: Oddities and goodies

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Pop Culture by

All sorts of good book news came our way this past week. In case you were snoozing and missed something, consider this your friend public service announcement from the land of book obsessives:

In book-to-TV news:

  • The BBC announced that it will be producing a TV adaptation of Susannah Clark’s wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. So far, it sounds like this will be a six-episode mini-series airing in the UK sometime in 2013… let’s hope it crosses the pond to the US soon thereafter. You can read more about this delightful news here.
  • Coming next summer on CBS: Stephen King’s Under The Dome! This was one of my favorite books read in 2011 — big, creepy, and scary in an all-too-human sort of way. I can’t wait to see how this translates to TV. Read about it here.

In sheer insanity news:

  • Because apparently it’s not enough to have read and loved the Harry Potter series… Amazon is selling a $1,000 gift set about the Harry Potter movies. Sure, why not milk this cow for all it’s worth? If you’re thinking, “So worth it! Where do I get one?”, click here to read more. As of today, Amazon is offering this item at a 40% discount… so for just $600, all this can be yours:

hp set

Author updates:

  • Herman Wouk has published a new novel — at age 97! The Lawgiver, an epistolary novel about screenwriters working on a movie about Moses, is Wouk’s 18th book, and, he says, not his last. According to this article in the New York Times, he’s already begun his next writing project.
  • In early November, Philip Roth announced his retirement from writing. His last book, Nemesis, was published in 2010.

And in other bookish news:

  • British author Nick Hornby will be writing the screenplay for the movie adaption of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild. I haven’t read the book yet, and I always enjoy Nick Hornby, so… wait for the movie version?
  • Remember the Janie series from your distant or not-too-distant teen days? Starting with The Face On The Milk Carton, published 20 years ago, Caroline B. Cooney’s engrossingly addictive series focuses on a teen girl named Janie, leading a happy suburban life, who accidentally discovers that she may in fact have been kidnapped as a child. If you walked away from the final book in the series wishing for more, your wishes are about to come true! Janie Face To Face will be published in January, and promises to reveal (according to the Amazon blurb) “if Janie and Reeve’s love has endured, and whether or not the person who brought Janie and her family so much emotional pain and suffering is brought to justice.”
  • Did y’all see this awesome creation from EpicReads? It’s a YA fiction map to the US, with a book for each of the fifty states. Pretty amazing — check it out. You may even want to hang up a copy, or use it as a checklist, or — just thinking here — put it up on the wall and throw darts at it in order to pick your next book. I’ve read 10 out of 50, and can definitely see a bunch more that I’d like to add to my TBR list. Fun!
  • And finally, on a hopeful note, NPR Books reports that this is looking to be a good holiday season for independent bookstores. Which reminds me, I have more shopping to do…

Cheers, all! If you have any other interesting tidbits from the world of books, please share in the comments!

Coincidence at King’s Cross?

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My son and I started a new book this week as his bedtime read-aloud. We’ve made it through about five chapters so far, and here are some key points:

  • There is a special platform at King’s Cross Station in London which leads to a hidden, magical world
  • Regular humans have no idea this magical world exists
  • Our hero is a nice boy being raised by people who are not his parents
  • He lives in the non-magical world, and doesn’t know that he belongs in the world of magic
  • He is not treated very well: he is considered the kitchen boy, works hard dawn to dusk, goes to a run-down, second-rate school, and sleeps in a cupboard
  • The favorite son of the family is a fat, spoiled boy of about the same age, who has a room overflowing with more toys and gadgets than he can possibly ever use or enjoy
  • The fat boy’s mom speaks to him in baby-talk (“Where does it hurt, my pettikins?”), sees him as sensitive and frail, and gives him everything he wants

Sound familiar?

Psych. This is The Secret of Platform 13, written by Eva Ibbotson, and published in 1994… which, by the way, is about three years prior to the introduction of the Boy Who Lived to the rest of the world.

Coincidence? I’m sure this was all hotly debated when Harry Potter first appeared in 1997 (so I’m a little late to the party). And seeing as I’m only about a third of the way through Platform 13, I’m in no position to state whether the similarities continue. It’s a little hard to believe that two different children’s authors came up with such similar elements within such a short time span without there being… oh, let’s call it cross-pollination.

I had a hard time buying it when the author of a bestselling series of vampire books claims to never have read any other vampire fiction. Really? Do you live in a media-less cave, perhaps? Of course, writers of children’s fiction read other writers’ works, and it’s natural to be influenced by what you’ve read, especially when it’s the good stuff. And as far as I can tell, based on the five chapters I’ve read, The Secret of Platform 13 is indeed the good stuff.

It’ll be interesting to see how the story plays out, and whether the seemingly familiar elements will continue to pop up. Somehow, I doubt that we’ll be seeing a wizarding school, a sport played on broomsticks, or a flying motorbike, but I could be wrong.

When worlds collide, part 3

Posted in Fun and Whimsy by

A friend sent this to me a while back, and I’ve never succeeded in finding the source:

I just love when my random obsessions co-mingle, and this truly tickled my funny bone. So just how many Harry Potter fans out there also geek out over Outlander (and vice versa)?

In any case, if you recognize this and know the source, let me know so I can give credit where credit is due!

Happy Birthday, Harry!

Posted in Fun and Whimsy by

Wishing Harry Potter and his creator J. K. Rowling very happy birthdays today! With apologies to Neville Longbottom, whose birthday came and went yesterday without a whole lot of fuss.

Harry would be 32 years old today… if he was, in fact, an actual person and not a fictional character. Nevertheless, he’s near and dear to my heart, and he’s made my world a more magical place for the past 15 years… so cheers, Harry!

I pre-ordered The Casual Vacancy. I’m just not sure I want to read it.

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Let’s be honest, shall we? If you came across this description of a soon-to-be-released book, would you want to read it?

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

(book description lifted from the nice people at Amazon)

Sounds okay, but it wouldn’t rise to the top of my to-read pile (which I swear grows a few inches taller every time my back is turned, but that’s another story for another day). I tend toward the dark, the weird, the magical or mysterious, the slightly off-kilter in my must-reads. A story about small town politics? Well, maybe when I have nothing else to do… and when I’ve run out of Stephen King or Christopher Moore to fill in the slow moments.

BUT… and it’s a very big but (ha! I can hear my 9-year-old saying, “Mom! You just said ‘big butt’!”), this is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill tale of life in a charming English town. This is The Casual Vacancy, the debut adult novel by J.K. Rowling! Changes the picture a bit, doesn’t it?

According to Amazon’s stats as of today, The Casual Vacancy is currently #223 in their sales ranking, with still two months to go until its release date in late September. If this wasn’t a book by J. K. Rowling but rather by some unknown author, I’d imagine that the preorders on this would be non-existent. BUT (again with the big but…) this is the queen of bestsellers, the creator of Harry Potter! Who doesn’t want to read whatever she writes next?

I can only imagine the conversations between J. K. and her agent and her publisher. “Well done, you’ve finished the most successful book series in the history of the universe! What are you going to do next?” “Ummmm….”

I suppose it would have been easiest for J. K. to coast for a bit, write more tales set in the Potter ‘verse. C’mon, don’t we all want to know more about Neville? That Teddy Lupin seems like an interesting guy, right?

And too, she doesn’t actually have to do anything for the rest  of her life, and she’ll still be more or less a gazillionaire forever, thanks to Harry.

It takes a certain amount of courage to go off in a new direction, to say to her legions of fans, “Hey, I know you lot want more wizards and magic — but I’m over it. Moving on, here!” And no matter what she writes next, there’s certain to be an intense amount of scrutiny and incredibly high expectations. The schadenfreude crowd would love, I’m sure, to be able to say, “Oh, J. K. Rowling? One-trick pony. She has nothing else to say after Harry Potter.”

So, onward to The Casual Vacancy. I wonder — is this a story she was dying to tell? Did she have a sudden burst of inspiration, see whole new worlds opening up before her? Has she always wanted to explore small-town English politics?

Or, perhaps, is The Casual Vacancy just a first tentative step toward moving into a post-Harry Potter writing life? Get that first book out there, like throwing a bone to a hungry dog, let all the people salivating over her next work see that she’s capable of writing something outside the HP world. If The Casual Vacancy is released to big fanfare and the world reads it, shrugs its collective shoulders, and realizes that J. K. Rowling is a novelist who will be around for a while writing lots of different books, then maybe the pressure will be off.

Who knows, maybe it’s the next book after The Casual Vacancy that ‘s the one that she’s just dying to write, and The Casual Vacancy is just a test balloon to get us all to back off and ease up on the expectations.

As for me, I’m sure I will read it. I love Harry Potter, world without end, and I’m willing to give J. K. the benefit the doubt, even if it means reading a book about Muggles.

Although it would definitely be cool if a dementor or two showed up in Pagford.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

What about you? Are you planning to read The Casual Vacancy?