Top Ten Tuesday: Characters I Wish Would Get Their Own Books

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Characters I Wish Would Get Their Own Books


1. Samwise Gamgee ("Sam")
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
To me, Sam was the true hero of The Lord of the Rings. Frodo would never have gotten anywhere without Sam.



2. Hermione Granger
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
I could have filled this list with only Harry Potter characters because they're all so interesting. I'm limiting myself to only two. Hermione is my favorite character out of all of Harry Potter, and I would love to see her get her own book.

Top Ten Tuesday: Things on My Reading Wishlist

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Things on My Reading Wishlist
My wishlist this week is about the perfect lead female character with five characteristics I wish more female leads had and five characteristics I don’t want to see in a female lead. There are a lot of authors who get their bad-ass heroines just right, and there are some authors who need to shake up their heroines. I don’t need a female character turning into a ball-buster or into a stubborn know-it-all with a propensity for too-stupid-to-die actions. I just need a strong, independent lead who can take care of herself and those that she loves.

5 Things I like to see in my heroines:

1. Intelligence
See Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

2. Healthy self esteem
3. Just Being Plain Good at Your Job
See Eve Dallas from the In Death series by J.D. Robb

4. Saving the Man Instead of Needing to be Saved

Audiobook Review: The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

Title: The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)
Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Narrator: Robert Glenister
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Acquired Via: Library
Release Date: April 30, 2013
A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

My Review

I was extremely hesitant to pick up The Cuckoo's Calling by one of my favorite authors writing under pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Harry Potter is one of my all-time favorite series, and I was scared that I would not be able to divorce that series from my mind while reading a completely different type of novel by J. K. Rowling. I know a lot of people have had this problem, especially while reading Rowling’s other adult novel, The Casual Vacancy. Which is one reason that while I own The Casual Vacancy in hardback, I have yet to read it. One of the reasons that I love J. K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series so much is that it was my introduction to the world of young adult fiction. Prior to reading Harry Potter (I was late to the party and didn’t start until almost forced at the end of 2008), I often held disdain for young adult fiction. I guess I always associated “young adult” with juvenile, held up my nose and read my purely adult novels. Then the Harry Potter series convinced me that I was idiot and that I would love young adult. And I do not want to see my beloved author fail to transition to adult fiction. However, some of my friends have read The Cuckoo's Calling and have really enjoyed it, and I saw some pretty great reviews, so I decided to maybe give it a try. When I saw that my library had it on audiobook version, I decided that I had to conquer my fears and jump in.

Book Thoughts: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This isn't a review or anything of the book, just something that came to mind as I was listening to the book in the car. I generally try to reread the Harry Potter books - with the exception of the last two - during the fall, into the holidays. Being as I'm reviewing books now and forcing myself outside of my cozy little reading box, I've been listening to the audiobooks in the car. This is my first time in experiencing the series in this format, and it is definitely worth it. (Jim Dale might just rock my world a little.) Since the books are being provided to me in someone else's voice, there are things that I'm noticing because my mind has more free time to wonder.

Why did the Ministry of Magic never find Sirius Black?!
Yes, I'm very well aware that he was in hiding, but something occurred to me while listening.

Owls.

When Ron Weasley snatched up Pigwidgeon at the Owlery in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and threw him out the window to deliver Harry's letter, it made me why the Ministry never tried something like this.

Couldn't they have used an owl with a tracking spell to search him out?

I'm sure that some wizard (Snape, for example) could have magicked some parchment since it's simple enough to assume that Harry and Sirius would be corresponding.

Yes, I realize that the story would not have been nearly as good if any of those scenarios had played out, but I seriously thought about this most of the day.

Has this occurred to any of you? If this has been addressed anywhere (and I'm sure it has), how was the idea dismissed? I'm interested in reading your thoughts.

Best Escapist Book Locations (3)

Wizarding England

I was (mostly) an adult when I started reading Harry Potter. London and England both had always held a certain appeal for me. However, when J. K. Rowling's masterpiece planted the idea in my mind that there may be more, I was read to drop everything and find my way out of the Muggle world.* 

Of course, everyone dreamed about receiving that magical letter inviting them to attend Hogwarts. The castle is an amazing world in itself, consisting of moving staircases, rooms that only sometimes exist, ghosts, and a Forbidden Forest that just begs for shenanigans. While I would love to learn to use magic there, I found many of the teachers terrifying. (I'm looking at you Professor McGonagall.)

I would also love to take a shopping trip on Diagon Alley. I think I could while away a fortune at Flourish and Blotts bookstore. Other points of interest to me would be Gambol & Japes joke shop, Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, and the Magical Menagerie. And who can forget Weasley's Wizard Wheezes? I would be lying, though, if I told you that the main reason I went was not to sit and stare for hours at the various wizardly passerbys. 

So, wizards of world, you may not exist and your world may be just a fun fantasy. However, I still imagine that one day you would open a position for me at the Ministry of Magic. I am quite happy being a Muggle, and I think I could do a superb job as the Ambassador for the American Muggles. I would even let you call me a Yank**.

*Hey, I said I was mostly an adult. We can all fantasize.

**Unless you're a wizard, don't call me a Yank. I'm from the South, and we don't care much for that label down here.