Top 5 Wednesday l Spring 2017

May 10th: Books as Event Themes

1. American Gods, Neil Gaiman - Each party guest much chose his or her god/goddess to personify or support. And whatever your bringing to the party should also be a traditional dish/drink from your god/goddess's home turf. Different sections/areas/tables around the event should be about different pantheons. 
2. Red Hill by Jamie McGuire, Resident EvilNovels by Various Authors and Canibalism a perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt. -- Zombie / Cannibal themed party, perfect for halloween. *** This would be my favourite choice 
3. Lovecraft Halloween Party - there are so many options to chose from on how to interpret this party... I wouldn't even know where to begin. Would be very cool for fan's to geek out together though. 
4. The Selection - Kira Cast : Girls Night or Day Event --   Pedicures, Manicures, facemasks... watch a season of the bachelor (which is pretty much The Selection) there are a hundred different things you could do depending on the age range of the guests / number of guests... 101 variables. 
5. Rage by Richard Bachman and This is Where it Ends Marieke Nijkamp : a mystery party where you can #1 try to figure out who the school shooter is or #2 reconstruct the event leading up to _________ (whatever reveal or final event). This is not a topic for everyone and I would be very sure of who I was inviting before doing this kind of thing. But this is one of the events I feel should be talked about but no one does (until just after one of these tragedies). As a society we are slowly starting to talk about mental illness and its effects this is one of the worst outcomes of young people with mental illness and having this staged almost like a murder mystery could be a educational and thought provoking event. 

May 17th: Summer Reads

I struggled a little bit with this question, I first tried to list books that were about summer or set in summer specifically, but I didn't like the list so it vanished, and I decided to do this list. Which is more of a type of read : lighthearted, comedies, easy to read, some YA. Which is my "go to type" around this season. 

1. Mary Janice Davidsons Novels (any of them), they are lighthearted steamy romance novels with quirky characters and lots of comedy.  
2. Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss OR/AND Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser : lots of people think about losing a little weight for the beach for summer. These books take a look into fast food, pre-prepared foods the sales and science behind it all. I have never had to worry about my weight thankfully, but from an educational standpoint these two books did more to discourage fast food in my diet than any self help/weightloss tip  book could have done. 
3. Chrestomanci - Diana Wynn Jones : Harry Potter is the magic lovers go to winter read? well this is the other side of the looking glass. She is also the Author of Howl's Moving Castle (the first novel in the trilogy set within that magical universe).
4. Heartless, Marissa Meyer - I am obsessed with this book and it might become a yearly summer read for a while. 
5. The Hatching and The Skittering by Ezekiel Boone, horror novels about spiders. Which might seem a little bit random as a "summer" read. But these few months are the only times of the year when it is NOT snowing in Canada (ie. spiders can survive in this wonderful weather) and this is the only time of the year when I see any bugs at all so... yea bugs = summer time around here. 

May 24th: Favorite Minor Characters 
 What does this mean?? Ex.  Ron and Hermione side characters, while Lavender Brown, Oliver Wood, and Dean Thomas are minor characters. 

1. The Badger's, Brian Jacques -- I have recently been rereading the Redwall novels, which I was obsessed with as a kid. And while the Badger characters in a couple of books are main or side characters the majority of the time they are minor characters. But they are always interesting and beautiful souls. 
2. Charlotte, The Infernal Devices, Cassandra Claire. -- It really annoyed me that the characters kept referring to Charlotte characteristics in a negative kind of "look down upon" way. There was an emphasis on how her "motherliness" made her seem older than her 23/24 years (can't remember her age exactly) but if you took away the tone she was given. You ended up with a very brave, upstanding citizen who was responsible and clearheaded. Really what women should aspire to be (in my opinion) by that time in their lives (regardless of time period) .
3. The Dark Tower, Stephen King -- This whole series was filled with awesome characters, but a lot of the quick mentions thrown in, where side or main characters from other King novels (I have to have at least on SK rant in each post pretty much I know, but honestly its just so mind blowing) 

I am so much more about the setting, plot, the main characters. Pretty much anything but the side characters (who I find are only really around in YA novels) I am giving this up at 3 because I really don't have anyone coming to mind and only 1/3 so far is a single character. 

May 30th: Fandoms You Are No Longer In 

I am changing this question up a little by listing the 5 reasons I leave any fandom no matter now much I love the book(s)

1. Insane Fans : If people start to lose touch with the fact that the story is fiction, the characters are not real, that every reader is entitled to their opinion, its time to jump ship.
2. Series That Dragged On...  
1. Authors that published slowly; for a while I was out growing the books faster than they could be written, losing interest in the conclusion or start reading other things and just never getting around to the final book(s). 
2. Series that have been extended from a trilogy into more later-on often never had those final books looked at.  
3. Series that just got too long,  3, 4 , 5 books into a series only to realize there were 22 more to go. Often I gave up. Example : Outlander by Diana Gabledon, I liked the first bit of the book that I read, but I not enough for a 10000 page commitment
3. Overly Popular Fandoms -- Hand in Hand with #1 and #2  on this list--  This is when you get crazy people, I am about the book fandoms not the movie fandoms and the two tend to get horribly tangled with these situations and finally this is when those "surprise" extra books start cropping up (written only because of the cash sometimes not because there is more story)
4. Outgrowing  the Fandom : while people of all ages like all kinds of books, there is normally an age range with a majority in any fan base. With "adult" targeted novels this is less of an issue. But as any former YA fangirl can relate too... at 22 I just don't relate so well to 12 year olds anymore.
5. Disagreeing with the Author as a person : Authors have become another kind of celebrity, brought into the media spotlight and sometimes I think this really takes away from the writing. If I disagree with personal opinions expressed, even if they are not present at all in your fiction, it reflects in my experience of the novel (past or present) and has caused me to turn away from a book or series in varying degrees.   

June 7th: Books For Your Hogwarts House

Slytherin

1. Necronomicon, HP Lovecraft
2. The Hatching, Ezekiel Boone
3. Rage, Richard Bachman
4. American Psycho, Brett Eason Ellis
5. The Martian, Andy Weir 

June 14th: Side Relationships + June 28th: Hate to Love Relationships 

Looking at these two questions only a week apart... I am not going to bother trying to answer these. While I have read tons of books with amazing relationships, I don't have any side ones that really come to mind, and I don't really have hate to love either, I am pretty black and white with this kind of thing, I love two characters as a couple or I don't.

I kind of feel these are YA-ish topics, that makes less of an appearance in my type of adult novels, thrillers and horrors which don't really focus on relationships, love is a fact, often a tragedy in these, and hard to think of in this context. Plus the glimpse we are given into extra characters is often more about memories, or internal character, a lot less to do with who they really are or what their lives are about. 

June 21st: Favorite "Unlikeable" Protagonists

1. Gemma Doyle, A Great and Terrible Beauty + Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Libba Bray *I don't think Gemma is really supposed to be so unlikable, but she is. Selfish, shallow, childish, immature, irresponsible, whiney, need I go on? but despite all she still touched a special place in my heart as did the books (despite many flaws). 
2. Patrick Bateman, American Psycho, Brett Eason Ellis *A murderous fiend, the epitome of protagonists you just love to hate
3. Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, Twilight, Stephanie Meyer *Need I say more?
4. Jamie Lannister + Various Others, Game of Thrones, George RR Martin *Particularly as I get farther into the series, there are so many narrators that are wonderfully terrible people. 
5. Clary and Jace, Mortal Instruments, Cassandra Clare *Its hard to distinguish angsty teen from "unlikable" these two seem to take turns flip flopping between who is being the bad guy / annoying/ whiney / selfish / ect. ect. ect. again maybe not supposed to be unlikable, but I don't like them very much and yet I liked the books and read the City of Bones at least 6 times + the rest of the series. 

July 5th: Books Without Romance !!!

***A few (very, very few) people complained about the "shipping" topics lately, so I thought it would be good to talk about books that don't have a romantic subplot! This is a really hard one, so if you can't find any, you can talk about some where the romance is super super minor. Like barely mentioned... at all...*** 

Guess who laughed at the above statement? I normally delete that bit of the T5W posts but figured I would leave it here with this one...

1. Pressure, Brian Keene
2. The Colony, AJ Colucci
3. The Hatching, Ezekiel Boone
4. Red, Jack Ketchum
5. Rage, Richard Bachman
6. Snowblind, Michael Mcbride
7. Feed, Mira Grant
8. The Martian Andy Wier

I want to be clear that some of these books mention a relationship(s).  So there are relationships and there is love, but those things are present without the romance side / focus on two people and there interactions etc. 

July 12th: Children's Books / Authors

1. Dr Seuss
2. Robert Munch
3. Laura Numeroff (If You Give  Mouse A Cookie) 
4. Eric Carle (Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear Brown Bear) 
5. Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit)
6. AA Milne (Winnie the Pooh)

July 19th: Books That Aren't Set In/Inspired By The Western World

Outside of North America and Western Europe) including fantasy novels (try to avoid medieval settings)

1. Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini *Middle East
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini *Middle East
3. Memoires of a Geisha, Arthur Golden *Asia
4. The Pearl, John Steinbeck *Latin America 
5. World War Z, Max Brooks *Asia + Middle East + Others (World Wide Travel and Narration)

July 26th: Series That Got Better

1. The Game of Thrones, George RR Martin
2. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
3. Redwall, Brian Jaques
4. Tortall, Tamora Pierce

The above books all started off strong, they were good reads (and some great reads), and they just kept building the characters, relationships, atmospheres and settings though-out the series. The more you read the more invested you are in the whole world. This is very much my cup of tea!

      5. Lunar Chronicles, Marrisa Meyers

These books were connected (same as the above books) but what I noticed most was the skill and style of Meyers writing which progress along with the series. Not only did our characters grow, and intertwine but the narration improved - and being able to see that improvement added something to these novels. 

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