Top Ten Tuesday: Places We Want to Go (And Dont!)

A cheers of our whiskey sour to The Broke and the Bookish's Top Ten Tuesday In honor of this week's TTT choose-your-own-adventure, here is YA & WS's top ten places we would like to visit/would never be caught dead in from the books we read:


Let's start with the "Classics":

1. Narnia: Grad Student is afraid to go here, but I would love to escape through a wardrobe to a magical forest or beach, just preferably not during one of the wars.

Hogwarts, yes please.

2. Hogwarts:  Does this even need a reason why?  And even though Disney now makes this a reality, I am sure the one in my imagine is better (and alot cheaper) and with alot less fast food and marketing.

PERN

3. Pern: Crazy Camper and Grad Student were enormous Ann McCaffery fans growing up. E-NOR-MOUS.  I dont know if i can emphasize this enough.  I would take the High Reaches, or the Southern Continent, Ruatha (during Jackson's time, not Lessa's)... really, plop us down anywhere. And also give me a dragon. thanksosmuch.

Recently Discovered Places to Visit

4. Lani Taylor's world in Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Grad Student would like to travel through the portals and go anywhere in the world on a whim, as well as the alternative world

5. The Summer Court of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series: Grad Student would like to hang out with Puck and Grimalkin!  Yes, she is picking her worlds based on boys here... (GS edit: Grimalkin is a CAT...geez, and you read some of these)

6. Westeros of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series: I would love to see the Great White Wall. Also, a dragon would be nice here, too.

7. The Night Circus of Erin Morgenstern's book by the same title.  So beautiful to read about! (GS's review)

8. New Beijing from Cinder by Marissa Meyer: The cool sci-fi future to have a fun robot friend (this probably stems from Grad Student's love of the noises R2D2 makes. (beep bop beep!)

9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children from Ransom Rigg's book by the same title: Goosie Mama says "It would be like an idyllic circus slash fountain of youth since you don't age. Plus, maybe some of the peculiarities would rub off on you and you'd, I don't know, develop x-ray vision or something amazing like that?"

Via

10. Sookie Stackhouse's hometown of Bon Temps, LA:  mostly would want to visit here in the off chance that Jason was in town doing some character research for True Blood. Also,  Goosie Mama has never been to Louisiana, but a place with shapeshifters, vampires, mind readers, fairies, etc. wouldn't be a half bad place to start she thinks!

And, last but not least....


Places to Avoid
1. East Meadow (both present day or as it exists in Partials by Dan Wells) Gah! Long Island!


1. Swamplandia (read Goosie Mama's review, in her own words, "nuff said")


3. Post-apocolyptic Chicago a la Divergent by Veronica Roth (jump from the El to the roof of the building?? Sounds risky)

Cruisin' Through a Series: The Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa

Oh, wait, is it possible? Another "ae" faery Cruisin' Through a Series post. I can't tell whether or not this is something to be proud of.  Since I am trying to keep my boyfriend from seeing the laptop screen as I type, its probably not.

But on to the review of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series. There are 4 of these books--Iron King, Iron Daughter, Iron Queen, Iron Knight. So through this series the main character Meghan finds out that she is the half-daughter of Oberon, the Faery king of the Summer Court, and that her best friend Robbie is in fact Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck (from a Midsummer's Night's Dream). She enters into the faery world to save her little brother, who had been kidnapped by a new faery in town, the Iron King (faery's lives in this telling are created by humans believing in them, and the iron fey are the new faeries of technology, which I thought was kind of cool. There is lots of iron, computer cords, etc in the iron realm). Through the next 3 books there are shenanigans of a war against the iron king, intrigue between the Winter Court  and the Summer Court, and trying to get the new and old faerie to cooperate since the fey are deathly allergic to iron. I have to say I kinda loved the characters in this. Puck is sarcastic and hilarious, Grimalkin the cat explains everything by "I am a cat" which is very funny, even if it doesn't translate to blogdom. I don't hate Meghan, which is pretty good considering the instalove with Prince Ash--SIGH.

Now, for the recap of why I kept coming back. Here is the scene. Crazy Camper calls me on her way home from work  and is all, oh hey I read book one and now book three has arrived at the lib, can you just summarize book two for me? AND I actually got to explain:

"so en-route to stopping a war between the Winter and Summer courts, Ash got wounded and needed to heal, and so he needed to  find some glamour, aka human emotions, to sorta feed off of and regain super faery strength. Puck, Meghan, and Ash happened to be in Meghan's home town where the school nurse was some sort of faery and the nurse pointed out that the Winter Ball was happening that night--perfect place to find emotions!  So the faeries make Meghan some fab dress from moss and dew and whatnot, and Ash wears and white tux and Puck a black one and off they go to the dance and make eyes at each other."


I mean, the end. that's amazing. and absurd.
(PS PUCK IS GREAT these covers, kinda painful to be seen with)

Guilty as Charged

 Ugh, I did it again. I skipped to the end to know what happened in another book. WHY, WHY!?!?  It seems like a brilliant idea at the time. But it leaves me feeling disappointed in the long run (I have the same relationship with late-night Hawaiian pizza). Its time to find some self control STAT. So here is an apology to both Lisa Mantchev's So Silver Bright and Julie Kagawa's The Iron Knight, who I abused in such a manner this week already. Sorry for being a flaky reader, I will try not to let the next YA series down.......(you might ask yourself, gentle reader/Sweet Tea/Goose/Crazy Camper, why the heck I have had time to be reading two books at once rather than dissertating....its because I managed to lock myself out of my apartment yesterday without any homework BUT in possession of my library card. So to the library I went....and it was raining......and my stretch pants may or may not have been on inside out. SIGH.)