[Official Blurb] Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature / weekly meme created by The Broke & the Bookish. The meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke & the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your Top 10 Lists! In January, 2018 this meme is now hosted byThat Artsy Reader Girl.
Today’s entry was inspiring to me for the following reasons:
I’ve been attempting to re-enter the lovely meme world of #TopTenTuesday since [2018 when I posted my sixth entry!] – to say I was slightly distracted by health afflictions and the tides of life therein would be putting it mildly. This week whilst I was sorting out how to *announce!* my intentions of reading the YA stories winking at me from my bookshelves for the past several years, I decided that this would be a fitting post to tuck into a #TopTenTuesday!
Even though my list is actually *25!* books long – I’ve placed select titles in *bold* to highlight on this post – these are the stories which I felt would befit a Top Ten List feature and the ten most anticipated reads I have on this List as well. Don’t get me wrong – I have been chasing after these stories for the past few years ever since they arrived in for review consideration, however, of the *20!* these were the 10x stories I felt helped inspire me to re-attempt reading the fuller list.
This is also the first year where I felt I could re-focus and re-address a lot of my backlogue of reviews, which I’ll talk about in a moment. If you’re also planning to read a heap of YA this Summer, due leave me a comment – add your book recs and/or the links to your own #TopTenTuesday!
Many of the book bloggers I visited were bloggers I regularly either a) follow and b) read – this is also the first year I’ve felt I can become more actively conversational again and look forward to the new convos which have yet to arrive.
DUE NOTE: all the books featured on #MyYASummer Reading List were books sent to me for review consideration at some point or another over the past few years. With the exception of ‘New England Rocks’ which was a gift from the author Christina Courtenay.
Interestingly enough, for those of you curious how we order things without thinking specifically about how we want to sort the books we’re reading, here is the organic nature of how the books were stacked as I sorted out which books would make into this challenge list:
Beautiful Girl by Fleur Phillips | #SRC2015 via #YASRC 2015
American Ballerina by Nancy Lorenz
Solomon’s Bell by Michelle Lowry Combs | leftover from #WyrdAndWonder
Kitty Hawk and the Hunt for Hemingway’s Ghost by Iain Reading
I, James by Mike Hartner | Kate Tilton’s Book Bloggers
Unclaimed Legacy by Deborah Heal | leftover from #RRSciFiMonth
The Kingdom Within by Samantha Gillespie | Kate Tilton’s Book Bloggers
Pig Park by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez
Kitty Hawk and the Icelandic Intrigue by Iain Reading
The Red Sun by Alane Adams | #SRC2015 via #YASRC 2015
Flower from the Castile by Lilian Gafni | Kate Tilton’s Book Bloggers
The Smell of Old Lady Perfumeby Claudia Guadalupe Martinez
New England Rocks by Christina Courtenay
Kitty Hawk and the Tragedy of the HMS Titanic by Iain Reading
The Beauty Thief by Rachael Ritchey
Every Hill and Mountain by Deborah Heal | leftover from #RRSciFiMonth
Trinity Stones by L.G. O’ Connor | leftover from #RRSciFiMonth
Sketcher by Roland Watson Grant
Portals, Passages and Pathways by B.R. Maul | leftover from #WyrdAndWonder
Captive Hope by Rachael Ritchey
Beyond the Moon by R.J. Wood
Impossible by C.A. Gray | leftover from #RRSciFiMonth
The Lemorian Crest by Hannah L. Clark | leftover from #RRSciFiMonth
I decided I wanted to finish reading the Kitty Hawk series and as YA can shift between traditional YA stories for audiences of readers who are seeking a less adult world within their YA selections to the Upper YA category which is fused with adult themes and situations – I decided to also include at the end of Summer a few stories befitting the reader ready to leave YA and opt instead for New Adult Fiction. As a segue before entering into Adult Lit.
+ Kitty Hawk and the Mystery of Masterpieces by Iain Reading
+ The Secret Life of Jenny Liu by Jean Ramsden
+ Asher’s Mark by Amy Durham
+ Dare to Kiss by S.B. Alexander
| by the numbers |
3x of BookSparks Reading Challenge Books
3x of Kate Tilton’s Book Bloggers List Reviews
2x of reviews leftover from Wyrd And Wonder (Years 1 & 2)
5x of reviews leftover from #RRSciFiMonth | Sci Fi November
+ / – 1x Middle Grade (others might be considered cross-overs / dual interest between MG & YA however the one MG I know for sure is “The Secret Life of Lucy Liu”
Wyrd And Wonder banner created by Imyril. Image Credit: Dragon – by kasana86 from 123RF.com.
Hallo, Hallo dear hearts!
Welcome to *Wyrd & Wonder* – Imyril, Lisa and I have delightfully planned a wicked #awesomesauce month of FANTASY celebration for you! This marks our 2nd Year co-hosting #WyrdAndWonder and we couldn’t be happier knowing we have mor participants this 2nd Year as well as renewed interest in the events we’ve planned.
A book photo challenge which can be done daily, weekly and/or in any combination of exploration you can think of!
2x Readalongs for those seeking community bookish discussions
A welcoming community of Fantasy appreciators across blogs | Twitter | #bookstagram & #booktube
We have been dearly *excited!* about kicking off our 2nd annual *Wyrd & Wonder* as last year was a raving success inasmuch as our mini-event #SpooktasticReads – all the while able to generate (discussion) posts or other such lovelies which help us better understand what it is about this wondrously lovely genre which entices us to enter into its sweet folds of worlds & wonders!
I’ve been an appreciator of Fantasy since I was quite a young girl – in fact, there is a blurred line about what I first discovered – Science Fiction or Fantasy?
Do you remember how *excited!* you were about seeing “The Neverending Story” for the first time as much as the twentieth?
There is a certain layer of JOY bursting out of reading & watching stories of the fantastical – I personally, love seeing how the writers knit the world ‘behind’ the Quest, the Journey and the dramatic lives of the characters you are almost too excited to be ‘meeting’!
These are the worlds which dimensionally re-define what is plausible and second nature to our own world – whilst re-instill why we have a penchant for Science Fiction – because where Sci-Fi leaves off, Fantasy begins or rather, both sides of the Speculative realms can sometimes blur together, co-merge and re-bend how we feel about *Fiction!* overall!
The beauty of course, is in the possibilities – of finding the authors (such as the ones I previously listed on my landing page for our inaugural *Wyrd & Wonder*) and the stories which enrich our hearts & minds for what is fantastically able to be imagined. I love seeing writers ‘go further, pushing our minds to see what they see & endeavour us to consider possibilities far outside the norm’ as this is what entices all of us to read Fantasy.
Week of Thursday, 26st of September through 1st of October, 2015 | Hostess List
I’ve honestly wanted to start participating in this weekly meme in 2014, however, I would always seem to get distracted during the hours leading up to Thursdays OR completely forget to compose my thoughts for this meme until into the weekend; at which point, the time had come and gone. I like the fact we can exchange thoughts percolating in our minds that run the gambit of the bookish world, creative outlets, or thoughts we want to share that might show a bit more about who we are behind the bookish blog we maintain. I am going to attempt to thread the journal of my 10 Bookish / Not Bookish Thoughts by order of the entries arrival into my life rather than a preference of 1-10.
No, your eyes did not lie to you, this is No. 6, No. 2-5 will be released this Autumn.
No. 1 | Corvidae + Scarecrow | Anthologies by World Weaver Press
As you might have recalled I happily devoured the stories in Rhonda Parrish’s first anthological series debut FAE, wherein I found myself quite delighted to find stories of the fae represented in such a uniquely clever collection of inspiration and craft of story-telling. After concluding my review on behalf of FAE, I wasn’t quite sure what I should request next via World Weaver Press, when happily their publicist Ms Wagner suggested I follow FAE with the next two anthologies in sequence:
What is so wicked awesome about these two anthologies is there is a serial short between them, which outside of pulp fiction and the classical serials found in zines decades inside the early 20th Century, I haven’t come across serial shorts inside anthologies! I’m quite a newbie to anthologies of the 21st Century, and thereby, each time I make a discovery I am wicked excited by the possibilities of what I am about to read!
I am now piqued with keen interest to read Sanctuary and Judge & Jury! I had agreed knowingly with the reviewer – sometimes you come across a short so profoundly moving, if you never found another you loved dearly as much, the collection was worth it’s weight in gold! This happened to me once in another anthology where I found a writer so tapped into the human condition and the emphatic heart we all have within us, I was forever moved! Shorts despite their length are powerful in what they convey! The four I focused on myself from FAE are still with me, even now.
I must confess, this fellow book blogger out here in the book blogosphere is as keenly passionate about these anthologies as I am, as it’s his reviews on behalf of these two anthologies that encouraged me to take the plunge into reading them myself!
I must admit – reading the reviews on Tangent in combination with reading the Press Kits helped make my decision because Tangent has bloggers who knit out the heart of each story and give me ‘just enough’ to whet a thirst of interest.
Do visit his reviews, ahead of my own which will be arriving in October!
And, dear hearts guess what!? Parrish isn’t yet done with her Magical Menagerie! She’s putting together a new collection entitled: SIRENS! Eek. Can you just imagine!? Watery stories of EPIC MYTHOLOGICAL loveliness?! I’m not sure about you, but World Weaver Press has bewitched me!
No. 2 | Being a part of DAW’s blog tour for This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie E. Czerneda
I initially thought my path had crossed with Ms Czerneda during Sci Fi November 2014, until I ran a search for our tweet convos and realised it was a bit earlier in 2014 during the Sci Fi Writer’s chat! Who knew!? I used to duck inside the #sffwrtcht on a regular basis, as I have a healthy appetite for SFF whilst getting the opportunity to talk to writers who are enveloping us in worlds that are a jolt outside our own realities to the brink of epic intraspace proportions! As we do not just jettison ourselves off of Earth or into the orbit surrounding Earth, we sometimes traverse the divides of time itself whilst visiting territorial systems beyond our line of sight. Then, there is the hidden joy of writers who write an arbitrage of stories contained on Earth herself but within the light years of time ahead of our own living futures, taking us both on land and sea to explore new frontiers and the plausiblilties of life therein. Read More
