‘Me, a name I call myself,…’

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Every Tuesday over at the  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  The topic this week is :

Characters Names that I love

There are plenty of great characters in books and some very memorable names.  Here are my top ten memorable names.

  1. Max/Maxim – I love this name- and in fact the novel that I first encountered it in – Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca.
  2. Oberon.  What a wonderful name and one we all probably know in terms of him being King of the Fae.  Brought to life in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream it’s a name that I also now associate with a rather large, unkempt and sausage loving wolf hound that keeps Atticus company in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles.
  3. I really like the use of the months of the year that Seanan McGuire uses for her Toby Daye series.  I think to date we’ve got characters called  October, January and April – I wonder if we’ll complete the full calendar month?  Kind of hoping that December will be used at some point as that’s my birth month!  *winks at MsMcGuire*
  4. The Bastard.  This is the name of a feisty horse, belonging to Imriel in Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series.  It just makes me smile – I’m very easily pleased like that, I know it’s not big and clever but it’s just a name that really seems to fit on this occasion.
  5. Inigo Montoya – this character is brilliant and you certainly can’t forget his name – he simply won’t let you.  The Princess Bride by William Goldman
  6. Sherlock Holmes – you can’t really ask for a more memorable name.  How on earth you come up with a name like that is a mystery to me but it’s brilliant and a name that everyone knows, whether they’ve read the books or not!
  7. Dolores Umbridge – you really do have to hand it to Rowling – this name is inspired and suits the character to perfection!
  8. Ebenezer Scrooge – again, a name that everyone knows and more than that uses.  Scrooge has become synonymous with tight fisted miserliness.  Dickens A Christmas Carol.
  9. Samwise Gamgee – I don’t need to qualify this one do I!  ‘I ain’t been dropping no eaves sir’!  Okay, Lord of the Rings by JRRTolkien.
  10. Dracula – another name that really needs no explanation.  I think everybody must know this name.  Bram Stoker’s famous vampire creation!

 

Ode to bloggers..

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Every Tuesday over at the  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  The topic this week is :

Ten Books I’ve Read Because Of Another  Blogger

One of the beauties of blogging is the number of amazing books that I’ve picked up as a result of great recommendations.  This list barely scratches the surface of course – not to mention I can’t in fairness always remember who recommended a book.  Of course a lot of books I’ve stumbled on purely by good fortune (or dumb luck)  but here are a few examples of books that I probably would have overlooked (at least for a while):

  1. I am Legend by Richard Matheson – this is one of many titles that I came to read courtesy of Jenny at Wondrous Reads.
  2. The Troupe by Robert J Bennett – recommended to me by Andrea at The Little Red Reviewer – again, one of many titles that I’ve picked up from this excellent blog!
  3. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – I first read about this on Carl’s Stainless Steel Droppings blog – I can also credit Sanderson’s Way of Kings and Butcher’s Dresden files to my early exploration of this blog.
  4. The Kushiel books by Jacqueline Carey.  To be honest I had already read Kushiel’s Dart but hadn’t continued with the series.  Thanks to Susan at Dab of Darkness and a number of readalongs involving a host of other bloggers I’m now in the process of reading my sixth book from this series (Kushiel’s Mercy).
  5. My favourite UF of the moment – the Toby Daye series by Seanan McGuire.  Currently reading book six as part of a readalong.  I wouldn’t have picked up this series without the readalongs organised by Lisa at Over The Effing Rainbow.
  6. Danya at Fine Print recommended to me Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews which was a rather sizzling first in series that I really look forward to continuing with!
  7. Mogsy at the Bibliosanctum first drew my attention to Dreamer’s Pool by Juliet Marillier which I loved.
  8. Lisa at Tenacious Reader recently wrote a review for Rae Carson’s Walk on Earth a Stranger.  Now, I had seen this around the blogosphere a number of times and I like the look of it already but this review I think really pushed me over the edge with this one.  I haven’t yet picked it up but it’s on the top of my list now.
  9. The next two are slightly different.  The Classics Club blog is a blog where people come together to talk about classic literature and to set themselves up with a list of books that they would like to way.  It’s a way of encouraging us all to pick up some of the older books that we might otherwise not get to.  I’ve read some good books so far – my last one was the very dark and spooky House of Usher by Poe.
  10. Finally, three different sci fi events hosted by Rinn Reads, Stainless Steel Droppings and Little Red Reviewer that have increased my sci reading enormously.  For example, I never would have read Flowers for Algernon or Fahrenheit 451 without these events and that would have been a crying shame.

And now, a little buffet of covers:

Wait till they get a load of me…

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Every Tuesday over at the  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  The topic this week is :

‘All About The Villains’

  1. Voldemort – needs no explanation!  But, just in case.  Seriously bad wizard with dreams of taking over the world of wizarding!  Harry Potter series by J K Rowling.
  2. Game of Thrones – evil siblings – what on earth could be worse.  GRRMartin’s Cersei and Jaime.
  3. Sauron – this guy only has a disembodied eye – an eye – okay it’s a huge eye, but still!  and he’s still making a play for world domination with orcs and the like running amok.
  4. Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series: Rayseline – fae.  In fairness she was kidnapped as a youngster and this has left it’s mark on her but even so – she plots!
  5. The Seven Forges series by James Moore – Sa’ba Taalor – God touched and basically war machines.  They live to fight and seem to feel no fear.  A great creation by James Moore.
  6. Hex  by Thomas Olde Heuvelt – Katherine van Wyler  – a witch, eyes and mouth sewn shut, she stalks the residents of Black Springs (where she was killed over 300 years earlier).  Nobody leaves Black Springs and lives to tell the tale.
  7. The Kushiel books by Jacqueline Carey:  Melisande a scheming woman who always has the long game in mind.  A magnificent baddie!
  8. Mrs Danvers from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.  You have to love Mrs Danvers – a woman obsessed.
  9. The White Witch from C S Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe – how can you like a person who froze Mr Tumnus!?!  It’s just wrong!
  10. Wesley Chu’s Tao series: The Genjix – a nation of aliens divided (The Genjix and the Prophus) and at war with each other here on earth – where they have to inhabit the bodies of people!

Autumn reading

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Every Tuesday over at the  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  The topic this week is :

Books on my autumn reading list

Nice and easy this week: these are my next scheduled books:

  1. Chasing Embers by James Bennett
  2. The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
  3. Summerlong by Peter S Beagle
  4. A Deadly Affection by Cuyler Overholt
  5. The Thorn of Emberlain by Scott Lynch
  6. The Witches of New York by Ami McKay
  7. A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky
  8. The Apothecary’s Curse by Barbara Barnett
  9. Faithful by Alice Hoffman
  10. Congress of Secrets by Stephanie Burgis

 

Speaking for themselves: audio books

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Every Tuesday over at the  The Broke and Bookish we all get to look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  The topic this week is :

Audio Freebie

In which I confess that I’ve never listened to a book.  I think if I was to pick 10 books though to give audio a try they would be as follows:

  1. The 3 Fairytale retellings by Sarah Pinborough: Beauty/Poison/Charm – because these are relatively short books, they’re retellings based on fairytales and they’re quite fascinating and cheeky takes on the original stories – I don’t think my attention would wander.
  2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – because I understand Neil Gaiman narrates this one on audio and so I would love to listen to it.
  3. The Road Brothers by Mark Lawrence – this is a series of short stories all connected to The Broken Empire series – I think it would be very easy to listen to these, one at a time, not all in one go but just every now and again.
  4. Something spooky that would give me the chills – The Haunting of Hill House of Shirley Jackson – I have a notion that listening to something scary would be excellent – providing it was narrated well, I suppose it could go horribly wrong!
  5. Monstrous Little voices – 5 stories retold, based on some of Shakespeare’s most famous works but given a more modern voice.  Each five of the stories connect but I figure listening to these would be great – overall just shy of 350 pages but taken individually they’re lovely little chunks.  As a rule I don’t like short stories but when they all connect in this way they’re excellent.
  6. I think I would like to listen to some of the Sherlock Holmes books on audio – particularly Hound of the Baskervilles.
  7. I think a book with excellent dialogue throughout – such as The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
  8. Bram Stoker’s Dracula – because of the style of narration I just imagine this would be an excellent audio book.
  9. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J K Rowling – I think the first in the series had a lighter feel and would be a good starting point
  10. Suggestions – given that I’ve read all of the above – do you have any suggestions that feel similar??

 

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