Top 10 Tuesday: Trick or Treat

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie. So, let’s go trick-or-treating! Is it the book or movie adaptation that’s the treat?

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Practical Magic

Book: Trick – I hated this book with a passion.

Movie: Treat – The movie is so different from the book that if you named it something else, you’d never really guess there was a connection between the two. This is a fun flick about two witches who kill a dude and try to cover it up. It’s lighthearted… I promise.

---

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Book: Treat – I absolutely loved this book as a kid. One of my goals is to eventually go back and read the entire series, since I’ve only read this one.

Movie: Trick – Here’s an unpopular opinion, I don’t like the movie “Wizard of Oz”. While I appreciate it as a pivotal piece of film history, I cringe at the thought of having to watch it. Might be because I was forced to see it so many times as a kid.

Top 10 Tuesday: Books I Read Because of Recommendations

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is top 10 books I read because of recommendations.

---

Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi
Series: Lunar Chronicles #1

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

---

The Dancing Floor by Barbara Michaels
Genre: Gothic Mystery
Series: N/A

For years, Heather Tradescant had dreamed of the journey she and her father would take to England–a pilgrimage to the great gardens of history. Now that her father is dead, Heather is determined to fulfill his dreams. Unfortunately, her request to see the fabled 17th-century garden of Troytan House is denied by the owner. Though unwelcome, she braves the walls of briars and reaches the Victorian manor house beyond. She senses a strange mission of evil lurking, tainting the manor’s peaceful beauty. Only then does Heather begin to wonder whether it is only stories of long-vanished witchcraft that haunt Troytan House or whether there is some more modern horror, hearer at hand, and far, far more dangerous. Continuing in the classic tradition she established with such acclaimed novels of suspense as Stitches in Time, Vanish with the Rose, and House of Stone, New York Times bestselling author Barbara Michaels has penned a chilling tale that will keep you reading until the last page.

---

Top 10 Tuesday: Favorite Villains

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is top 10 favorite villains.

---

Dr. Chilton (Silence of the Lambs)
Genre: Thriller

I love Lecter as a villain, but he’s so contained here that he’s not much of a threat. Instead, I found Dr. Chilton and his machinations much more menacing in “Silence of the Lambs”. It’s his self-serving nature and his complete lack of caring of who he effects with his actions that made me want to see Lecter eat Chilton’s face off at the end.

---

Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
Genre: Classic

Nurse Ratched is one of the most classic villains. She’s a tyrant to the patients in the mental hospital and has a complete lack of empathy for the people in the institution. She has authority over everyone’s access to medications and basic necessities, which she views as privileges. She’s not shy about taking away those privileges anytime she thinks one of the patients are stepping even remotely out of line.

Top 10 Tuesday: Books on my Fall TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is top 10 books on your fall TBR pile.

Listed below are the books I’m planning to read this fall. You’ll see quite a bit of horror titles since I tend to get in the mood to read that genre in the fall/winter.

---

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Series: Six of Crows #2

Kaz Brekker and his crew have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn’t think they’d survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they’re right back to fighting for their lives. Double-crossed and left crippled by the kidnapping of a valuable team member, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz’s cunning and test the team’s fragile loyalties. A war will be waged on the city’s dark and twisting streets―a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of magic in the Grisha world.

---

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
Genre: Horror
Series: N/A

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör comes packaged in the form of a glossy mail order catalog, complete with product illustrations, a home delivery order form, and a map of Orsk’s labyrinthine showroom.

Top 10 Tuesday: Favorite Audio Books and Web Series

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is an all about audio freebie.

Honestly, I don’t listen to very many audio books and I didn’t want to pad out this list. So, I’m cutting this week’s list into two top fives. The first half of the list will be my five favorite audio books. And, since I watch a ridiculous amount of YouTube, the second half of will be my top five favorite web series (at the moment).

---

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Narrator: Michael C. Hall
Genre: Classic

Truman Capote’s writing is gorgeous and Michael C. Hall did a truly spectacular job of narrating this one. This is my all time favorite audio book. If you get the opportunity, it’s definitely worth a listen.

Back Cover Description: It’s New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany’s. And nice girls don’t, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly ‘top banana in the shock department’, and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

---

The Martian by Andy Weir
Narrator: R.C. Bray
Genre: Sci-Fi

I expect this one will make it onto a lot of audio book lists this week. R.C. Bray nailed Mark Watney in his narration of “The Martian”. The way this one is written makes it so excellent to listen to since it feels like you’re hearing to recordings Watney is making while stranded. This is one book where I’ll actually suggest someone listen to it vs. read it.

Back Cover Description: Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate the planet while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded on Mars’ surface, completely alone, with no way to signal Earth that he’s alive. And even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone years before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, Mark won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark’s not ready to quit. Armed with nothing but his ingenuity and his engineering skills—and a gallows sense of humor that proves to be his greatest source of strength–he embarks on a dogged quest to stay alive, using his botany expertise to grow food and even hatching a mad plan to contact NASA back on Earth.

As he overcomes one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next, Mark begins to let himself believe he might make it off the planet alive.

But Mars has plenty of surprises in store for him yet.

---

Top 10 Tuesday: Favorite Fantasy Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is all time favorite books of X genre.

I decided to go with fantasy books. For the sake of this list, I’m not including any titles in the urban fantasy sub-genre. That’s a list for a different day.

---

Radiance by Grace Draven
Standalone or Series: Series
Series Complete: No, there’s 2 books so far. The second one wraps-up Brishen and Ildiko’s story. The next books in the series will follow different characters.
Review Here

Back Cover Description: Brishen Khaskem, prince of the Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne secured many times over. A trade and political alliance between the human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Always a dutiful son, Brishen agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined.

Ildiko, niece of the Gauri king, has always known her only worth to the royal family lay in a strategic marriage. Resigned to her fate, she is horrified to learn that her intended groom isn’t just a foreign aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor human. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she’s known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by light. Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart.

---

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Standalone or Series: Series
Series Complete: ALMOST! This is a duology, the second book comes out this month.
Review Here

Back Cover Description: Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone…

A convict with a thirst for revenge.

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.

A runaway with a privileged past.

A spy known as the Wraith.

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.

Kaz’s crew are the only ones who might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

Top 10 Tuesday: Favorite TV Shows

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is to pick a TV-themed topic. So, I’m choosing to do my top 10 favorite TV shows, at the moment. From the list you’re going to be able to tell that I haven’t been watching a whole lot of new stuff lately.

---

X-Files
Series Run: 9 seasons, plus 2 movies and a revival
Originally Aired: 1993 – 2002, 2016
Genre: Sci-Fi, Horror-lite
Favorite Character: Dana Scully
Top 5 Favorite Episodes: (1) Beyond the Sea; (2) Ice; (3) Die Hand Die Verletzt; (4) Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’; (5) Detour

I binged hardcore on The X-Files in 2015. For the most part, the show has held up spectacularly well. Sure, there’s some technology focused episodes that are ridiculous/cringe-worthy but the rest is pretty solid.

Where the Show Lost Me: Middle of season 7. This is one of those shows that dragged on too long. The overarching mythology started to get too crazy for me in season 6 but I manged to hold on for a little while longer before giving up. I did, however, watch the short revival that aired last year.

---

 

Firefly
Series Run: 0.5 seasons, plus 1 movie
Originally Aired: 2003 – 2004
Genre: Sci-Fi, Space Western
Favorite Character: Zoë Washburne
Top 5 Favorite Episodes: (1) The Train Job; (2) Out of Gas; (3) Our Mrs. Reynolds; (4) Jaynestown; (5) War Stories

For only having 14 episodes, Firefly has a major cult following. I wasn’t among those who watched it as it aired on TV, since I was still a little too young to get into it. Plus, my love of sci-fi didn’t develop until about six years ago.

Where the Show Lost Me: Serenity. Okay, okay. I still kind of love the movie since it offers nice closure to some things Firefly never had the opportunity to conclude. But I still like to pretend certain things didn’t happen.

Top 10 Tuesday: Favorite Books Read in School

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is Back To School Freebie — anything “back to school” related. So, I chose to do my 10 favorite books read for school.

---

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Back Cover Description: First published in 1892, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity. In the involuntary confinement of her bedroom, the hero creates a reality of her own beyond the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wallpaper–a pattern that has come to symbolize her own imprisonment. Narrated with superb psychological and dramatic precision, “The Yellow Wallpaper” stands out not only for the imaginative authenticity with which it depicts one woman’s descent into insanity, but also for the power of its testimony to the importance of freedom and self-empowerment for women.

---

The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

Back Cover Description: Written during the final stages of her illness, “The Garden Party and Other Stories” is full of a sense of urgency and was Katherine Mansfield’s last collection to be published during her lifetime. The fifteen stories, many of them set in her native New Zealand, vary in length and tone from the opening story, “At the Bay, ” a vivid impressionistic evocation of family life, to the short, sharp sketch “Mrs. Brill, ” in which a lonely woman’s precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed when she overhears two young lovers mocking her. Sensitive revelations of human behavior, these stories reveal Mansfield’s supreme talent as an innovator who freed the story from its conventions and gave it a new strength and prestige.

---

Top 10 Tuesday: Books That Have Been on My TBR Pile Since I Started Blogging

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is “ten books that have been on your TBR pile since before you started blogging”.

Even though this blog is only about 2 years old, I originally started blogging in 2004. I’m actually proud to say that I don’t have any books that have been on my TBR for 12 years. However, I do have some that are pretty darn close. So, these are the 10 books that have been sitting on my TBR pile the longest.

---

Greygallows by Barbara Michaels
Genre: Gothic Mystery
Length of Time on TBR: 10 years

Back Cover Description: Lucy Cartwright placed her life and future into the hands of the dashing Baron Clare, despite the rumors of his dark, unsavory past. Trusting his kind words and gentle manner, she agreed to be his wife and followed the enigmatic lord to Greygallows, his sprawling country estate. But mystery, deception, betrayal, and danger surround the magnificent manor—a ghostly secret charges the atmosphere and terror reigns in its shadowed hallways. Lucy entered Greygallows willingly . . . and now she may never leave.

---

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Genre: Literary Fiction
Length of Time on TBR: 9 years

Back Cover Description: It’s been 11 years since Junot Díaz’s critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus “lovesick ghetto nerd” with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake.

Top 10 Tuesday: Books Set in New Orleans

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is top 10 books set in X. For this one, I chose to do New Orleans. The first six books are ones I’ve read and enjoyed. The last 4 are books set in New Orleans that are on my TBR pile.

“In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home. ” — Anne Rice “Interview with the Vampire”

---

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Genre: Classic

Back Cover Description: Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole’s tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. (“Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.”) But Ignatius’s quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso–who mistakes him for a vagrant–and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.

---

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
Genre: Horror

Back Cover Description: Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force—a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.