Hey everyone! Today has been so much fun! I've done more reading today than I have in a long time! I managed to read three and a half books today! I feel like that is quite an accomplishment, especially because I had a lot of other things going on today too! I read:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (533 pgs.)
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silversteing (169 pgs.)
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (232 pgs.)
and I started Izzy, willy-nilly by Cynthia Voigt.
I didn't get much blogging done today, (maybe tomorrow) but I did take the time to check out the mini-challenges posted today, and try my hand at those. I don't know if I have an answer to each challenge today, but here goes-
Over at Book Crazy we were asked to pick our favorite book or character and find a song or image that describes the book or person. This is hard for me because I can never pick just one favorite. However, the Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld has been on my mind a lot recently, so I decided to pick a song for them.
Joydrop is a very unknown Canadian band from the 90s. They sing one of my most favorite songs, and I believe parts of the song describe various elements of this series almost perfectly. The song is called Beautiful.
The Uglies series (full review later) takes place sometime in our future, after our bad eco-habits have destroyed the world. (more or less...) Our main character is Tally, and all she wants is to become a Pretty and move into Prettytown. It's what you do when you turn 16 and it's what everyone waits for. Westerfeld took this idea of being "Beautiful like you" and crafted a story around it.
The verses of the song are all begin with the line, "If I were beatiful like you". She sings about her desire to be beautiful and all the doors or opportunities that would open up for her. (They'd do anything to please me; I'd never be at fault; I'd have so many friends; etc.) And the chorus sings, "But that will never be, cause I'm not beautiful like you, I'm beautiful like me."
Tally grows a lot during this series, and one of the biggest things that she must learn is how to accept herself and the others around her for who they are and how they look before surgery. She must accept that she is "beautiful like me." I love this song. It is one of my all time favorites, and I love thinking about how this song fits in with this series. If you've read the series and you listen to this song, I would love to hear your thoughts! Tell me if you think my song matches up well!
Over at The Eager Readers we are asked about our favorite fictional couples and which people we would like to see cross over between novels. This one was also hard, because I don't read a lot of romance so I was struggling to come up with anyone besides Elizabeth and Darcy... However, after scanning my bookshelf, I came up with a few couples that I just adore. So:
Enna and Finn from Shannon Hale's Books of Bayern. Enna is one of my favorite characters from this series — so full of life and fire (haha... aren't I funny!) and Finn is just such a solid steady guy. I love what he is willing to do for Enna even if sometimes I wanted to smack her a little bit... He rocks.
Harry and Corlath from Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword because I just love this book, okay?
Warning — my crossover couple DOES contain SPOILERS so BE CAREFUL READING!!
The cross over couple is significantly harder for me, because I don't generally think about books in relation to others, at least not in terms of characters meeting. To me, they remain separate and individual. I'm not thinking — Oh! These two characters would go great together unless they are both characters in the same series... So, the couple that I am crossing over is not because I somehow think they would be absolutely great together as characters, and more because I really want both characters to end up happy, and given the nature of each book, there is almost/maybe/possibly sorta kinda a chance they would meet in some futuristic/past alternate reality in space... (confused? Ya... Me too...)
So, my couple would be Gemma Doyle from Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty series and Georyn from Sylvia Engdahl's Enchantress from the Stars. Both are characters who are ultimately denied their perfect happy ending, but I love them both and want them to be happy. But, I don't want to break up some other happy couple to give that to them...
The other couple I would love to see 'together' would be Elizabeth Bennett with Heathcliff and/or Darcy with Catherine. NOT because I think they would be a good match, but because I would love to 'watch' Darcy or Elizabeth tear into the respective Wuthering Heights cast member... I think it would be great to watch Elizabeth tell Heathcliff what a soulless waste of breathing space he is, and listen to Darcy berate Catherine for her incredible selfishness and manipulation. I did actually enjoy Wuthering Heights. It is probably high on my list of classic favorites, but I would never wish either of the leads (or really any other character for that matter) on any one... Ugh. What an unpleasant bunch of people!
I might give the challenge hosted at I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read a chance tomorrow, but none of the chapters I've read so far have inspired me to song.
That's all for my update tonight. This post is long enough already! Let me know what you all think, and I am, of course, open to reading suggestions for the next two days of the read-a-thon!