Divergent

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Characters I Wish Would Get Their OWN Book

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week – I’m thinking I might not take part every week but just see if a week takes my fancy. I love secondary characters, sometimes more than the main character, so this was the perfect Top Ten Tuesday for me as I always want to know more about minor or secondary characters.

photo 1Angela – The Inheritance Cycle – Christopher Paolini
I quite like not knowing much about Angela’s past but I think it would be cool to have a story about what she did after Galbatorix is defeated. I’d love to see her go on more adventures and get involved in other rebellions and excitements.

Robin Goodfellow – Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman
Robin Goodfellow is a very old puck so I’d love to read about his adventures before he met Cal and Nico in the twenty-first century.

Murtagh – The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini
Murtagh is such a tragic character. I’d love to have a book from his point of view about when he is captured by Galbatorix and how he came to be bounded with Thorn, his dragon. It wouldn’t be a fun story but I’d like to see what was done to him to make him turn against Eragon, but at the same time what made him stay strong and try to protect Nasuada.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Book Characters That Would Be Sitting At My Lunch Table

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week – I’m thinking I might not take part every week but just see if a week takes my fancy. This is an eclectic mix of characters of various ages so let’s say this school is more of a school/college/university hybrid where age doesn’t really matter. Also this is quite an eclectic mix of characters and personalities which I think is quite true to life as I tend to have eclectic groups of friends who are interested in different things.

Christina (Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth) Christina
Christina would definitely tell it like it is and help keep everyone level-headed and would be there for everyone.

Cal Leandros (Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman)
Cal would be a bit moody and a bit of a loner but he’d soon become one of the gang and would be very loyal to the group and be up for being a sarcastic idiot now and then.

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Y is for: YA and my problems with it

YA or Young Adult literature is incredibly popular right now. Like any type of literature it covers many genres including contemporary, dystopian, fantasy, romance and many more. All YA books put a big focus on the plot, which is often fast moving, and the characters rather on the language.

This is great and sometimes a plot driven book is just what I want and need to get me reading in amongst my university work.

However I’ve sometimes been a little annoyed with the way some YA books are written. Now this is a bit of a generalisation though I will draw on two specific examples, one from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins and Divergent by Veronica Roth so spoilers for those two books.

The main thing is that some plot points or potential plot twists seem to be blatantly obvious to me. I don’t know if this is because I am 22 (so in some ways you could say I am a young adult) when the target audiences are teenagers, so theoretically I have read more and am used to the typical genre tropes or narrative arcs so can see where something is going. But at the same time it sometimes feels like the author is being slightly insulting to its audiences (and sometimes its characters) by making something so obvious.

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S is for: Secondary Characters

I really like secondary characters, whether they’re in film, TV shows or books I’m probably going to be more interested in in the secondary character(s) or at least like them quicker than the main characters. I think it’s because the secondary characters sometimes say what we’re all thinking, or that they’re funny, or that because their secondary characters you don’t know that much about them so you can make up your own backstory for them.

So here are some of my favourite secondary characters:

Angela from the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paoliniphoto 1
I love how mysterious Angela is, and while you do get some hints to what her background is in the final book, I love how you never know everything about her. I think if you did she’d lose something that makes her so special. Angela is a healer and witch and has the uncanny ability to turn up wherever significant events are happening.

Jonathan Carnahan from The Mummy and The Mummy Returns
(I feel as if I’m forever mentioning The Mummy and Jonathan Carnahan in these blog posts – oh well! Just shows home much I love him)
Jonathan is funny, loyal but slightly useless. He’d do anything to help his family but he’s also a bit of a scaredy-cat that being said when he needs to step up the plate he does so.

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