Top Ten Tuesday – A Wonderful World of Books

Afternoon! I have to admit that this topic cause me a little bit of dread, there are just so many wonderful worlds that have been lovingly created and brought to life by incredible creative authors over hundreds of years, how could I narrow this down to just ten?

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to focus on the bookish worlds I would most enjoy living in or those I would want to avoid at all costs so I decided on a mixture of both!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Bookish Worlds – Those I’d Love To Call Home & Those I’d Avoid At All Costs

Home – Magical Britain – Harry Potter

I suspect this will feature on a fair few posts today! I was about 10 when I first discovered Harry Potter, just about a year after the Philosopher’s Stone was first published and I’ve been waiting for my Hogwarts letter ever since! Now don’t get me wrong, I can quite believe that Magical Britain during the wizarding wars was probably a pretty terrifying place to be, not knowing for sure if you and your friends and family would make it through the next day but even so I think I’d love to be able to call Hermione a friend – oh and housework really bores me so the idea of being able to tidy, iron and do the dishes with a couple of waves of a wand is amazing! And just think of all those wardrobe options when you can transfigure one pair of shoes or a dress into another!

Avoid – Republic of Gilead – The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale was one of my set texts when I sat my AS level in English Literature, slightly longer ago than I care to admit, and I remember being terrified by the idea of a world like the one Offred finds herself in, reduced to little more than a walking incubator without a name of her own. At first read it seems pretty extreme but at the same time it’s not hard to imagine groups of people in the world who would quite happily make it true given half a chance so yeah not a world I fancy being a part of and I’d probably find myself shipped off to The Colonies.

Home – Alternative Oxford and Lyra’s World – His Dark Materials 

A little like the Magical Britain of Harry Potter, Lyra’s world is not perfect, the Gobblers, the officials from the Magisterium and the soul eating spectres of Cittàgazze are all things I’d rather avoid but other aspects are pretty cool, I think having a dæmon of your own would be pretty amazing, and I’m pretty intrigued about which form mine would have settled into. Also who wouldn’t want the armoured bears of Svalbard as a friend! I mean you wouldn’t want one as an enemy but I adored Iorek Byrnison.

Avoid – Sempera – Everless

I adored Everless when I read it and I cannot wait for Evermore to be released but there’s no way I’d want to live in Sempera. Where time is money quite literally and hours, days and weeks can be extracted from your blood and bound to coins to use as currency. The rich can live for centuries, while the poor can bleed themselves dry, using up their time early to pay their debts. The chances of me being born into one of the wealthy families like the Gerlings is pretty slim, and the idea of being one of the poor in this world is terrifying! That said I’m not sure I’d want to live for centuries, dissolving the coins in my tea to casually add on a year or two, all the while knowing one of the coins may have come from a little old women who gave up her last week to pay the rent and keep a roof over her grandchildren’s heads.

Home – An Angelo Events Convention – Unconventional

This one is much more achievable than Hogwarts or Lyra’s Oxford, I would love to immerse myself in convention after convention but alas distance and funds are against me! One day things will align and I’ll have enough cash and annual leave left to attend a few – although YALC if you feel like doing a year in Scotland for a little variety I wouldn’t say no!

Avoid – Vermaine – All Rights Reserved

I must confess to not having fully read the book I’m speaking about here, I have it to read, but I did read the extract that was in Buzz Books and it terrified me! All Rights Reserved perhaps hasn’t had quite the same buzz as some other YA books so let me explain why it terrifies me so much. In the world of All Rights Reserved everything is trademarked, restricted or copyrighted. Want to say the word beautiful? That will cost you $8.99. Quickly pat someone on the shoulder? That’ll be another $1.98 – as long as it only lasts 2 seconds. As soon as you turn 15 you receive a cuff, which from that point on will measure everything you say, every gesture you make and charge you for it! I think I’d quite quickly bankrupt myself! So as much as I’m looking forward to picking up the book and getting stuck in it’s not a world I would want to live in.

Home – Rosewood Hall – Undercover Princess

This was a little bit of a take it or leave it book for me, I kept waiting for the plot to really kick in and the excitement to step up a few levels and it didn’t really. That said I think I would quite like being at Rosewood Hall, especially if it meant I was a princess or the daughter of some high powered diplomat who could afford to send me to one of the most prestigious schools in the world – I think I could probably get used to being ferried about on a private jet…

Avoid – Fire Lake – Project Nemesis

Definitely don’t fancy being Min – being quite horribly murdered every second year from my eighth birthday? No ta! While not all of Min’s sophomore class have to go through the experience of being murdered regularly, the other experiences they have to go through still aren’t ones I would pick to encounter! I’m not spoiling the plot so I’ll let you all read Nemesis to figure out why Fire Lake isn’t a place I fancy being!

Home – Narnia – The Chronicles of Narnia

There’s a very specific time period this would have to be, I’m thinking the nice peaceful period after the White Witch is defeated and they enter the Golden Age under the High King Peter and his siblings – who wouldn’t enjoy a chat with a couple of beavers, or a faun? And I’d have loved to meet Aslan when I was younger!

Avoid – Alternative Britain – Dark Gifts Trilogy

This was such a hard world to place! It’s such an intriguing world and I loved discovering little bits about the history of this alternative Britain, it’s another world where which side of the divide you find yourself on has a huge impact on how your life would be. The Magical Elite, might be quite interesting but I’m not sure even my Slytherin nature is quite ruthless enough to survive and thrive in the Equals Parliament… But being one of the unskilled and having to give up ten years of my life to slave labour, no thank you! I would rather like a conversation with Silyen Jardine though…

So there are my five worlds I’d like to find myself in and five worlds I really wouldn’t! As I’ve stuck to worlds that have featured in books I’ve read at least part of there are probably a few really obvious worlds that you’d want to avoid that I’ve not listed – for example I’ve still not read The Hunger Games so Panem and its 12 districts haven’t made the list.

What do you think of my choices? Would you want to avoid any of the worlds I would like to call home? Or maybe you’d like to settle down in one of the world I’m keen to avoid! Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to link me to your posts!