books Archives - Page 28 of 102 - Better Than Dreams

This is my twenty-fifth Top Ten Tuesday. As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by its creators at The Broke and the Bookish.

This topic is a great idea but it took me a while to come up with a full list! Some of my choices are small things, others much bigger, but they’re all extremely useful.

Top Ten Things That Make My Life as a Reader/Blogger Easier

1. Bookmarks – Imagine life without bookmarks. Struggling to remember page numbers or having to bend over the corners of pages. It’d be pretty horrible, right? And what about the other kind of bookmarks? I rely on web browser bookmarks to keep track of all the books I want to read.

2. Gimbles – I used to struggle to eat or do anything else while reading, but my Gimbles changed all that. I even use them now when I’m reading on my bed or the sofa, to give my hands and wrists a break.

3. Online library renewals and reservations – I can renew my library books and reserve future reads without leaving my house. It’s amazing. Which brings me to…

4. My smartphone – When I’m in a charity shop and I find a interesting book, I use my phone to check that it’s not in stock at the library.

5. Wikipedia and Fantastic Fiction – Both really useful resources for checking series orders and finding out the titles of other books by an author.

6. My Nook – It’s unlikely that it’ll replace paper books, but it is easier to fit in my handbag sometimes.

7. Goodreads – Being able to catalogue all my books on Goodreads is brilliant. It helps so much when I’m writing book list posts to be able to scroll through all the books I’ve read and jog my memory.

8. Twitter – For ‘networking’ with other bloggers. If I wasn’t on Twitter I’d miss out on all the great blogs and posts than get retweeted and otherwise shared around.

9. My diary – I make notes about the books I’m reading, post ideas, and I even use it to draft my Top Ten Tuesday lists. I write the next topic on each week’s note page, to help me to come up with ideas in advance.

10. My reading journal – Where I write all my thoughts about the books I’ve read. These notes form the basis for my reviews, though I usually don’t include everything that I’ve written in the journal.

Are any of these on your list?

This is my twenty-fifth Top Ten Tuesday. As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by its creators at The Broke and the Bookish.

When I was choosing a setting for this week’s topic, I looked back at my Top Ten Settings I’d Like To See More Of (Or At All) list for inspiration. The one word that pops up over and over again in that list is school. Most YA protagonists go to school, but many books are set outside the school year, during the holidays. As much as I enjoy reading about teenage roadtrips and summertime adventures, I really love books where school plays an important role.

I really did not like school. I’m pretty sure that at least 75% of the time I spent in school could have been better used had I been left to my own devices, preferably in a well-stocked library. However, schools are fantastic plot devices. Even if the school itself is just your standard suburbian comprehensive, the mere fact that the characters are forced to go there five or more days per week and spend time with each other can lead to all sorts of fictional trouble. And if it’s a secret training ground for spies? Well…

Top Ten Books With A School Setting

1. The Boyfriend List, by E. Lockhart – Ruby Oliver is a scholarship student at Tate Prep, the odd one out who can’t afford to spend all afternoon eating cake in the trendy cafe or choose the most glamourous school trip option. Although the teachers are fantastic, the Tate Universe is small and gossip is rife, and it’s all too easy for Ruby to become a ‘social leper’.

2. Girl Meets Cake, by Susie Day – Heidi is another outsider, the only day girl at a boarding school. Again, it’s quirky and funny, and the intense school setting provides a lot of the drama.

3. Night School, by C. J. Daugherty – A thrilling mystery set in a luxurious boarding school – definitely the kind of school that I’d have loved to attend, if it wasn’t for all the murder.

4. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart – Another E. Lockhart book, I hear you cry. Keep reading, this is only number two of the three on this list, and E. Lockhart is brilliant at school settings, so there. Alabaster is an exclusive boarding school, and the home of the Basset Hounds, an all-boy secret society that Frankie plots to infiltrate.

5. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray – This is another boarding-school book, this time set in the Victorian era, with plenty of atmosphere. The school is really, really, creepy during the night-time scenes!

6. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, by Gabrielle Zevin – School is the place where Naomi, the teenage amnesiac of the title, figures out who she is and who she wants to be.

7. Fly on the Wall, by E Lockhart – This time, E Lockhart sets the story in an arts school, but again the protagonist is an outsider, Gretchen Yee, who can’t get on with her teachers and is struggling to find a place amongst her peers. Then she gets turned into a fly on the wall of the boys’ locker room.

8. Spellbound, by Cara Lynn Shultz – The school itself is just another private day school, but it makes a great setting for the action scenes, and it is where all of Emma’s new relationships are forged.

9. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have To Kill You, by Ally Carter – The Gallagher Academy is a training school for the spies of the future, and is full of secret passageways and gadgetry.

10. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling – How could I not include one of the most famous boarding school books of all time? Hogwarts is a character in its own right.

Do you like books in which school plays a major role? Are you a fan of any of the books on my list?

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