Top Ten Tuesday #21 - Book Geniuses

Top Ten Tuesday is a Meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish where I will be picking from their top tens and attempting to reveal what my thinking is behind these choices.

This weeks Top Ten Tuesday is on Book Geniuses!

1. Sherlock Holmes
The best detective in existence, whose ideas were the basis of modern police investigation. Obviously he's fictional, so Arthur Conan Doyle gets the credit for that, but still, he's awesome.

2. The Phantom - The Phantom of The Opera
The most misunderstood genius that ever graced the pages of any book. His story is so sad, so real, and yet unbelievably horrible in what can happen to a person who has been tortured and neglected their whole life.

3. Dr Jekyll - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
This guy invented a potion that made him change not only physical form, but his actual identity. The most interesting case of split personality I've ever read.

4. Hermione Granger - Harry Potter
Everyone's favourite witch and a complete nerd. She reminds me of myself in that she works really hard to achieve her goals, and I admire that.

5. Artemis Fowl
Boy genius extraordinaire, and to top it off, he's a bad guy that turns good! I love it when evil geniuses come around.

6. Victor Frankenstein - Frankenstein
The guy who actually brought the dead back to life. Who could not think of this guy as a genius?

7. Robert Langdon - Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code etc
This guy has one of the best memories ever and he is really good with symbols. He's a teacher, and they're very smart, but he also figures out things logically with what little he's given. Very good with puzzles. I do love reading these books :).

8. Matilda
Possibly the first fictional genius I ever knew about... possibly not. All I know is that Roald Dahl's creation of a girl whose mind was so intelligent she could literally move things about is truly magical and very awesome.

9. Lord Asriel - His Dark Materials
This guy is the one who really brought all of the events in Philip Pullman's series into being. He saw Dust and discovered how to use it to cross into other worlds. Identifying something that has never been done before seems to be the genius thing these days.

10. Ariel Manto - The End of Mr Y
This book is so super smart that at some points I could not keep up with it. But hey, Ariel does, so she must be a genius.

Kyra_x

Beastly - Alex Flinn

This next installation is a modern retelling of the classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast, again by Alex Flinn. It is, as with 'A Kiss in Time', very much for teenagers as the protagonist is a 16 year old boy. However, I feel that this story has a lot more work gone into it than the version of Sleeping Beauty did.

The original story of Beauty and the Beast can be seen quite clearly in the plot of this version, and I personally like that the Disney version was also incorporated into it, though not so much that the story lost any reality that it might have had.

The rose garden, which is in the original story, was brought back into being, and I personally think that the symbolism of the rose in this particular book was very clever, if not subtle.

I did not think at first that I would like the modernity of the book. but it turned out to be very interestingly done. The chat room at the beginning that also includes characters from other fairy tales (the little mermaid, snow white and rose red, the princess and the frog) was completely unneeded. I think this tried to make it overtly modern and actually took away from what was already a good plot. The emotion that the beast shows in it could have easily been put into the main story rather than having the chat room.However, the rest was well done.

I have read many books that., although are for young adults, also appeal to an older audience. Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy is one, Harry Potter, of course, is another. But these books are so to do with younger people than myself, that I cannot put myself in their position and therefore lose myself in the book.

It may be that the author has also missed putting adult emotion in this book, thus rendering me incapable of feeling for the characters.5/10 for effort and cleverness, but it was again, too young for me.