Top Ten Tuesday #25 - Places Books Have Made Me Want To Visit

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.

Places books have made me want to visit:

1. Oslo/ Norway
The Witches, by Roald Dahl was one of my favourite books to read growing up. I loved this strange country where witches lurked around every corner and the funny, fierce old woman who lived there. I have always wanted to visit it. Also, Northern Lights  was another favourite, and it made me want to go there to experience the Aurora Borealis, so I'm twice as hungry for it.

2. Rural France
Lansquenet Sous-Tannes. I'm not even sure if it's a real place, but it feels real to me. First mentioned in Chocolat by Joanne Harris, it then features throughout a few more of her books, including my favourite, Five Quarters of the Orange. Although I have been to France before, I want to have the incredible experience of eating in patisseries and chocolateries and meld it all with a market village life along the banks of a beautiful river with gypsies living along the banks and irritable old ladies settling in shops for a mug of chocolat chaud.

3. New Orleans
The Casquette Girls is something I read quite recently, and I really enjoyed it! I want to put a city to a name now and stroll around in the historic french quarter. I want to see voodoo shops and street celebrations and really take in the history and the eerieness of the place. Oh, and did I mention it's the setting for Disney's The Princess and the Frog?

4. Narnia
It's quite not as dangerous as the likes of Westeros and you don't get stuck there, unlike Neverland. No time passes when you're there, so you can go off an have an adventure, see some mermaids and a giant friendly lion and come back to your boring life again. Plus, there are so many magical entities that I would love to spend time with! Hell, once I wished I was a Dryad.

5. Madrid
It's not often I get funny notions of going to big cities, but Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novels truly take me to Madrid, and I would love to see it and experience life there. It sounds like a great holiday destination with a lot of history and it can get a bit creepy at times I am sure.

6. Ancient Europe, Greece and Rome
Any Ben Kane novel can take me to this point in time, as well as the excellent David Gemmel series, Troy. I'm not really one for danger, and this is rife with it, so perhaps I would lay low. I think it would be incredible to go back to this time and see how people did things then. I love the mythology of these times and I think we could learn a lot from the way these people lived.

7. Ingo
I wish I was away in Ingo... I really do. This beautiful but treacherous undersea world, thought up by Helen Dunmore,  is filled with merpeople, and I love the idea that you can become one, and that people are actually able to breathe underwater if Ingo wants you to.

8. The Bayou
Ok, this is not dissimilar to New Orleans, but instead of going to the city, I would want to see the Bayou in all its glory. This was inspired by Teardrop, which focuses much more on the power of water and the Bayou feels like an extension of this power, as it floats in the background only to become part of a main event later on.

9. Italy, Rome and Venice
This is derived from Dan Browns novels, Angels and Demons, and Inferno. I am pretty obsessed over history, and it really liked the way the mystery fits in with the actual stuff in real life. I have been to Rome and seen a few of the landmarks in the book. Let me say they are stunning and well worth going to see.

10. Neverwhere
Who wouldn't want to travel to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, an alternate version of our London, where nothing is as it seems and some things have been taken pretty literally. Black Friars really does have Black Friars in it while The Angel, Islington is an angel named Islington. I need to read this book again.

Kyra_x

Film Mini Review: In Time

Synopsis:

In a world where time is money, people live freely until they are 25, when a timer device begins ticking on their arm. They then have one year until their death. While some die young, with next to no time amounted and stuck in dead end jobs, other high flyers in better time zones can live for a hundred years, a thousand years, even a million. It all depends how successful you are, and where you were born. Some live by this law: for the few to live, many must die, but two young people are about to put a stop to that.

The Good:

• An awesome idea of time being currency, set in a dystopian future.
• Takes on a Bonnie and Clyde feel which is great, but also this all happens for the good of the people from impoverished time zones, which can also be compared to Robin Hood.
• Olivia Wilde, Cillian Murphy, Alex Pettyfer, Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfriend star, and it's a really good watch.
• Lots of action.
• Makes you honestly question what you would do in such a situation.
• Dystopia, yay!

The Bad:

• I am not too keen on Justin Timberlake's acting abilities
• More world development would have been good.
• Some distances and time-frame didn't make sense when added up against the time on the protagonist's clocks. eg: When passing between multiple checkpoints.

Overall:

A really good film and something I will be watching again. Suitable for fans of dystopia and action films, as well as sci-fi lovers and those who like a futuristic feel. Very entertaining.

Kyra_x

Review: Independent Study - Joelle Charbonneau

The Testing was only the beginning. Cia is once again forced to use all her wits as she enters University. Fist she sits the enttry exams, where the penalty for failing is redirection. Then life gets even harder as she is separated from those she trusts and  put through a horrific hazing system.

Here we see Cia develop all over again as she begins to piece together her testing experiences. Her nightmares and the recording she left herself are enough to give her a good sense of the awful things she has to face. People change during the testing, and she has no idea who to trust and who will be the same person they were before they entered the process. Cia is on her own, and with her memories slowly returning, she come to the conclusion that the testing has to end. This character never disappoints. Her trusting nature still makes her an easy target, but she is working on it. The plot device to allow her to forget her memories actually give an excuse to recap the last book throughout, whilst not giving a boring overview at the beginning.  This was great as too many books do this, and when you are reading one after the other, this can be really aggravating.

In this second book of the testing trilogy, we meet more characters, and more about the Government and the rebellion is revealed throughout. This has developed the plot very well, but unfortunately once again the supporting character have not been given the same treatment. While a few key classmates stick out in terms of the fact that they may have ulterior motives and that they have different beliefs to Cia, they do not come to the fore, and Cia remains the only character who truly has a lot of depth given to her.

However, I really enjoyed this book. The pace was as good as the first, and the plot is full of action, with no dull moments. The story definitely pulls you in straight away, and the idea has now taken a further step away from other YA dystopian fiction that may be similar. A great read.

Kyra_x

Review: The Testing - Joelle Charbonneau

Cia is a determined girl and a hard worker. Her goal is to be chosen for the testing and  to go to University like her father. She soon learns to be careful what you wish for when the testing takes a sinister turn, with failure meaning almost certain death. Cia soon has to use all of her knowledge to ensure her own safety. Her only clue as to how to survive is the advice her father gave before she left home: Trust no-one.

Another YA dystopian trilogy with a skewed Government and a horrific amount of danger involved. This book is similar to The Hunger Games in that young people are pitted against each other in a competition, but this one is far more precise. The playing field is more even and the tests are more sophisticated, the players are cleverer too, with much more room for trickery and tactics. yes, you have to try not to die, but it becomes apparent that the answer is to evaluate the competition carefully and fully utilise your skills.

Cia is a great character that you can really sympathise with. She is very smart, compassionate but slightly too trusting and slow to make decisions. She is emotional and understanding in the worst circumstances, and sometimes this makes you wonder if she will survive the process at all. Her journey is difficult, but seems natural as she slowly learns to be tougher, to listen to her instincts and to become less trusting. However, although Cia is great, there is much less character development in her supporting characters, such as Tomas and Will.

The main theme in the book is trust. Though there is romance involved, even that is affected by the tests and the secrets Cia has to keep. This book really makes you think about what you would do in these situations. Who would you trust? How much would you know? How would you cope with the pressure, the animosity, the danger? Would you even make it to the testing? The book also makes a comment about human nature as some candidates turn to manipulation and murder to succeed in these tests, thereby forcibly eliminating the competition. The question is, would you?

The Testing is very fast paced, with no boring parts and lots of interest. This is a great start to the trilogy and I am very intrigued as to what happens next, especially with the ending that has taken place.

Kyra_x

November Update

So as some of you may have noticed, I have recently skipped a couple of days of blogs. This is because my internet is down and I can barely get online. If I do, it takes up far too much of my time waiting for it to respond. This is time I really don't have.

Therefore, I am sorry to say that until this is fixed properly I will only be working on the blog on weekends. Hopefully this won't be too awful, but in the meantime I am going to only be reviewing the books I am reading and maybe making some Book Banter and Top Ten Tuesday posts. This might mean that I will be posting a couple of times a week instead of every day.

Bear with me! I am hoping that the issue is solved soon!

Kyra_x