Top Ten Tuesday | When I Grow Up

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is '' - I'm so excited to share my list with you and to see other people's lists, because I think this is such a fun topic and one that's going to give a lot of insight into the kind of books other book bloggers were reading during their childhood.

Just as a side note, I haven't included any characters from Harry Potter in this list because they'd probably take up my entire list. Also, with the main trio at least, we do get a glimpse of them as adults in the epilogue, and I'm off to see them as adults in the new play in October!

Matilda Wormwood from Matilda by Roald Dahl: As much as I tend to think of Matilda as forever a child, forever living comfortably with Miss Honey in their lovely house, I'd love to see the kind of woman Matilda would grow into. Very intelligent, of course - I get the feeling that Matilda would be the kind of girl who goes to university and never leaves, and once she has her English Literature PhD under her belt I'm sure she'd take the academic world by storm.

Adèle Varens from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: Considering there's a possibility that Adèle is Rochester's daughter, and that she and Jane get along so well, I feel like she gets forgotten too often by Jane Eyre fans - I'm guilty of forgetting her myself! Before she passed away Angela Carter had plans to write a novel about Adèle in which she slept with Rochester, who did indeed turn out to be her father, and then ran away to France to find her mother and become a dancer. Or something like that. That would have been interesting, but the amount of daughters who sleep with their fathers in Angela Carter's stories kind of freaks me out...

Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden is one of my favourite classics, and Mary's one of my favourite heroines. I've always had a soft spot for her. I like to think she and Colin had a very happy childhood with Colin's father, and when she grew up I hope Mary became a botanist or something of that ilk. She has to do something with gardens, and Mary enjoys getting her hands dirty far too much to do nothing but arrange bouquets.

Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: I find it very hard to imagine Alice as anything but a perpetual child, but I imagine adult Alice would be a fascinating Victorian lady. I would hope she'd use her dreams - if they were dreams - to write bizarrely fun and fantastical stories for children, and indulge in a little nonsense.

Susan Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: I hate the way C.S. Lewis treats Susan, so I'd love to see her as a fully grown adult just to make sure she's doing okay. She's 21 years old by the time of The Last Battle, which means the majority of her 20s would take place in the '50s and her 30s in the '60s. I'd love to see her at political rallies fighting for birth control and racial equality. At least that's what she's doing in my head.

Sophie from the Sophie series by Dick King-Smith: Dick King-Smith is one of my favourite childhood authors. I was obsessed with animals when I was little - I wanted to be a vet for the longest time - so I devoured animal books of every kind, including Dick King-Smith's Sophie series. Sophie is a little girl who wants to be a farmer when she grows up, and I'd love to see if she achieved that dream.

Ellie Allard from the Girls series by Jacqueline Wilson: Jacqueline Wilson is another childhood favourite. In fact as a child she was my favourite author for a very long time; I read and loved everything she wrote. Her Girls series in particular has always been very special to me, because these were the first books I read during my pre-teens where I really understood the main character, Ellie. Ellie struggles a lot with self-esteem, especially with her appearance and her weight, and those were issues I struggled with (and still do) a lot during my teens. I'd love to see where Ellie ended up. Hopefully she's a world famous artist by now.

Sophie from The BFG by Roald Dahl: I'd love to know what Sophie grows up to be when she has The BFG for a guardian. Does she give children pleasant dreams with him, or does she set up her own giant-hunting agency for all those other horrible giants out there? Perhaps she even sets up a (very big) safe house for other giants like The BFG, and becomes the ambassador for human and giant relations. Whatever adulthood has in store for her, I'm sure it's not dull.

Nobody Owens from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book is probably my favourite of Neil Gaiman's novels, with American Gods coming in at a very close second, and I'd love to know what adulthood brings Bod. If you haven't read The Graveyard Book yet then I highly recommend you do - it's so good!

Neil and Emily Parker from the Puppy Patrol series by Jenny Dale: The Puppy Patrol series was another series I was obsessed with as a little girl; I used to own so many of these books, which centred around the adventures of the Parker family, particularly brother and sister Neil and Emily, who owned a kennels. Each book introduced a new dog and a new adventure, and I'd love to know if Neil and Emily stayed in the family business or did something entirely different.

Who made your list this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Characters Who Deserved Better

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Books With Characters Who ___'. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for this at first, but a previous TTT topic got me thinking about the characters out there who deserved so much better than what they got.

Some of these characters were the victims of their circumstances, and others were just treated terribly by their authors. Only one of the people on this list is a man.

Frankenstein's Monster from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: A lot of the stuff this guy does is very bad indeed, but when you read this classic it's difficult not to empathise with him, even just a little.

Susan Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis: I will forever be unhappy with how Lewis treated Susan, with how he criticised her for wanting to grow away from Narnia. She is described as "no longer a friend of Narnia" who is "interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations". Lewis himself said: "The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there's plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end." When we're younger it's easy for us to dislike Susan - why would anyone want the real world when you could live in the world with centaurs and queens and talking lions? - but when we grow older and we see the religious aspects to Narnia, this view on Susan becomes rather sinister. How dare she like lipstick when she could have Jesus!

Bertha Rochester from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: If someone told me to choose between Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff I'd choose Mr. Rochester in a heartbeat, because Heathcliff is a whole other kind of messed up. But Rochester's hardly a catch himself. Yes he's educated and wealthy and, let's face it, quite sassy, but when he asks Jane to marry him he fails to mention he's already married, and his mentally ill first wife is locked up in the attic. Real husband material. I suppose we can argue that it's something of a mercy that poor Bertha wasn't sent away to an asylum, but locking her up in the attic was hardly a good idea either.

Elinor Mompellion from Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks: Despite including her on this list, I can't say a lot about Elinor without giving too much away. All I will say is that something is revealed near the end of the book which infuriated me, but kudos to Brooks because I didn't see it coming!

Margaret Prior from Affinity by Sarah Waters: Yet another character who I can't talk about too much without spoiling the ending of Affinity. Let's just say that Affinity is probably Waters' gloomiest novel, and those of you who've read it will know why poor Margaret made this list.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir from Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: Here I'm talking about Agnes the character, because for all I know the real Agnes - the last woman to be executed in Iceland - really was a violent murderer. The Agnes that Kent writes, however, just breaks your heart.

Nancy from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: Nancy is one of the few decent people in Oliver Twist, and the person who gets dealt the worst hand. I had an illustrated version of this book when I was a little book and when I first read it, the scene where Nancy is murdered terrified me. Her death has haunted me ever since.

Sirius and Regulus Black from the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling: We could probably argue that pretty much every single one of the Marauders deserved better, but the Black brothers make my heart ache like no others. Poor Regulus's courage was practically forgotten, and Sirius, the most loyal friend anyone could ask for, had to spend thirteen years of his life imprisoned for something he didn't do, only to be confined in a house full of horrid childhood memories when he escaped until he was eventually killed. I just have a lot of feelings about these boys, and I'm never going to be over Sirius.

Tess Durbeyfield from Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy: Alec d'Urberville and Angel Clare are both awful human beings and I hate them both in equal measure. That is all.

Katniss and Primrose Everdeen from The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins: Don't mind me, I'll just be over in that corner. Weeping.

Who made your list?

Top Ten Tuesday | Bookish Places to Visit

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find out everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Ten Places Books Have Made Me Want To Visit'. At first I didn't think I'd manage to think of ten places, but as soon as I started my list I discovered there were more places I wanted to visit than I thought, so let's dive in!

Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling: This is bound to be on pretty much everyone's list, right? I don't think I have to explain myself. I'm a Ravenclaw through and through and I want to go to Hogwarts!

Hogsmeade/Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling: I'm not going to go to Hogwarts and miss out on a few trips to Hogsmeade. I want to try out butterbeer and fire whiskey and go shopping in Flourish and Blotts!

Wonderland from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: I love this book (I'm sure that's no shock given the state of my blog) so I'd love to go to Wonderland, but I wouldn't want to stay there too long - it's such a bizarre place that I don't think it'd take me long to get homesick and go mad.

Narnia from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: There are talking animals in Narnia. Why wouldn't I go?

The Garden from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett: I love The Secret Garden, and there's something that sounds so peaceful and cathartic about the garden that I'd love to take a picnic and spend an afternoon there.

Stormhold from Stardust by Neil Gaiman: Any place where the Queen is an immortal star I want to visit. Yvaine's awesome.

The Shire from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: This is going to sound odd, but for a couple of years of my childhood I lived in an area of the UK that was sort of similar to the Shire. No it wasn't full of hobbits (boo!) but it was, as were all the places I lived during my childhood, in the countryside. We lived in an area where there were a lot of open fields and farms - in fact my older sister dated a farmer's son for a little while and I got to meet some piglets. Then in North Yorkshire, where I'm originally from and spent the majority of my childhood, each year there was a show where people entered their animals, from guinea pigs to horses, into competitions and sold their produce and homemade jewellery. There's just something about the Shire that reminds me of my childhood and I'd love to go there. Plus if I went anywhere else in Middle Earth I'd probably get stabbed.

Helford River from Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier: First thing's first, Helford River is a real place so I can go there one day (woohoo!). I've been to Cornwall before, some years ago now, but recently I've had a real desire to go there again and reading Frenchman's Creek convinced me that I need to go back. 

Dorne from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin: Okay, I'm cheating a little here because while I watch Game of Thrones I have yet to read the books. To be honest I'd rather stay away from Westeros entirely, but there's something about Dorne that sounds like a lot of fun.

Luna from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer: Luna might not be the best place to visit - Levana's crazy - but if there's a colony on the moon then hell yeah I want to see it!

Where would you visit?