Why I Love….

My Favorite Character

Okay, so picking a favorite character is like having to pick a favorite child or something. There are so many books with so many great characters, and then of course there are my own characters. As a writer, I have a lot of them who live in my head naturally, and they count on in my head too.

Maybe this is a cop-out, but I can tell you why I love the characters I do? (I tend to not have a lot of favorite things for the record. I’m indecisive).

My favorite characters usually fall into one of the following: Tender and sweet, or sarcastic and silly. I like characters who have a heart and care for others, are smart, and think beyond the small picture. They’re the kind of friends you’d want to have on your side, even if they have flaws. Generally, if I don’t have a: I want to slap you moment, I like the character a lot. And there are a lot of characters I want to slap (even my own!).  In the end, they’re the ones that stick with you for a long time, even outside of the book.

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Why I Love….

 

Favorite reading weather? This is easy for me. I like to read on rainy days, or in the winter time when it’s cold. I find heat distracting. When it’s cloudy or gloomy out, I don’t feel like doing much of anything beyond sitting down, curling up, and being lethargic.

 

Add in some cocoa, a stuffed animal, and a quiet baby and my day is pretty much made. This is also my primary gaming time though too, so I need to make sure I give myself enough time to do both. I’m not as productive during the winter time, so that might have something to do with my love for wanting to be lazy during it.

 

This is probably going to be a short week. I feel like this is one of those ‘nough said sort of topics.

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Why I Love …..

This week it’s sidekicks. Now, I tend to enjoy the sidekicks a lot more than the actual hero, but that’s just me. The sidekicks always have a tendency to be more interesting though because they have a certain quirk about them. Maybe I’m alone in this, but I feel a lot of sidekicks have more in-depth backgrounds than the hero does even. They can be more damaged, more fascinating, and it might simply be because everything about them isn’t fed to us on a silver plate.

 

So who are my favorite sidekicks? I have too many to list, but I am going to focus this post on my favorite of favorites: Tobias.

 

Anyone who’s read Animorphs should know who I’m talking about. This boy gets trapped as a hawk in the first book of the series. At the age of thirteen he struggles with maintaining his humanity, being in love with a girl he can’t touch, and is trying to find out the truth about his family who abandoned him at a young age.

 

He’s the emo boy to a T, but what makes him even more interesting is his selflessness. He doesn’t complain when asked to risk his life. He gets over his handicaps (aka not being human) to still do what is right. He even sacrifices the chance to be human again for the greater good. He’s probably the one character in the series that I didn’t have the urge to slap. This is usually saying a lot because I’m one of those people who likes to mentally throttle characters often for being stupid. I could go on and on, but I’d be revealing a lot of spoilers about the series, and this is one of those fandoms I think people need to read on their own.

I should add that his pairing is one of the most touching and sweet relationships I have ever read. Let’s face it, it takes a lot of guts to date a guy who spends most of his time as a bird.

But I love Tobias.

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Why I love….

This week, the topic for Why I Love was “movies based on a book”. This is tough for me because I’m one of those weird people who usually sees the movie before reading the book. I don’t know why I do this, but I do for whatever reason. There are a lot of movies I enjoy based on books. I love the Harry Potter series for example. For the most part, I think the movies are well done. I also have my film school stuff working with me though, so I understand things about cutting information, etc. etc. so I tend to not get super freaked out by things being left out. No, they aren’t perfect by any means, but I enjoy them.

However, one of my favorite movies based on a book is….

The Witches, by Roald Dahl.

I don’t think I can remember a movie that still impacts me so much. It’s dark, it’s deep, and it’s actually still kind of scary. It more or less petrified me as a child, but in a good way. Plus I think it got me out of bath time. What I loved though, was the way the movie was so well cast, the visuals were perfect with the children turning into the mice and the anamatronics. It’s just a great movie to go with a great story. There were only a few small changes to the story, but they were so minor it didn’t make much of an impact.

If you haven’t seen this movie, I highly recommend it. Though I wouldn’t watch it with really young ones because like most of Dahl’s work, it is twisted.

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Why I love….

Book Blogs!

 

As an author, I adore seeing what my readers are saying. I also like to see what else people are reading. More importantly though, I like how book blogs are able to say all of the things I can’t.

Some of you may have noticed I tried to do book reviews not too long ago on my blog, and it uh…well that didn’t work out well. I tend to not be able to say what I want to about a book beyond: Yes, read this! or No, stay away! For whatever reason, I just can’t blog about books.

I can blog about writing. I can blog about a lot of things actually, but not about the books I read. Same thing with movies or games or whatever. The words won’t come for me. I’ve learned to live with it and go read other people’s talents.

I love book blogs that are honest, but I like them when they’re so much more than simply a review. I like opinions, I like to see the souls of other people. I like raw emotions. I think that’s the best part about blogging. Sharing those real emotions. So many people crank out book reviews like they’re a factory to the point where they don’t read and connect with the book. A real book blog though does that. They read and connect, and those are the kinds of blogs I love to read.

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Why I Love My Nook

So today instead of Wreck This! I’m putting up a new meme from Reflections of a Bookaholic. Looked like fun to me, and I haven’t had a chance to wreck my journal lately due to illness. Let’s just say I’ve been sooooo tired.

This weekly special is called: Why I Love…. And it’s book formats! Today I’m going to gush a little bit about my Nook. Why? Because I love my Nook. Now, I know some of you think that e-readers are the devil, but I promise you they aren’t.  My gushing about my Nook could probably be applied to a Kindle as well. I’m not brand specific, but since I have experience with the Nook it’s the only one I can accurately talk about.

I love my Nook because I can keep 234987234 books in one spot and not take up bookshelf space.

I love my Nook because I can keep these books for forever. This is huge with the bookshelf space thing because there are a lot of books I LOVE but can’t always keep because of limited storage. I usually end up selling/regifting a lot of my books.

I love my Nook because I can put different formats on it, and I can read my WIP’s on it.

I love my Nook because if I have questions, I can take it to a human being to get help with it.

I love my Nook because it’s light and easy to carry around. So those big 900 page whopper books? They don’t break my hands/fingers. They also don’t get wear and tear.

I love my Nook because if my kiddo gets a hold of it, he can’t pull out the bookmark on me. It’s easier to wipe off the screen and clean and I don’t have to worry about him ripping the pages.

There are many other reasons I love my Nook, but I’ll stop here before those list gets too long.

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