Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Favorite Book Settings


Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish.


10. China- North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley: I’ve never really been that interested in vacationing or living in Asia (I’m more of a Western Europe or Mediterranean kind of girl), but after reading North of Beautiful (which is a fantastic book, btw), I was dying to visit China!

9. Nantucket- Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini: The gorgeous (and very very rich) island made a wonderful place to see a modern day Greek tragedy/love story. The story will quite literally take you flying over the beaches, cliffs, and waves. Also… it’s got a cool name. NAN-TUCK-ET! J


8. Deep South- Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl: As Texas natives, we have a special love for the south, but the Deep South makes for a lush, historical, tragic, and simply to die for setting! There’s been several great books recently that have taken us to the deep south (like Rachel Hawkins’s Hex Hall ), but the darkly gorgeous Beautiful Creatures/Beautiful Darkness takes it in our opinion!

7.  Boston (and the Northeast)- Deception by Lee Nichols: Boston and the rest of the northeast (I’m a Philly-girl, myself) make for beautiful, historic settings no matter the story. But imagining all of the ghosts that would make such historic places their home creates an even more fascinating (and creepy) place for a story to unfold.

6. The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women (Virginia)- Gallagher Girls Series by Ally Carter. Again, we love the south! So small town Virginia is lots of fun to read about. But do you know what’s more fun? SPIES. Especially, a top secret school for teenage girl spies! It doesn’t get much better than that!
5. Austin, TX – Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith: Like I said, we’re Texas girls, so we couldn’t leave out our capital city. Austin is known for being trendy (and a wee bit weird), but the weird soars to new heights in Tantalize where vampires are real (and have restaurants themed after them). Keep Austin Weird! J

4. Nevernever- The Iron Fey Series by Julie Kagawa: The world of fairy was a given for this list, considering that many humans were so enraptured by it’s beauty that they never left (not that they always had that much of a choice). And several faerie books have beautifully depicted the world of fairie (The Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr, for example), but the most imaginative goes to Julie Kagawa in our opinion—where Summer, Winter, and Iron meet to form a deadly and beautiful place.

3.  New York City- The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare: Who doesn’t love New York City? But do you know what we love even more than the Big Apple? Downworlder/Shadowhunter NYC! J Vampires, Werewolves, Demons, JACE! New York City is quite the place! (Teehee… that rhymed).
2. Paris (Oh! La! La!) There are a number of recent books that have taken us to the City of Love and left us quite literally enamored! Die for Me by Amy Plum submerges the beautiful city into a war of epic proportions between two supernatural races (awesome!). Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins made me want to go back to school, just so that I could study abroad in Paris. And Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly made me fall in love with Paris’s past and the real Paris that isn’t overrun by tourist. I travelled to Paris a few years ago, but these books have me dying to go back!
1. Hogwarts- Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling: Do we really even need to elaborate? Every speech class I ever had where I got the question, “If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?” Easy. HOGWARTS. I would go there and never co me back.  (The Wizarding World makes a pretty good alternative, but I’m still holding out hope that Hogwarts is real. My letter just got lost in the mail… thirteen years ago).