A to Z April - F: Fantasy

For the letter F I'm going to choose a genre of fiction that is not actually one that I read a ton of.  There are some of my very favorite series that fit into it though, so it is worth mentioning.  The more I'm around authors and bloggers, I've learned that the type of fantasy I really don't get into is called "high fantasy".  Like Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings for example.  While I can enjoy a movie or tv series with it, I just have trouble actually sitting down and reading it.


1.  My all time favorite fantasy series is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series by C.S. Lewis.  I used to read those books over and over when I was a kid.  My copies of them are dog-eared and tattered, and to me look well-loved.  The pictures below match the covers of the books that I own, and I've posted them in the story's chronological order, as opposed to order of publication.


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2.  My 2nd all time favorite fantasy series is by Madeleine L'Engle, the A Wrinkle in Time series.  What is funny to me today is that I keep hearing about the "tesseract" in the Marvel Comic movies, and this book is where I first remember seeing that word.  So now whenever they mention it in those movies, the book is what I think of first.  This is another dog-eared series of books that I read over and over.  But I didn't own all of them, used to check them out from the library.

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3.  My 3rd and final favorite fantasy series is a newer one.  It didn't come out till I was a grown-up.  I was teaching at my 3rd teaching job, and working part time at a B. Dalton bookstore.  I resisted at first, but when I picked up a copy of the first one at the suggestion of a fellow bookseller, I was hooked.  That series is the Harry Potter series.

So, are you a big fantasy reader?  Have you read all of these?  What are your favorite fantasy series? 

Top Ten Tuesday - Books/Authors I'm Thankful For

I'm not an every week participant in the Top Ten Tuesday, but being Thanksgiving week, seeing this on blogs I follow I figured I'd join in.  This is sponsored by The Broke and the Bookish.  And the perfect theme for this week is the top 10 books and/or authors that we're thankful for.  And like some of the other posts I've seen, not all of my posts will be specific books or authors exactly.

1.  First I have to say I'm thankful for the Nancy Drew series, which in a way means I'm thankful to my mom.  When I was young, 3rd grade I think, there was a bunch of the series for sale at an outlet store.  My mom bought like the first 10 in the series I think!  I took them home and devoured them.  A great beginner series, and also thanks to my mom, who at the time didn't see quite how obsesses I would be with reading.

2.  I know many people out there aren't a fan, and have lots of criticisms.  But I LOVE the Twilight series.  The story just sucked me in.  And, to see how much this series got people excited about reading again, that makes my day.  

3.  I have to also mention the Harry Potter books.  For making such a huge pop culture following along with the movies and the books, where it was cool, in some crowds, to be discussing fictional characters and how things would work for them.

4.  Next would be the Percy Jackson series.  Once again the students I saw that were former reluctant readers, and they got pulled right into reading, and never looked back, really just made me happy to be a teacher again.

5.  And along the same lines would be The Hunger Games.  Having students come up to me and talk about things that were missing from the movie, that totally made my day.  To have kids knowing how the books are always better than the movie was just music to my ears!

6.  Stephen King is an author I'm thankful for.  His scary stories were ones that again I was able to share with my mother, or maybe vice-versa.  At first I wasn't allowed to read them.  But I remember the summer before my freshman year of high school, my mother had left one of them sitting out, and I read it.  And from then on, I was unable to put his books down.

7.  V. C. Andrews is an author that I loved, and the books I read over and over and over!!  Sick as the stories really are, there are a lot of things from those books that have stuck in my head.

8.  All the Buffy the Vampire Slayer books.  Not the comics, but the actual books.  They gave me something to continue reading when the show was over.  And always bring me right back to hanging with the Scooby Gang.

9.  I'm going to combine the Wrinkle In Time series with the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe series.  Both of these are books I read over and over as a child.  Again, they are reference points for me for several things, many situations in life bring to mind things that happened in these stories.  Even the movie The Avengers the summer reminded me that I'd learned about a tesseract first in A Wrinkle in Time.

10.  This is kind of a general one, going out for all those awesome authors that are out there and available to talk to on social media.  How cool to be able to so easily interact with these people who are my rock stars.  A couple specific shouts go out to Cara Lynn Shultz, who was so cool to actually meet up with me last year when I visited NYC for the first time.  Also Maureen Johnson who is so funny on Twitter.  I could go on and on, but pretty much almost every YA author on Twitter is who I'm thinking of.  Heather Brewer, Beth Revis, Jodi Meadows, Rachel Vincent, Aimee Carter, Jay Asher, Nancy Holder, there are so many I could go on and on!!!

So, what books or authors are you thankful for this Thanksgiving season?