Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Things on my Reading Wish List

Ten Things on my Reading Wish List

There are so many missed opportunities in books, which I notice because I’m obviously a genius. Joking aside, when you spend as much time as I do reading you’re bound to have a list a mile long of things that you wish were more common. Unless you fail to write them down and you spend an hour and a half trying to remember all the things you complain about incessantly...

Note from The Editor: ...Which she most certainly didn't do, of course. And I didn't help her for another half hour either.

Books set in places that don’t speak English

              And this is coming from somebody who can’t speak a word of any other language. That being said, I do know that a lot of people have complained about this. I understand that it is complicated, and a whole lot more work; but, there are places in the world that aren’t America, England or Australia. Even Australia doesn’t get quite enough love.

Note from the Editor: Italy, for example, is a wonderful place. There should be more books set in Italy, or Greece... Or Egypt.

Animal sidekicks (that don’t die)

Note from the Editor: No, if the dog doesn't die then the universe is thrown out of balance.

              I actually really like animal sidekicks. They’re usually my favorite character regardless of whether they talk or not. Unfortunately, they’ve kind of fallen out of fashion these days. I think it’s because so many people decided to kill them off for some cheap consequences. Still, if I see a book that has a cat character I’m completely sold.

Better ghost stories

              Maybe I’m just crazy (jury’s out) but I always thought of ghost stories as solving a decades old mystery in creepy places with some jump scares. I don’t know why, but that’s interesting to me. Sifting through old legends to discover who this ghost is and how they died is super cool. The creepy factor would just be an added bonus, instead of an awkwardly forced focus.

More protagonist who can write/art

              Dial Em for Murder wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but easily the best part of it was the writing/plotting protagonist. This needs to be more common! It’s an awesome opportunity for tongue in cheek humor and some fourth wall breaking comments. Self-aware literature is criminally underused and it’s amazing.

Note from the Editor: Self-aware literature is called Metafiction. While I am a bit disappointed that metafiction is not about super awesome world-hopping or uber-powerful robots, this genre of literature is really cool!

I think it’s called magical realism

              Holly Black does this a lot. If only Holly Black’s main characters weren't super frustrating. Still, magical realism is a great idea. Magical coffee shops, moving tattoos and familiar pet shops-- how cool is that! Plus, it makes for a nice change to the whole ‘magic is secret’ trope that seems so popular these days.

Or futuristic magical fantasy

              Basically, Star Wars. Why does magic always need to be surrounded by medieval castles and swords and stuff? There are a lot of different time periods, people. You could make an entirely new genre just by sticking magic into a Victorian era or a futuristic space era. Again, it’s something that is criminally underused.

Note from the Editor: If the reader is looking for a really entertaining magic set in the Victorian era, Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer was a fantastic read.

Protagonist who can lie

              There are two types of protagonist when it comes to lying: The one who’s ‘flaw’ is that they can’t lie, and the one who says they can lie. But, neither are done well. When it comes to the first one, the ability, or disability, is usually used as some sort of plot device. It usually ends up looking like ‘I’m going to try and lie but I’m so bad at it that this important plot thing is now revealed... oops’. Which is frustrating and overdone. The second one is just bad writing. The character may say that they’re good at lying but it’s either never used for anything useful or simply shunted aside for plot device reasons. Come on guys, I’m sure we, as writers, can figure out how to write believable lies. That is kind of our job, after all.

Religion that’s not used as war profiteering plot devise

Alright, I know that the crusades and crap is super famous, but, surprisingly, religious people don’t always want to kill each other. I’m also aware that it’s hip and cool to write religious commentary but it shouldn’t be the norm. Whenever a religious group so much as shows their face in a novel you know that they’re going to be some sort of antagonist. And, that’s kind of ridiculous.

Teenagers who aren’t the spawns of the devil

              Even in YA books, teenagers are just awful. They’re rude and cruel and constantly thinking about sex... Or alcohol... Or drugs. I’m not saying that teenagers aren’t like that, some of them are. But, certainly not all of them. I have no idea how books that shame their main audience can even survive. You can argue about how ‘realistic’ it is all you want, but the reality of the situation is that nobody wants to read about those kinds of characters.

Well written chosen one books

              I swear there is a way. Just look at books like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings even more modern ones like Percy Jackson or Avatar the Last Air bender. There are ways to make Chosen One stories well. In fact, they were some of the first ones I’ve read and even the first kind I wrote. So from a nostalgia perspective I double love well written chosen one stories.

Note from the Editor: And, who doesn't want to play the special snowflake, even just for a little while?