Top 5 Wednesday: Favorite Top 5 Wednesday Posts of 2017

Top 5 Wednesday is a Goodreads group hosted by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Bloggers, booktubers and bookstagrammers post on a common topic every (you guessed it) Wednesday. You can find the lists by searching #T5W or Top 5 Wednesday. And you can join the group on Goodreads if you want to participate.  

We’ve decided not to do Top 5 Wednesday in 2018. We’ll still be making lists, just probably not every week. But we had a great time participating last year and wanted to look back at some of our favorite posts.

It seems that our lists fall into two basic categories, ones that recommend books in a particular category, and ones that have fun with the worlds and characters from our favorite books.

Here are our Top 5(ish) T5W Book Rec Posts:


5. Favorite Slump Busters


4. Favorite Books With Non-Western Settings


3. Favorite Enemies to Lovers Romances


2. Favorite SciFi/Fantasy Books


1.5 Favorite LGBTQ+ Reads


1. Future Classics

And these are posts we love that may not help you find your next read, but they’ll definitely entertain you:


5. Supernatural Creatures We Want to See More Often


4. Fictional Jobs We Want to Have


3. Books That Would Make Great Video Games


2. Characters Whose Fitness Routines We Want to Try


1. Books For Our Hogwarts Houses

You can look back through the year of Top 5 Wednesday posts by clicking the image in our sidebar.

Thanks to Sam for hosting and we hope to see all of our T5W friends around the comment section.


and

Top 5 Wednesday: Bookish Things We're a Grinch About

Top 5 Wednesday is a Goodreads group hosted by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Bloggers, booktubers and bookstagrammers post on a common topic every (you guessed it) Wednesday. You can find the lists by searching #T5W or Top 5 Wednesday. And you can join the group on Goodreads if you want to participate.  

This Week's Topic Is:

Bookish Things You're a Grinch About

This is like the holiday version of pet peeves, rather than serious social issues. Though number one may include a hill we're willing to die on.

5. When series books don't match 

Like when they change the cover style in the middle of the series like Black Knights Inc. or

go to hardcover after book 6 like Iron Druid and Kate Daniels. The latter also messes up my reading schedule because I don't like to buy ebooks at hardcover prices.

4. Name change in the middle of a series

Like Tales of the Black Lily which is now called Vampire Blood (which is a stupid name) and V-Date.com which became Bite Night (also kind of a stupid name). Also, the whole naming the series after the first book is dumb. It can't be that hard to find a unique series name, can it?

3.Titles that say nothing about the story

Like Paige Tyler's X Ops series. I've mentioned this in the reviews before so I won't rant now.

2. Covers that say nothing about the story
I'm generally not a fan of covers that show nothing but some guy's abs, but it's even worse when they cut off the top of his head. And then sometimes they show the cover model but he obviously doesn't match the character. Like he has the wrong skin or hair color or is shirtless and missing a bunch of tattoos. It just gives the haters more ammunition to hate on romance when the covers all look the same.

1.Things that deface a book

Like writing in or highlighting anything that's not a textbook, dog-eared pages, or worst of all

those origami-like flowers and stars made from the pages on bookstagram. They hurt me physically. (Though I do think painting the edges is pretty cool.) Or those stupid stickers that aren't really stickers that some publishers print on the covers of books really irritate us. Why would you do that to a book? They're worse than the stickers that you have to get adhesive remover to take off. Can we just not put stickers on books?

Honorable Mentions:

Series that aren't clearly numbered

I will never understand why authors/publishers won't put the number of each book on the spine. I can't tell you how irritated I get when I have to look up a series on Goodreads just to shelve them in order on my bookshelves. Trad publishing need to take pointers from the manga industry on this.

Reading a series out of order

I really don't get this. I'm a firm believer in reading a series in order. Why would you read book three before book one? I don't care if the books in the series are companion novels. Reading things out of order are going to spoil things from the previous books. I hate spoilers with a passion. Why would I intentionally spoil myself? 

 and

Top 5 Wednesday: Top 5 Reasons We Want to be Victoria Schwab When We Grow Up

Top 5 Wednesday is a Goodreads group hosted by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Bloggers, booktubers and bookstagrammers post on a common topic every (you guessed it) Wednesday. You can find the lists by searching #T5W or Top 5 Wednesday. And you can join the group on Goodreads if you want to participate.  

This Week's Topic Is:
Authors You'd Want to Write Like
But we could really only think of one, so here are the top five reasons we want to be Victoria Schwab when we grow up.

A post shared by Victoria Schwab (@veschwab) on Oct 19, 2017 at 4:31pm PDT

5. Her Wardrobe and Cosplay Skills
Like Victoria, I am a huge fan having a mostly black wardrobe. Although hers is way more diverse than mine. I envy her nerdy t-shirts and I will admit that I've bought more than one that I've seen her wearing. She also has some serious cosplay skills. Just look at the costume she assembled for her Howl cosplay! It is glorious!

4. She Travels The World
It would be great just to go on a book tour and meet people all over the world, but Victoria actually lived in Scotland for a month to write A Conjuring of Light. Plus, she spent a year there for grad school. I would love to have a job that let me do that!

3. Her Versatilty
Not only does she write for three different audiences - MG, YA, and adult, she rewrites vastly different books in each age group. Vicious is nothing like A Darker Shade of Magic. Same with This Savage Song vs. The Archived. But the one thing each has in common besides their uniqueness is beautiful and atmospheric writing that just sucks you into the story.

This makes my heart happy. https://t.co/t1zlqBARpz

— Victoria/V.E. Schwab -- No I'm not doing NaNo (@veschwab) November 14, 2017

2. She's a Fangirl Just Like Us
Victoria is a lovely person both in person and online. But one of the things I've loved about following her on Twitter and Instagram is seeing her geek out about everything from books to anime to movies to authors. Her fangirling over the Captive Prince books is what made me pick them up. I started watching Black Butler because of her. And her fangirling over Neil Gaiman, an author I also adore, just endeared her to me more.

I am 3 books away from my 100 book reading goal. Tell me what stories you're loving right now, Twitter. Points for ones I might NOT have heard of.

— Victoria/V.E. Schwab -- No I'm not doing NaNo (@veschwab) November 25, 2017

1. Her Productivity
Victoria reads about the same number of books as I do every year because he considers it part of her job. But she also writes multiple books in a year. Even if you add up all the blog posts both Rose Red and I have written, it's nowhere near that many words. She usually releases at least one book a year and most of the time it's two, like next year when we get both Vengeful and City of Ghosts. The woman must run on tea alone. Seriously, when does she sleep?

and 

Top 5 Wednesday: Books I'm Thankful For

Top 5 Wednesday is a Goodreads group hosted by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Bloggers, booktubers and bookstagrammers post on a common topic every (you guessed it) Wednesday. You can find the lists by searching #T5W or Top 5 Wednesday. And you can join the group on Goodreads if you want to participate.  

This Week's Topic Is:

Books You're Thankful For

Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers! 

We hope you're getting a chance to curl up with a book this week. 

Lots of us make lists of people and things we're thankful for this time of year. Before this T5W topic, I've never thought to list books though. Here are my top 5.

5. Hungry Like the Wolf by Paige Tyler

I'm always thankful for a Slump Buster! Last year Tyler's SWAT series, of which this is book one, broke me out of a major reading slump.

4. Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh
Speaking of Slump Busters, whenever I'm in one of those "I want to read but nothing sounds good" moods I pick up something from the Psy-Changeling series.

3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerors Stone by J.K. Rowling
In the last few years, I've seen so many new authors who were inspired by Harry Potter. Not to mention a whole community of YA bloggers, booktubers, and bookstagrammers. This series unites readers from all over the world, giving them common ground and shared experiences.

2. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

How can I be thankful for a book that I haven't actually read? Twilight brought so many of my peers to paranormal books and blogging. Many of us who are currently reviewing adult PNR may not have gotten here without it.

1. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

This book is the one that brought me. My gateway into the UF/PNR world was Sookie Stackhouse and I discovered some of my favorite series based on recs from Charlaine Harris.

Which books are you thankful for?

Top 5 Wednesday: Nostalgic Book Boyfriends

Top 5 Wednesday is a Goodreads group hosted by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Bloggers, booktubers and bookstagrammers post on a common topic every (you guessed it) Wednesday. You can find the lists by searching #T5W or Top 5 Wednesday. And you can join the group on Goodreads if you want to participate.  

This Week's Topic is:

 Nostalgic Book Boyfriends/Girlfriends

This is an odd topic for me because I didn't read for fun much as a teen and calling books I read at 30 "nostalgic" makes me feel really old. So I'm thinking about the way things used to be in some of my favorite series. Here are some of my favorite book boyfriends that didn't wind up with the heroine. Possible spoilers ahead.

5. Quinn in Definitely Dead and All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

I loved Sookie with Quinn! It probably helped that the series was also at its best around that time. I didn't love things ended for him in the series though.

4. Richard in Circus of the Damned by Laurel K Hamilton

I'm including him not so much out of nostalgia for Richard himself, but for the early days of the series when Anita Blake was with him. The later books just have a completely different feel.

3. Vlad in Destined For an Early Grave by Jeaniene Frost

Maybe I'm pushing it a little bit by calling Vlad a book boyfriend in the Night Huntress series since he was pretty much friend zoned the whole time. I just liked Vlad so much better before he had his own series. I thought that version of him was such a great potential book boyfriend.

2. Eric Northman in Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

Amnesia Eric is super swoony!

1. Jonah in Drink Deep by Chloe Neill

I've been Team Jonah pretty much ever since I read this book. But he was doomed to be Merit's rebound guy. I hope that Neill gives him his own HEA some day.