Favorite Book Blogfest

I am on a ROLL with these blogfest things this June. Too bad that wasn't on my resolutions list for this year because I'd be owning. :)

Anyway, you can still participate. Teralyn Rose Pilgrim is hosting this 3 day blogfest. Here are the deets:

1. Pick your top five favorite books
2. Between June 20 and 22, write one line of what each book is about and then write one line of why you liked it. Think of it like a twitter pitch for other people’s work. Semi-colons are cheating, but you can use them anyway.
3. Go to other blogs and discuss the books.
4. If you do not keep a blog, put your challenge in the comments on the day of the event.

So Jolene at Been Writing posted her blogfest entry on Saturday and broke the rules a bit. Instead of saying why she liked the book, she included a line or two from said book. I thought, Hey, that's cool. So I'm doing the same. Yeah, I just go around, sponging up other people's rule breaking ways.

Picking my 5 favorite books is CRAZY hard. A nigh IMPOSSIBLE task. I have a number of favorites, but they can't be ranked in any permanent way (they change up). Anyway, I did my best.

Here are 5 books I'm proud to have on my bookshelf.


1) The Last Unicorn: After learning she is the last of her kind, a unicorn journeys into the world to discover what has become of the others and to face the Red Bull that haunts their tracks.

Why I love it: It's an extended fairy tale with so much depth, and it has gorgeous prose.

"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea."


2) From the Dust Returned: This is the collected stories of a special Family made of dust and dreams and untamed things and the foundling son, who wants so much to be like them.

Why I love it: It's a beautiful study of wonder, longing, and nostalgia. Plus, it has imagery and turns of phrase that make me long to be a better writer.

(From Chapter 5: The Wandering Witch)
"Into the air, over the valleys, under the stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as autumn winds, fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew."


3) Good Omens: The Apocalypse is nigh, but the Antichrist is missing, and a fussy angel and snarky demon, who aren't so keen on the End of Days plan, see it as their chance to stop the whole thing in its tracks.

Why I love it: Angels, demons, Horsemen, kids, a dog named Dog, prophecies gone awry (or not), and bucketloads of humor.

(Conversation between the angel Aziraphale & the demon Crowley)
"'There are people out there shooting one another!'

'Well that's just it, isn't it? They're doing it themselves. It's what they really want to do. I just assisted them. Think of it as a microcosm of the universe. Free will for everyone. Ineffable, right?'

Aziraphale glared.

'Oh, all right,' said Crowley wretchedly. 'No one's actually going to get killed. They're all going to have miraculous escapes. It wouldn't be any fun otherwise.'"


4) The Odyssey: With the end of the Trojan War, Odysseus can finally sail home to Ithaca, but after he ticks off Poseidon, the sea god, he is forced to journey through mythological Greece's most treacherous waters to find his way home.

Why I love it: It's an epic poem, which makes it EPIC, and I love Greek mythology. If it's translated well, the prose is spare but vivid in its imagery. I also have like 3 different copies of this book.

"But once your vessel has cut across the Ocean River / you will raise a desolate coast and Persephone's Grove, / her tall black poplars, willows whose fruit dies young. / Beach your vessel hard by the Ocean's churning shore / and make your way down to the moldering House of Death."

5) Sabriel: When her necromancer father goes missing, Sabriel leaves her boarding school on the non-magical side of the Wall for the magical Old Kingdom to discover her father's fate and to confront the dark force behind the rising Dead.

Why I love it: I think this is possibly the first new-at-the-time YA fantasy book I read as an actual YA that I really loved. The heroine kicks butt. There's mystery, danger, action, romance, and a really cool, well-developed magical world.

"Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was."


Thanks for reading! What are your 5 favorite books and why? Have you read any of mine?


P.S. In case you haven't heard, the fabulous agent-writer extraordinaire Weronika Janczuk is doing a #SaveBookstores fest on June 25th, the first Saturday of summer. What do you have to do? Easy, go buy a book from a bookstore!

In fact, if A Nudge reaches 100 followers this week or next, I may buy one of YOU a book too. Just sayin.' But more on this perhaps Friday, while I mull it over. Any requests? ;)