It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for two of my favorite bookish blogging memes!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by MizB at “Should Be Reading.” Here are the rules if you’d like to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s mine, from The City of Ember by Jeanne DePru

The little group of Believers had gone, but the protesters with their signs continued to pace back and forth. A few of them were still shaking their fists in the air and yelling, but most of them tramped silently, looking tired and discouraged.

I’ve had this book on my TBR for a long time, just never got around to reading it. It’s aimed a bit of a younger audience than what I usually read, but it’s keeping my interest. I might recommend this one to my kids when I’m finished with it.

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the lovely folks over at “The Broke and the Bookish.” This week’s topic:

Ten Books For Readers Who Like Character Driven Novels

This topic was a bit difficult to narrow down, since I think most of what I read is pretty character driven. If there aren’t good characters that I can latch onto and hope and laugh and cry with, I don’t usually stick with the story. Here are a few that I really loved.

1. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling – A top ten list of mine with Harry Potter on it?? Shocking!! Sorry, but I can’t help it. Rowling’s characters are all wonderfully written, but you can’t help but stick by the boy wizard as he grows up and faces the greatest evil the wizarding world has ever known.
2. If I Stay by Gayle Forman – Oh my heart. This book gets you inside a character’s head like no other I’ve read. Mia, a teenage girl, has a near death experience after being in a car crash that kills the rest of her family. She has to decide whether to live or move on. Gah!!
3. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – This is one of my favorite books from when I was younger and there is a good reason. Ender Wiggin. This poor kid. He has the fate of the world resting on his little shoulders and he doesn’t even know. It’s uplifting and shocking at the same time.
4. Going Bovine by Libba Bray – This book is definitely up for a re-read in my near future. It is so bizarre a twisted, but that’s what makes it fun. The main character, Cameron, is a teenage boy diagnosed with mad cow disease. To find a cure, he goes on a crazy, trippy adventure that may or may not be in his head.
5. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – I love this book. 80s trivia, video games, and a contest to win a fortune. It would still be a good story, but is made even better by the main character, Wade. His struggles through the Hunt and his relationships with the other contestants make this book even better.
6. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie – This is probably one of  my favorite books read this year. The main character, Junior, tells his story of what it’s like growing up on the reservation, being part of two communities who don’t fully embrace him, and his journey to finding his own identity. Plus his cartoons are really funny.
7. The Otherworld Series by Yasmine Galenorn – While there is a lot a wacky stuff happening in these books (which is part of the fun), you have to read them for the relationship between the three sisters. If we didn’t have Camille, Delilah and Menolly, the whole thing would be a mess.
8. The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare – Even more than the Mortal Instruments series, this one punched me in the gut. I love these characters so much. They had me hanging on every word to find out what would happen next.
9. Comes the Night by Norah Wilson and Heather Doherty – The friendship between the three main characters is really a beautiful thing in this book. Seeing these three very different girls fight for each other is what makes the story so compelling.
10. Splintered by A.G. Howard – For a story that has so much going on, it would be easy to let the setting tell the story. It would probably still be a good book if that had happened. The fact that Alyssa, Jed, Morpheus and the rest are such amazing, well-written characters only makes this good story great.

Please leave your teasers or your favorite character driven books in comments!

Categories: Teaser Tuesday, Top Ten Tuesdays

Tags: books, teaser tuesday, top ten tuesday