Blog Tour: Here Lies Bridget Tens List

 

Top Ten Favorite Things in Books:

1)      When the hero is kind of a jerk.

2)      When the pretty girl isn’t just “the most gorgeous girl in the world, but doesn’t know it,” because that’s stupid.

3)      Chapters that end in a hook.

4)      Drop lines. They make me feel like I just had a “BOOM” moment.

Even when I didn’t.

5)      When the environment is well-examined and used. When the sounds of silence in the big empty house are scarier than the sound of a bang upstairs.

6)      When the author writing young adult isn’t 100% out of touch, and trying to be. I’m sorry, if you don’t get pop culture references by fifteen year olds, don’t try to write them. It was a pet-peeve in a Book That Shall Remain Nameless. An “AIM” conversation (already kind of irrelevant) that went something like this: “Sup?” “NM, U?” “NTM, JC” “U UP 4 C-ING THE NEW TRNSFRMRS MV 2NITE?” “N. FRI?” “OK.” “GR8. GTG, GN.”

Um. What? Teenagers are lazy, not stupid. Yes, abbreviate some, but UGH.

7)      Kind of goes hand in hand. Too many technological references. This is the most effective way to make your book irrelevant in a year.

8)      I like when a book pushes into the next realm of believability without making a world I don’t understand or can’t relate to. In Harry Potter, the train platform, Grimauld Place, Diagon Alley—they were all right there in the middle of London, just being ignored by the ‘muggles.’ I like when I feel like if I look hard enough around me, I’ll find something that no one else can.

9)      Again, related to #8. I like books that take place in my world, starring the bored, normal girl or boy, who gets picked up from his or her normal life and ends up in a real story.

10)  I like when the author is aware of how fast I’m reading. I read, what, 6 pages a minute? So if a word is repeated or if, in that time, a relationship has been formed, it has happened too quickly.