Daily Archives: June 11, 2013

Top Ten Tuesday – Beach Reads (June 11)

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TTT3WTop Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week a different topic is posted inviting the participants to come up with a list of ten things to do with the topic.

This week’s topic is: ‘Top Ten Beach Reads (however YOU define a beach read!)’ I don’t really go to the beach that often, but I were to I’d definitely bring some books with me. I think the kind of books that would be most ideal would have to be short and fun reads, nothing too heavy or deep. So, here are ten that I think would best fit that category:

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  1. Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) – a classic from my childhood, with plenty of association with the ocean. Would be an ideal summer beach read.
  2. The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection (Wendy Northcutt) – easy to read in short bursts, which makes it ideal for not having to concentrate or keep track of what’s going on.
  3. High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories (Robertson Davies) – a collection of sixteen short stories, making it ideal to pick up and put down for short spells.
  4. The Book of Awesome (Neil Pasricha) – lots of humour and fun facts. Another good book for short spells of reading, if you can manage to put it down once you have started.
  5. The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived (Allan Lazar, Jeremy Salter, Dan Karlan) – yet another fun book that can be read a snippet at a time, without having to worry about plot or too much thinking.
  6. Moominpappa at Sea (Tove Jansson) – I could have chosen any of the Momin books, as they are all such fun stories, but I chose this one because it has the family going to live in a lighthouse for a little while.
  7. The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float (Farley Mowat) – of all the Farley Mowat memoirs I’ve read, this has been the funniest and the one I enjoyed the most. Large parts of the story take place at sea as well.
  8. Stenwick Days (R.T. Johnston) – a collection of hilarious stories that take place in the fictitious Orcadian parish of Stenwick. It is always a fun read.
  9. The Adventures of Tintin Vol. 5 (Herge) – any Tintin adventure would be ideal beach reading, but I chose this one because it contains two of my favourite Tintin stories. The three in this volume are Land of Black Gold, Destination Moon, and Explorers on the Moon.
  10. Stories (edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio) – I’m really not a beach person, so this collection of strange and offbeat short stories would help to deaden the pain if I had to be there!

Teaser Tuesdays – Peeps (June 11)

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tteTeaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

  • 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 are my teasers for this week:

peepsAnts may not think anything ever. But if they do, maybe they have visions of strange creatures coming along to carry them to another world, like X-Files geeks in the Roswell desert waiting for a spaceship to whisk them away.

From page 60 of Peeps by Scott Westerfeld.  I haven’t started this one next, but it is high on my TBR list.