Today’s Top Ten Tuesday theme was one I couldn’t resist: book worlds where you’re glad not to live. But I’m going to tweak it a little and do five places where I’m glad I don’t live and five book places I would like to live. If you think this topic is as much fun as I do, check out The Broke and the Bookish blog. The ladies there host this meme every week and have lots of great bloggers chime in on all kinds of book topics.
So here goes!
Worst Book Worlds: Or, Books Worlds Where I I Don’t Want To Live
1. The United States featured in The Hunger Games. Yikes.
2. Charles Dickens’s London. The coal, the fog, the rain, the damp, the poor….eesh. When I read The Old Curiosity Shop, I cheered internally when Nell and her grandfather leave London to go to the country. And then there’s the danger of being put in the Debtor’s Prison, like Little Dorrit’s family. Talk about hopelessness.
3. The United States in Matched. I still haven’t read the third book in The Matched trilogy by Ally Condie. If you’re unfamiliar with it, basically everything is decided for your in life by The Society: your spouse, your vocation, your house, your food, everything. And that’s really all you need to know about why I don’t want to live there.
4. Life After Life‘s setting: a world where you can keep on living alternate versions of your life. This book gave me waking nightmares. Very vividly written and thought provoking, but not a read I enjoyed!
5. C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy worlds. Basically, anything that includes science fiction is somewhere I do not want to be. I like normal life. The ability to travel to other planets is nice to read about, but man am I grateful not to live there when I’m done reading!
Best Book Worlds: Or, Books Worlds Where I Want To Live
1. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. For those of you who have only read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, you won’t get this one. Or maybe you will, if you can get past the beginning when it’s a perpetually frozen iceland. Like Bree in The Horse and His Boy, if I lived anywhere else but Narnia in the world of these books (say, Calormene), I would be high tailing it to Narnia. I want to see a Dryad, talk to a Beaver, dance with a Faun, all of it.
2. Tolkein’s Rivendell. Or anywhere but Mordor. Actually, I’d probably just like to visit Rohan, but not live there. I’m not exactly keen on horses.
3. Green Gables. Sigh. 
4. Guernsey from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. After the German occupation, of course. Living on an island that’s not too far from the mainland sounds great.
5. Hogwarts. But just for a visit. =)
Kerri says:
I didn’t enjoy Life After Life either-and I thought I was the only one. It was like Groundhog’s Day gone bad. But very well written.
Great list- would love to live in Rivendell.
Tricia says:
Oh, I love this idea! I agree with you on the places I would NOT want to live. I haven’t read Matched, but maybe I will now. I suspect Hogwarts would be really crowded if all its fans decided to go!
MiaTheReader says:
I know, Hogwarts is such a popular pick I almost didn’t include it, but I had to be honest. I wouldn’t recommend Matched unless you really enjoy dystopian literature. It’s not the greatest piece of writing, though some of the concepts are quite thought provoking.