Top Ten Tuesday: Things On My Bookish Wishlist

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday on The Broke and the Bookish is “Top Ten Things On My Bookish Wishlist.” This, apparently, means thigns I wish I could make authors write about. Could be an issue, a time period, a type of character… whatever.

Man, I have NO idea where to start with this one. I feel like most things I want to read about – well, I’ve read about them. But there are probably a few things I’d be into:

1. More books (ANY books) set in the Harry Potter universe.

I love the Harry Potter books. And while I’m sure that, after seven books, many years and countless hours spent writing these books JK Rowling was more than ready to move on, I’m not. I want prequels (how about the story of Harry’s parents’ generation while they were at Hogwarts – and everything that happened leading up to their deaths?). I want sequels (What do Harry, Ron and Hermione end up doing? What madcap adventures do they embark on post-Hogwarts and Voldemort’s defeat?). I want tangential storylines (I want Dumbledore’s life story!). Pretty much anything else in this world – I’ll take it, thanks.

2. More sarcastic and bitingly funny teenagers.

I’ve been reading a LOT of YA books this year. And there are a lot of amazing ones out there, but I do find that YA is often synonymous with censored and fluffy. Now, it’s totally possible that this is a perspective thing. I am well past my teen years, after all. But as memory serves, my teen years weren’t very often like what I read in YA books. There was a lot more swearing, for one thing. A lot more “naughty” shenanigans. A lot more stupid decisions. I’d like some more hilarious, no-holds-barred, uncensored teenaged antics.

3. Another book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Good Omens, the one and only book by these two authors in combination, is my favourite book of all time. Not only is it fantastically well-written, but it also contains some of the funniest images, ideas, characters and events I’ve ever come across in a single book. It’s also piss-your-pants hilarious. I’m a huge fan of many of Gaiman’s solo works (though I haven’t read any Pratchett – I tried but got woefully lost somewhere near the beginning of the first Discworld novel), but nothing else I’ve read comes close to the chemistry of these two authors writing as a team. Man, what I would do for another book anywhere near as good as Good Omens!

4. A re-write of The Hunger Games.

As you know if you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, I am not a fan of how the Hunger Games books were written. The story and concept? Stellar. So. I would like to do what my elementary school teachers did whenever I turned in inadequate homework – I’d like to send Suzanne Collins home with her books and have her do a re-write of the end of every single one of these books. I’d like her to, you know, actually write an ending. No more of this Katniss being unconscious bullsh*t.

5. More really GOOD books set in my part of the world.

I live on the we(s)t coast of Canada. It rains a lot here. On the plus side, we have beautifully green forests, but on the down side…. it rains a LOT. But there are so many wonderful and unique elements to living on the west coast. I recently read The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong, which is set on Vancouver Island, and it was amazing and wonderful to me to read a story with such an intensely familiar setting. So much better than Forks, which is the only other YA book in particular I can think of that is set in this general area (the Twilight movies were filmed in and around Vancouver – the “movie theatre” they go to is actually a strip club down the street from where I used to live. Ah, the things you didn’t know….). They don’t have to be by local authors, in fact I’d be interested to read what someone recently located here would have to say about it. But I do love Douglas Coupland, who’s from here and writes excellent books that are mostly set here.

6. Another TFIOS.

Yeah, I know. It’s unique, nothing will ever be the same… but a girl can dream, right?

I really can’t think of anything else. That good enough?