Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is  weekly meme hosted by The Broke and Bookish. Each week they give a topic, and then other blogs make their top ten list for that topic.

This week's topic is Top Ten Most Vivid World/ Settings

Megan and I came up with our list today sometime between baking cookies and watching the music video to 'Take a Walk' by Passion Pit (it's really weird. But kind of funny.)

In no particular order, this is what we decided on.

1.  Narnia

This world is vivid enough that I haven't met a single person that wouldn't take a chance through the wardrobe. From the talking animals to the castles, this series had one of the first worlds that really left an impression on me. I would've given anything to be Lucy or Susan in these books.

2. Alice in Wonderland

As far fetched as this book was, it did have a vivid setting. Maybe not vivid in all the right ways (between you and me, I'm pretty sure there was something wrong with Lewis Caroll) but I could most definately picture almost every seen in my head very well.

3. Harry Potter

In our opinion, this is one of the most complete and fully-functional fictional worlds there is. Everything is thought out, everything is seamless, everything has an answer, yet J.K. Rowling managed to create this without flooding her readers with description and background info in every book. That's also why we think that there has been so much fanfiction written for Harry Potter- the world is so 'massive' (not exactly in a spacial sense, more a creativity sense) that the possibilities are endless, yet still Harry Potter.

4. Victorian Era Settings

Quite possibly among our favourite time periods, the Victorian Era has room galore for book plots. I love the fashion and the social events- balls, tea parties, court scenes- and also the added royalty to lots of Victorian Era books is a really interesting place once you add in the possible drama.

5. Tortall

One of my favourite authors is Tamora Pierce. I have almost an entire shelf on my bookcase just for Tamora Pierce books. A large amount, about 2/3, of her books take place in the realm of Tortall. This world is a bit like the Harry Potter world in the way that it is complete and 'endless'. There are rules to the magic that make it practical, as practical as magic can be. This is another world that also has massive amounts of fanfiction.

6. Dystopian Settings

Lately, there's been many books in the buzz that are in Dystopian settings. Hunger Games, Divergent, Delirium, The Chemical Garden Trilogy, The Selection, Matched, The Maze Runner Trilogy, you get the drift. I think that part of the reason why these are so easy to imagine and make vivid is that it's fairly easy to imagine yourself in the protagonists place- as compared to something abstract like being a mermaid or a dragon-slayer, living in a dystopian world is imaginable. It's easy in an odd sort of way to image what it would be like with censorship- take away Facebook and Twitter and Youtube, how would you feel? I think that while most people haven't experienced something like this before, we've all had something we can't have, and blow that up times a million and you could be in a dystopian world.

7. Middle Earth

If you've ever read any Tolkein books, you'll know that his books all had lots of description and imagery, making for very vivid settings. (Plus if you've watched the Lord of the Rings movies you can't help but picture that while you read)

8. Incarceron

I read this book several months ago, and the world completely enthralled me. Incarceron itself, a sort of prison- thing, is pretty much one massive robot. It was something so different then anything I've read before, the scenes just jumped into my head. While I'd love to see this book on the big screen, I just don't know if they'd be properly able to pull it off.

9. The Enchanted Forest series

The Enchanted Forest series by Patricia C. Wrede (a co-author of Sorcery and Cecilia) is a crazy and hilarious world. It's complete fantasy- just fed about 50 pounds of sugar and put in a bouncy castle. They are incredibly fun to read and are really enjoyable. Everything about the world is fun and easy to picture, but it would certainly be an interesting place to live, if at times a bit frustrating. (Some places don't stay where you thought you last saw them.)

10. Eyes Like Stars 

Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev and the rest of the books in this series have another setting that I've never really encountered before. While I did find the books a teensy bit slow, both the characterization and descriptions are something to be envied. Some day, I hope to be able to write such imagery as Lisa Mantchev can. Basically, the whole world is the stage of Bertie. While I never could put a finger on the time period or the place, that was part of the magic of these books. It's its own world, a fancy mixture of time periods, settings and myth.

There ya have it, our first Top Ten Tuesday list.

Rachel