Top 10

SE’s Favorite Inspirational Characters

Matilda, (Roald Dahl) Matilda inspires me to believe that my habit of disappearing into my room for hours at a time to read and emerging only after my family has forgotten I exist is a worthy, nay, even noble life decision. Fitzwilliam Darcy, (Jane Austen) As a fellow socially awkward introvert, Mr. Darcy is honestly my #partygoals. We can triumph over large groups, we can survive a village assembly with resting bitch face intact, and we can become enduring romantic literary…

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Bookish Worlds I Would Live In Tomorrow, and A Few I Wish to Avoid

Today I’m making a half-and-half list. Five bookish worlds I would move to in one second, no questions asked, YES my bags are already packed; and five bookish worlds where I’d last long enough for one good Hollywood scream. First, the top five worlds I would disappear to in an instant if it were somehow possible: 1. Narnia If you tell me you never wanted to live in a world where the animals could wish you ‘good morning’, I will…

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Hidden Book Gems You Need in Your Life

I have a suuuper soft spot for these six lovelies. Some of them are older and therefore mostly forgotten, what with all the shiny new stuff coming out every year. A few are newer, but might not have had the best marketing. Whatever the reason, they’re the underdog and we all know I’m a complete sucker for the underdog. (Book descriptions come from Goodreads and let’s face it; I’m totally trying to suck you into reading them) Beauty Robin McKinley –Of…

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Top Ten Please Just Stop the Series

Slightly cheating for this week’s top ten, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Waaay back in October, 2017 I wrote a post for Books Rock My World that has a lot to do with the chosen topic for this week. If you didn’t know I write for that site, now you do know. [Unless you hated one of my articles, in which case haha, NO, that’s totally another SE White. It’s a very common name. Don’t flame me.] Anyway. Leaving a series…

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10 Books That Have All the Sensory Feels

This is all about the trip down memory lane. It sounds strange at first to think a book, dead leaves stuffed full of inky imprints of soul, could come with a strong sensory memory attached to anything other than your eyes. But if you think about it, a lot of different things combine to be part of the reading experience. Where you were, what you were going through at the time, your environment, even what you were eating. Most of…

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Top Ten Awful Books I’m Glad I Read

To preface this list: I try hard to stay away from bashing bad books. In the first place, I wouldn’t like it done to my books. That shit hurts. Second, I might meet the actual author some day, and that would be awkward AF. Can you picture it at a convention? Me: “Oh, hi, you’re [author]? You must be the one who wrote [this book, which I totally trashed in a review].” Poor Author: “Yep, that’s me. So you’ve read…

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Sewhitebooks Recommends the Clever Bastards

Hello and welcome to my tangent! I’ve previously covered this topic in Top Ten Tuesday, Villain Edition and had a lot of fun with it. So today I’m going rogue again and picking my favorite clever villains. I want the best plotters, the most urbane, cultured, and ridiculously devious little psychopaths for the list today. I want the type who have plans A-D ready to go, are already one move ahead in the chess game of hero vs. villain, and could pick…

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Sewhitebooks Wants Your Childhood

Our theme today: Favorite Books from Childhood Full on nostalgia hit this week. I blame my fourth cup of pumpkin spiced coffee. Anyway, allow me to throw this entire list at you and then fight off the urge to go re-read all of these immediately. And also let me know your own childhood favorites! I’ve got two school-age mini bookworms growing up and I’m sure we’d all love to read them, too. The Beatrix Potter stories For some reason we…

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Book Tropes: The Grovel in The Novel

Sometimes I’m in the mood for a super specific, really niche trope. It’s like a food craving, where only that certain brand from that one store will do. In this case it’s a good old grovel. Not the little token apology with immediate making-out, ohhh no. I want the real down-and-dirty, sincere, I-fucked-up, oh-my-god-I-was-so-dumb, dawning realization. It doesn’t particularly matter to me which character (hero or heroine or all three heroes in a reverse harem) is doing the groveling. There…

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10 Reasons Writers Are Definitely Creatures of the Night; Author Toolbox Post

We function best with comfy, secluded, darkened spaces. In a house, there was a writing cave. Inside that writing cave, there was a desk. At that desk, there was an author and an empty notebook. Under that desk, there was a blanket fort, and in that blanket fort there was . . . a writer’s block. See? It just works. 2. Random screams into the void have high probability. Also we’ll hiss at our Word program, to assert dominance, after…

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