Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Top 5 Wednesday: Books From Before We Started Blogging

Top 5 Wednesday is a group of bloggers, booktubers and bookstagrammers posting on a common topic every (you guessed it) Wednesday. You can find the lists by searching #T5W or Top 5 Wednesday. And you can join the group on Goodreads if you want to participate.


This week's topic is:
Books from Before You Joined a Bookish Community
We chose when we started blogging.

Gretl's List

One of the things that changed when I started blogging is that I don't get to binge read as often. But before that I always read a whole series, or as much of it as was released at the time. That's why my list isn't single books but series. I didn't include any like Mercy Thompson or Kate Daniels that I'm still reading and reviewing - for me those are both before and after blogging. Though it wasn't my intention, this list is really Urban Fantasy 101.

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5. The Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris
This is the first series I read when I started the genre and a lot of the others on the list are ones I started because Charlaine Harris recommended them.

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4. The Hollows by Kim Harrison
The Hollows may have been my first non-vampire centered series, though it has a little bit of everything. I've read some of the books in this series 4 or 5 times.

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3. The Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost
This is the most romance-like of my early UF choices, though it always used to bug me that they were published as romance. I see so many hybrid series now that I don't really worry about it.

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2. The Anita Blake series by Laurel K Hamilton
The early books in this series are so different from the recent ones. I tried to keep up for a while because there are some characters, like Edward, that I still love. I think I'm three or four books behind at this point though.

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1. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
This series has also evolved quite a bit, though not in the same way as Anita Blake. I wonder when we're getting new a Dresden book?

Rose Red's List

5. The Dark Mission Series by Karina Cooper
When I first really got into urban fantasy, I used to search the "Customers Who Bought This Also Bought This" section of my favorite books on Amazon for anything that looked interesting. That's how I found Karina Cooper's Dark Mission series and I adored it! It's dark and gritty and features witches and witch hunters. I had never read anything like it then and I really haven't since. If you want to know more about it, I did write a RTFB post about it soon after I started blogging.

4. The Tales of the Ketty Jay by Chris Wooding
I don't know why I don't talk about this is series more. It's one of the series that cemented my love of steampunk and crews of misfits. I've tried to describe it to friends and all I can say is it's a an airship steampunk series that reads like Firefly but with little bits from The Lies of Locke Lamora, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Indiana Jones thrown in. It's one of my favorite series ever! I loved it so much, I imported the 3rd and 4th books from the UK because there was a several year delay getting them published in the US.

3. Sunshine by Robin McKinley
 Long before I read the Kate Daniels series, Robin McKinley taught me that vampires are not always handsome and sparkly and I loved that about it! The vamps were gross and the heroine was a normal baker at a bakery. Sunshine is the urban fantasy book that made me start looking for creature mythos that were outside the mainstream norm. It holds a very special place in my heart. I also wrote a RTFB post about this one.

2. Bitter Spirits and Grim Shadows by Jenn Bennett
About six months before I started blogging at the Goldilox blog, I was searching for a new paranormal romance series to start but I wasn't finding anything I wanted. Being a mood reader sucks some days. Then one of my favorite blogs wrote a review for Bitter Spirits and I was hooked on the premise. These books are still one of my all-time favorite PNR series.

1. Vicious by V.E. Schwab
I was introduced to Victoria's book by Jesse the Reader on booktube. He had made a video about how much he loved The Archived and I was immediately sold when I heard the premise. I went out that very day in early 2013 and bought it and The Near Witch then proceeded to read both of them in one day. I loved them! So I was super excited to hear that she was releasing an adult book a few months later. That book was Vicious and it blew my mind! It's still is my hands down favorite of Victoria's books. I did review it soon after I started blogging here.

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