Friday Fives: Novel Envy

It's been a while since I've gotten to a Friday Fives post, simply because it's been a while since I've gotten around to reading blogs at a reasonable hour on a Friday!  But this week's topic from Paper Hangover is a fun one: 

 

1) A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I've mentioned my love of this book before, but the writing combines the simplicity of Sara's ideas about life and being nice to people and imagination with some incredibly lush and evocative descriptions.

 2) Delirium by Lauren Oliver.  I think this one sprang to mind because my current WIP has some structural similarities and I despair of ever getting into some kind of shape that is even half as urgent and lovely as Delirium.

3) An Abundance of Katherines by John Green.  I think I mentioned my love of the narration in this book when I posted my response/reviewlet/whatever after I read it.  That's like, the least of John Green's gifts--I can't even wish I wrote Looking For Alaska, because I don't even understand how that book happened in someone's brain, but I can wish for John Green's 3rd person narrative voice in An Abundance of Katherine's because it's at least like something I've attempted before.  

4) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.  I was nervous about reading this one when it was assigned in my college Intro to the Novel class, because I had an out-and-out battle with Dickens when we had to read A Tale of Two Cities my sophomore year of high school.  But I wound up getting so sucked in by Great Expectations that I actually gasped out loud reading a particularly suspenseful section alone in my dorm room.  It's such a great story.  (English majors aren't really supposed to talk like that.  But I wasn't a great English major.) 

5) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.  Yeah, I went there.  I chose this one on the strength of a four word phrase near the end of the book that I think I may someday get tattooed on my wrist to remind me what words can do.  (It's "this is what happened" and it's right before The Awful Thing happens, and no book has ever made me want to slam it shut and stop reading more than that phrase did, because I knew as soon as I read it.)