My Top Ten Non-Bookish Hobbies

Usually when I’m not banging on about books or studying on this blog, I’m writing long Back from the Dead posts to explain why I’ve once again slipped off the face of the planet. If you’ve read any of these posts, you’ll know that the excuse I usually use is that I have so much work to do that I don’t have time. Either that, or I’m just super lazy and unmotivated. And while the latter excuse is definitely one hundred per cent accurate, the truth is that I do also have a (very) few other things that occupy my time other than work and books. Since this week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about non-bookish hobbies, I thought I’d share a few of them with you, although honesty forces me to admit that I ran out of steam at about No. 3 on this list and couldn’t think of any more things that I enjoy doing, so I proceeded to either a) make stuff up, or b) fantasise about the stuff I would do if I were wealthier, cooler, smarter, and had more time – or indeed an entirely different personality.

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Top 10 Super Long Book Titles from My University Essays: Being a Short and Incomplete Historie of the Ridiculously Verbose and Unnecessarily Long Titles of the Tomes Brought Forth for Studye During My Younger and More Academic Years, Written in the Yeare 2020

I’ve been out of academia for a while now, but if there’s one thing that I remember about being at uni, it’s the fact that there is a lot of reading. And I mean a lot.

Sometimes that reading is fascinating, sometimes it’s decidedly not (I’m looking at you, Jacques Lacan, you bastard). I’ve already written a list of top 10 books I think every lit major should read, and this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was a great chance to revisit my university days once more. As soon as I saw the topic was extremely long book titles, the reading I did at uni immediately sprang to mind. Because if there’s one thing academics love, it’s a nice, long, and juicy title.

My Top Ten Favourite Quotations

If you’re anything like me, you keep a notebook of your favourite book quotations. It’s a fancy book, perhaps gilded or with some nice patterns on it, because as we all know, pretty covers make books just a little bit more interesting. (Incidentally, the same rule applies to all of the following: movie posters, mediocre wine, cheap t-shirts, and all the men you met before the age of twenty seven.) But sometimes there are also some incredible quotations inside those covers. I’m using today’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt to explore some of my favourites.

Top Ten Books with Colours in the Title (Plus! A Lot of Really Bad Colour Puns)

It’s Top Ten Tuesday time again. Because today’s prompt was delightfully open to interpretation, I decided to think long and hard about how I could be creative with it.

But after about two minutes of strained cogitation I decided that was too difficult, so I just combed through my Goodreads list until I found ten books with colours in the title. So here they are. Forgive me if my choices come a little… out of the blue. I hope I won’t come out of this too red-faced. Then again, I’ve always been a bit of a black sheep.

(WARNING: there will be a lot more of this. I make no apologies. I’m just showing you my true colours.)

Top Ten Signs You’re a Book Lover

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So it’s been a while since I’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday list, but this week the topic is definitely one that tends to occupy the minds of us bookish types – how can you recognise a book lover? Well, here’s my humble attempt at a field guide to your garden-variety bookworm (helluo librorum vulgaris).

1. You regularly have dreams about characters from books that are more vivid than the dreams you have about your friends and family.

Top Ten Most Memorable Fathers in Literature

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The last time I tackled a Top Ten Tuesday topic, it was ‘Most Memorable Mothers in Literature‘. So this week I’m looking at the most memorable fathers in literature: the good, the bad, and the ugly. (This was technically supposed to be last week’s TTT topic. My bad.)

Top Ten Most Memorable Mothers in Literature

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Happy belated Mother’s Day, Mums! Hopefully your kids remembered that Saturday was the big day, and bought you lots of nice presents and didn’t forget, like Steve always does. Nice job, Steve.

(Full disclosure: I did forget.)

So to make up for it, Mum, here are ten memorable mothers from literature for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you for having all the qualities of the good ones and none of the qualities of the bad ones.

Top Ten Book Turn-offs

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Last week’s Top Ten Tuesday was all about things that will instantly make you want to read a book. But I love this week’s topic even more: things that will instantly make you not want to read a book. Advance Warning: This topic will require the use of frequent 30 Rock GIFS. Because Tina Fey gets it, man.

Top Ten Things That Will Make Me Instantly Want To Read A Book

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I’d like to think I’m not particularly fussy when it comes to picking books to read. That I like to read widely and experimentally. And while this is broadly true, it’s also fair to say that I am a judgemental bitch who definitely makes snap decisions about books without sufficient evidence to back up said decisions. So, in the interests of calling me out on this terrible habit of mine, here are my top ten book turn-ons for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday: the things that will make me want to read a book straight away, laid bare. 

My Top Ten Favourite Movies Based on Books

I contemplated using this week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme about movies to just talk about movies that weren’t book-related, but then I realised that a sizeable chunk of my favourite movies consists of book adaptations anyway. These aren’t necessarily the best book-to-film adaptations I’ve ever seen, but they’re the ones I love re-watching.