Bookworm Blurbs

I missed out on the last two Top 5 Wednesdays, so this is a catch up post! I missed last week's because I was in Florida and didn't bring my laptop, and I missed this week's because I just had a crazy day yesterday. But it's okay because I'm making up for it now! Read on to see my Top 5 Siblings and Top 5 Fictional Technologies. 

 

 

Top 5 Siblings 
I was super excited about this topic! I'm the oldest of 6 kids and I LOVE being a part of a big family, so I get really excited any time siblings are mentioned, haha. Here are my favorite literary siblings: 

 

1. Fred and George Weasley

As any Harry Potter fan will tell you, Fred and George Weasley are the ultimate siblings. They stick by each other no matter what and are truly inseparable, right up until Fred's death in Deathly Hallows. Not once do we ever see them fight (at most, they simply tease each other) and they're always a team, even when it means going against the rest of their family. When it comes to sibling teams, you can do no better than the Weasley twins! 

 

2. The Gilbreth Family

As a member of a big family myself, I've always appreciated the loveable crew from Cheaper by the Dozen. My family's not quite as big as the Gilbreth clan, but by modern American society's standards, we might as well be. The adventures of the Gilbreths make me laugh out loud every time I read this book and its sequel, Bells on Their Toes, and I find their experiences to be very relatable. The Gilbreth family shows that while your siblings might drive you crazy, in the end, they're also likely to be your best friends. And now I want to re-read these books so badly, haha. 

 

3. Mary and Laura Ingalls

I was a HUGE Little House on the Prairie fan as a kid. I read all the books and I've probably seen just about every episode of the TV show. I was so obsessed that from age 4 to about age 8 I pretty much constantly wore a bonnet because I literally wanted to be Mary Ingalls (because she was the blonde and while I wasn't blind, I did wear glasses - but I did love Laura, too). If you're familiar with either the books or the TV show, you know that Mary and Laura got into their fair share of fights, but that in the end, they always made up and they truly were each other's best friends (this is a common theme in my choices for today, haha). Their relationship is much like my relationship with my sister Elyse, and I'll always have a soft spot for the Ingalls girls. 

 

4. The Baudelaires 

The Series of Unfortunate Events is one that I never finished as a kid but have been dying to get around to finishing for years. But from what I have read of the series (I think I got up to book 7 or 8?), the Baudelaire siblings are true champions. They're orphans and they're shifted along to various obscure relatives, always pursued by the evil Count Olaf. The Baudelaires rely on each other to get out of many a scrape and they know that no matter what happens, they need to stick together. They each contribute something to their little group and it's hard to find a better example of Great Siblings than the Baudelaires. 

 

5. The Pevensies

Last but not least, the Pevensies (better known as Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) are great examples of imperfectly perfect siblings. This group demonstrates that your siblings will disappoint you at various points throughout your life (Example A: Edmund's betrayal to the White Witch, Example B: Susan's lack of belief at the end of the series, the list really could go on from there...). But as angry as the Pevensies get with one another, they never give up hope that whatever sibling's being a dummy at the particular moment will eventually come around. When said idiot does see their error of his/her ways, he/she is always immediately forgiven and all is forgotten. And as a team, they're basically unbeatable. The Pevensies are a fantastic example of how real life relationships with siblings often work, and that's why I've included them on my list. 

 

Fictional Technology
I did have a hard time coming up with stuff for this topic. I am not a huge sci-fi fan and I feel that the books with the greatest amount of fictional technology are sci-fi books - so coming up with this list was a struggle for me - I honestly could only come up with 4, and some of them are a stretch (pathetic, I know, but that's what happens when the staples of your reading tastes are historical fiction and classic literature). But then as soon as I posted this I came up with a 5th, yay! Anyway,  I hope you like what little I've put together! Here are my favorite examples of fictional technology: 

 

1. The Second Chance Institute/daynight

Okay, so if you read my review of daynight that I posted several months ago, then you might remember that I wasn't super impressed with most of the book - I didn't think it was very well-written. But what really did blow me away was the concept. In daynight, there's an alternate world called Thera that's an exact mirror of Earth, except everything's reversed - where there's water here, there's land there; when it's day here, it's night there, etc. And then there are these portals that take people back and forth. It's not really technology, but the whole society on Thera is very technologically advanced and I thought the concept was awesome. So that's on the top of my list!

 

2. Apparition

This is another example that's not really technology but I'm stretching things and counting it anyway. When I read the Harry Potter series for the first time, one of the things that impressed me the most was apparating/disapparating. Having the ability to just appear somewhere? How cool is that! Again, I realize that this is technically magic, not technology, but again - I decided to stretch it and list it. 

 

3. Tesseract

Okay, this one definitely counts, haha. I am not a huge fan of A Wrinkle in Time, but tesseracts are way cool. They're a fictional technology that allows the characters in AWiT to go to alternate dimensions (much like in daynight) and it allows the characters to travel through the universe. And they're described in a way that, to the average not-super-knowledgeable-about-science kid, they come across as totally possible and legit. 

 

4. Wardrobe 

My last not-really-technology-but-screw-it example on my list is the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Which of us hasn't hoped that our mom's antique wardrobe doesn't have a secret world in the back of it (or your closet, if your mom doesn't have her grandmother's wardrobe like mine does, haha). I remember being super disappointed when we first got the wardrobe and my mom had to tell me that there was no chance of me going to Narnia - but in the back of my mind, I always hoped that she was wrong! 

5. Aliens in The Host

Okay, so you might be reading this thinking to yourself, "aliens are creatures, NOT technology," right? And you're totally right. But in Stephanie Meyer's The Host (which I read like 7 years ago and I think was actually way better than Twilight, if I'm remembering correctly), the aliens are actually implanted into humans' brains. They're not capable of living on Earth without a host and so they take over the humans. Way. Cool. And super scary. There's a similar type of deal going on in The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, but I chose to use The Host since it was published earlier. 

 

Hope you liked my lists, although the tech one is admittedly lame :( who are your favorite literary siblings? And what fictional technology has impressed you the most? Please leave comments below, I'd love to hear from you! :) 

 

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