This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is Books to Pull You Out of a Reading Slump. I don’t get into reading slumps often. Usually, if a book isn’t working for me, I give up on it and move on to something else. But I do get into writing slumps, and every so often a book will jolt me back into writing. Here are a few and why.
From Twinkle, With Love by Sandhya Menon: This book was awful. It was poorly written plot with obnoxious characters and a perfect happily ever after. I don’t mind happily ever afters, I don’t mind cute YA contemporary, but I do mind if book is poorly written. This book (and her previous one) has inspired me to write my own YA contemporary… that has good writing and good characters.
Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly: I love middle grade books, but I don’t read as many of them as I should. I have mixed feelings about Hello, Universe, but it pushed me toward wanting to focus more of my writing on middle grade stories. There are a lot of good middle grade books, but there are plenty of bad ones too. I want to make sure there are great ones.
The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley: Like Hello, Universe, this book has inspired me to write middle grade stories. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write something this quite as amazing in both character, plot, and detail as this book, but I want to try.
River of Time Series by Lisa T. Bergren: This series was one of the first from a Christian publishing company that I thought were fantastic. It had all the elements of The Hunger Games (plus time travel and medieval knights) but with a slight Christian message. For years, I’ve wanted to be as awesome as Lisa T. Bergren and write books like her. I still do.
The Archived/The Unbound by Victoria Schwab: I reread and read this series recently, and I was blown away by the aesthetics of the books. I hope someday to write something as atmospheric and intriguing as this one. Plus, the way she sets up the Library and its system helped me look into my own system of magic in a story I’ve been working on for a while.
The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli: This book is one that I wish I had written. The concept of the dragons and storytelling blew me away. I hope someday I can write a dragon story that has just as much power and intensity as this one.
Renegades by Marissa Meyer: While this isn’t my favorite Marissa Meyer book, it definitely inspired me to write my own superhero story. I love how she created the characters and their abilities, developed the world-building of the Renegades and the Anarchists, and wrote the action scenes. It’s one of the best superhero novels I’ve read.
The Disappearances by Emily Bain Murphy: I fell in love with this story for many reasons but the biggest reason is because of the way it made me feel. The relationship between Aila and Will mirrored my own relationship (with a William, no less). I just hope someday I can write the same kind of story that leaves someone gasping for breath as they read like this book did for me.
Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland: I’ve only read the first book in this series, but I love what I read. A middle grade series about dragons where the dragons are the main characters? It’s like my 12 year-old self wished really hard. These books definitely inspired me to write more dragon books.
Siren’s Song by Mary Weber: While I love all three books in the Storm Siren trilogy, Siren’s Song takes the cake. The way Mary Weber wrote Nym’s story arc, the emotion at the end of the book, and the messages incorporated throughout the series twisted up my reader’s heart in so many ways. I want my books to be just as powerful and moving, full of healing, love, and compassion.
And then I read Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor and gave up all hope of writing something amazing. Just kidding!
If you write, what books have inspired you? Don’t forge to join the link-up!
Keeper of the Wood Between Worlds 
I absolutely love the way that you use the books you read to inspire your writing. This is such a wonderful adaptation of the challenge! I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t actually heard of any of these titles – I think I’ll have to look some up!
If you’re interested, here’s my Top Ten Tuesday list for the week: https://emilyweatherburnblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/21/top-ten-tuesday-books-to-pull-you-out-of-a-reading-slump/.
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Thank you! I don’t really get into reading slumps because I DNF books if it doesn’t work for me, so I wanted to do something different for this week’s prompt.
I don’t recommend ALL of these titles, but most are some of my favorite books. Happy reading!
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That makes a lot of sense – I struggle to DNF books, but I definitely do sometimes! Thank you :).
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Fun twist on the topic for this week! I haven’t yet found that reading any particular book will get me out of a writing slump, but that’s mostly because I haven’t tried hard enough to write through the slumps. Usually these days if I’m in a writing slump the writing takes a back seat until the need to write overpowers it. I love the way you describe how books you read make you want to pass along the feeling you got from a book — or write a better example of a genre.
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Thank you! I try to push through writing slumps, even if I work on something else–a book review, a blog post, a rant about my day. Anything to contribute toward writing.
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It does make sense! I don’t usually count blog posts as “writing” even though it totally is. I need to be more realistic about including that, since it does still take the same type of effort.
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For a while, I didn’t count it as writing either, and then I thought about it. It does take effort and time and it’s putting words and sentences together to form thoughts. So even if it’s not toward a specific story or piece of writing, it’s still getting me into the habit of writing. And I think I need to remember that still, too.
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Oooh, I love this twist you did on this week’s TTT! With summer ending and college classes starting up next week, I’m definitely starting to slip into a writing slump!
And aaah, Renegades; I still need to read that book!
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Thank you! And Renegades is awesome, even though it’s long.
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Ooh, I love seeing middlegrade on this list. I loved The War That Saved My Life. I still need to read Hello, Universe.
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I love middle grade! I need to read more of it, but The War That Saved My Life is an easy favorite. The sequel is just as good.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Hello, Universe. Some aspects were great and others weren’t, but I would recommend it to the appropriate age group!
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