Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Book Excerpts

Top Ten Tuesday is an original blog meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is “Top Ten Quotes I Loved From Books I Read In The Past Year Or So.” I don’t usually write down favorite quotations from books while I read (though I should), so short of going through every book I’ve read during the last couple of years, doing this topic by the letter is not going to happen. Instead, I’m going to do a little twist on the topic. As part of my reviews, I always select a quote from the book to share, so for this week’s topic, I’ll be sharing my favorite of these excerpts. Covers linked to Goodreads.

1. The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma – “We were gasoline rushing for a lit match. We were bared teeth. Balled fists. A stampede of slick feet. We went wild, like anyone would. We lost our fool heads.”

2. The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton – “There it was again. Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon.Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage.”

3. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson – “Still, the longer I was around her, the more I could see the colors of her mind and the recesses of her heart. There was a beast in there. But there was also a girl who was afraid of being a beast, and who wondered if other people had beasts in their hearts too.”

4. A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Shwab – “But the thing about magic…is that it preys on the strong-minded and the weak-willed, and one of the worlds couldn’t stop itself. The people fed on the magic and the magic fed on them until it ate their bodies and their minds and then their souls.”

5. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman – “Under the white winter sky the dragons looked rusty, a disappointing color for so fabled a species, but I soon realized their shades were subtle. The right slant of sunlight brought out an iridescent sheen in their scales; they shimmered with rich underhues, from purple to gold.”

6. The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg – “To her amazement, snow began to fall. Paper snowflakes cascaded through the air, some as small as Ceony’s thumbnail, some as large as her hand. Hundreds of them poured down as the paper ceiling gave way, all somehow timed just right so that they fell like real snow.”

7. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – “‘You are looking for someone who can perform in the midst of a crowd?’ she asks Chandresh. He nods. ‘I see’ Celia says. Then, so swiftly she appears not even to move, she picks up her jacket from the stage and flings it out over the seats where, instead of tumbling down, it swoops up, folding into itself. In the blink of an eye folds of silk are glossy black feathers, large beating wings, and it is impossible to pinpoint the moment when it is fully raven and no longer cloth.”

8. Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link – “Wizards are sly, greedy, absentminded, obsessed with stars and bugs, parsimonious, frivolous, invisible, tyrannous, untrustworthy, secretive, inquisitive, meddlesome, long-lived, dangerous, useless, and have far too good an opinion of themselves. Kings go mad, the land is blighted, children starve or get sick or die spitted on the pointy end of a pike, and it’s all beneath the notice of the wizards of Perfil. The wizards of Perfl don’t fight wars.”

9. Undercover by Beth Kephart – “The squirrels were hysterical in the trees that day, hurtling off limbs like cannonballs. Above the squirrel circus was a big-winged hawk that rode a thermal, then flapped its wings to follow the stream. After a while I started following the hawk. I took off my shoes, and I went running through autumn air that was so acorn ripe that it crunched.”

10. The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater – “In that moment Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.”

Do any of these quotes intrigue you enough to want to read these books? Share your thoughts in the comments and be sure to leave a link to your own TTT post, so I can visit.