Top Ten things books have made me want to do or learn

So, Top Ten Tuesdays are a book tag/meme thing that is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish every Tuesday.

I’ve been following their blog for ages and I love their weekly Top Tens, they are always really interesting topics. I’ve never taken part before, mainly because I didn’t want to swamp by blog with loads of these posts, but I saw this topic and had to give it a go. It’s such a different idea and I thought it would be cool to know what you guys wish you could do from books. I’d love to know if there are any things you picked up or wanted to pick up based on a  book.

 

1. The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen – Rolling a coin over your knuckles

I leaned against the wall and withdrew the garlin from my pocket and began rolling it over my knuckles. It was a nervous habit, and I admit that I felt a little nervous.

The knuckle roll came so automatically to me that it barely required my attention.

Okay, this first one I admit, I did actually learn how to do this. Both right and left handed. I’m by no means great at it, but I can do it. Which is more than I can say for anything else in this list.

2. Harry Potter by JK Rowling – Chess

Okay so obviously I would love to be able to do magic and play quidditch and all of the rest of it too but as that is only available to me in my imagination – Chess. I always go back to chess and try to learn then remember how bad I am and give up again. Kudos to Ron.

3. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – Video games

Ready player one is a brilliant book that uses so many video games as pop culture references in it. And I don’t mean all those modern games. I’m talking about all those classic arcade and platform games (which are the only games I’ve ever been good at) and I came away really wanting to play them all.

4. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – A research Journal

The journal didn’t immediately choose a page to open to; it was so well-worn and well-stuffed that every page claimed seniority. It finally split down the middle, obeying gravity instead of use.

The page it opened to was a mishmash of yellowed clippings from books and newspapers. Red pen underlined a few phrases, added commentary in the margins, and jotted a neatly boxed list….

Do I have to say more? I want a journal like that.

5. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch – Slight of hand/Card Tricks

Really, any book where the main characters are con men of any kind. They always state they are really good at sleight of hand which I guess is a must if you’re a thief.

6. Stories from the Stars – Exactly what it says on the tin

I read this book as a little kid and it was my favourite. I kept it under my pillow and reread all my favourite myths. I’ve always wanted to know more. I’d love to be able to look at the starts and name them all and know the constellations and the myths behind them. What I need is an easy digest course or something but they’re either astrology and to do with horoscopes and star signs or pure astronomy and about different types of stars and planets.

7.Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor – Drawing

Karou’s sketchbooks had a cult following around school and were handed around and marveled at on a daily basis. This one—number ninety-two in a lifelong series—was bound with rubber bands, and as soon as Zuzana took them off it burst open, each page so coated in gesso and paint that the binding could scarcely contain them. As it fanned open, Karou’s trademark characters wavered on the pages, gorgeously rendered and deeply strange.

There was Issa, serpent from the waist down and woman from the waist up, with the bare, globe breasts of Kama Sutra carvings, the hood and fangs of a cobra, and the face of an angel.

Giraffe-necked Twiga, hunched over with his jeweler’s glass stuck in one squinting eye.

Yasri, parrot-beaked and human-eyed, a frill of orange curls escaping her kerchief. She was carrying a platter of fruit and a pitcher of wine.

And Brimstone, of course—he was the star of the sketchbooks. Here he was shown with Kishmish perched on the curl of one of his great ram’s horns. In the fantastical stories Karou told in her sketchbooks, Brimstone dealt in wishes. Sometimes she called him the Wishmonger; other times, simply “the grump.”

Okay so I could kind of draw but not to the extent of what I would like and my sketchbooks never looked like that. The idea of it bursting at the seems with pages full of texture and colour almost makes me want to try again….almost.

8. The Cherub series by Robert Muchamore – Lock picking

This is by no means the only book I’ve read where the main characters pick locks (I’m sure there are dozens of them) but it might just have been the first. I have looked up the theory but never quite got around to buying a lock picking set and practice locks (although I have added them to a wish list of mine…)

9 & 10. The Alpha Force series by Chris Ryan – Diving and Climbing

She walked to the base of the cliff and let the coiled nylon rope drop to the ground. Paulo hurried to pick it up and she turned to wink at him then, casually, began to climb. It was like watching a slow dance. Li seemed to flow up the cliff, gripping tiny ledges of rock with her fingers or toes. She moved one hand or foot at a time, then made sure of her holds before moving again. The coil of rope that Paulo held grew smaller and smaller as she made her way higher, a tail of rope swinging behind her.

****

Diving this reef was like being a bird. She could hover, or move up and down effortlessly with a flick of her fins. With the endless deep blue below her, it was like dreams she’d had of being able to fly.

I might be cheating a bit by naming two from the same series. Just know that I could name at least a dozen things that this series made me want to do if I really tried but these are the two that stick out in my mind all these years later.

 

So, how about you? Anything you have done or have been made to want to do because of something a character has done in a book?

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