This week’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl is a relationship freebie: pick a relationship and then ten characters who you want to have that kind of relationship with, e.g. siblings, found family, etc. I’ve gone with friends — and I’m going to try to pick side characters, rather than the main event, since main characters tend to have a lot of drama (and sometimes danger) coming their way…

1. Liu Mingyan, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (MXTX). I think Mingyan and I have some things in common — we could definitely talk about books, if nothing else!
2. Ratthi, from The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells). He seems like such a sweetie, and Martha Wells did say in an interview that of all her characters, he’d be a lot of fun to hang out with.
3. Medic, from Ancillary Sword (Ann Leckie). In part, it’d be just kind of funny to get a Medic’s-eye-view of Breq, Seivarden, and all the trouble they bring with them.
4. Csevet, from The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison). In the same vein as Medic, really, it’d be fun to get a different view of Maia and the court. And Csevet seems pretty fun.
5. Lord Ruthven, from Strange Practice (Vivian Shaw). He knows so much, and he’s kind, and let’s face it, he’d probably make me cookies if I asked.
6. Amanda Frisby, from Band Sinister (KJ Charles). I think we could make a pretty neat book club between me, Amanda and Liu Mingyan.
7. Harriet Vane, from Strong Poison (Dorothy L. Sayers). Here’s another one for the book club. Sure, we’d all need some time to adjust to each others’ cultures and time periods, and I’m not sure if we’d all agree about the merits of each others’ reading matter, but you can bet after that we’d have the most fun.
8. Lenore, from Shady Hollow (Juneau Black). She owns a bookshop. We’re natural friends. And while we’re talking about that book club idea, Lenore’s a good addition too (though I doubt she and Mingyan would see eye to eye).
9. Dr Chef, from The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Becky Chambers). Okay, maybe this is slightly another one where I’d love him to cook for me. But also he has a heck of a perspective on the world from all he’s seen, and tries to be so kind and inclusive.
10. Natalie Oscott, from The Tropic of Serpents (Marie Brennan). She drops out of the series and pursues her own career, and I’d love to hear more about her efforts at pushing boundaries.

There we go, I succeeded without any main characters! And I think this book club idea would be really good, if only…

Looking forward to seeing other folks’ posts on this theme — don’t forget to drop your link in the comment if you visit.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday had me stumped for a bit, but it’s always fun to give it a shot, so let’s see what I can do: “Planes, Trains & Automobiles/Books Featuring Travel (books whose plots involve travel or feature modes of transportation on the cover/title)”.

1. The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. This jumped to mind right away, because it opens with Maia receiving the news that he’s the new emperor — and a swiftly-arranged airship flight to the capital to take up that position, even though an airship crash was precisely the reason for his unexpected ascendance to the throne.
2. Murder on the Ballarat Train, by Kerry Greenwood. There’s a rich tradition of mysteries involving trains, and Phryne Fisher solves hers so stylishly.
3. The Wheel Spins, by Ethel Lina White. This leaps to mind for the same reason: it’s set mostly though not entirely on a train, covering the course of one fateful journey in which the protagonist puts herself in danger by refusing to accept someone’s disappearance.
4. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. The book follows the crew of the Wayfarer as they travel to a far-off part of space in order to create a wormhole that allows other people to travel faster from point A to point B, so it feels like it fits handily into this prompt!
5. Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey. While we’re being unconventional, how about this one? Phèdre certainly travels, not just in this first book but throughout the series. This book concerns one of her first journeys, through the snow of Skaldia home to Terre d’Ange.
6. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, by Malka Older. More mysteries and trains, but in a SF setting!
7. The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi. Travel to a different dimension counts, right? Right?! And it’s such a fun book too.
8. Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells. Murderbot is travelling! It doesn’t like it, but it sure is travelling. (Can you imagine a travelogue by Murderbot? Yikes.)
9. The Masked City, by Genevieve Cogman. This one features a train — a Fae train, travelling between worlds! I can’t believe it wasn’t one of the first I thought of, because this is in some ways a favourite of mine in the series.
10. Chalice, by Robin McKinley. I know, another unconventional choice, but hear me out: Mirasol ends up binding her demesne together by travelling around the whole area, doing her magic. And there’s the also the Master’s somewhat more metaphorical journey back from Fire, since he originally left the demesne to become a priest of fire. See? Travel.

This feels like… a very typical list from me, heh. Somehow it comes down to the same books in many of my posts, somehow. I guess it’s because I feel like I’m supposed to be choosing the ten representatives of whatever the theme is that I like the best, or at least like a lot.

Naturally, as soon as I saw this week’s TTT prompt, my brain went blank: “Ten Favorite Books from Ten Series”. But after some digging around on my shelves in the blog, I do have some answers! I’ve probably left out something perfect and amazing, but here goes. I’ve linked to my review in each case, assuming I have one posted on the blog!

1. Death of an Author, by E.C.R. Lorac. Of the British Library Crime Classics series, this is one of my favourites. This is perhaps not the conventional sense of “series”, and perhaps I should’ve picked my favourite Lorac of her series about Inspector Macdonald… but, well, I didn’t.
2. Mirror Lake, by Juneau Black. It’s hard to pick a favourite of this series, because it’s less about any individual book (at least so far) and more just enjoying the setup. Still, Mirror Lake is very clever.
3. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, vol 3, by MXTX. Okay, maybe it’s cheating to count this as a series, but we’re not being marked on accuracy here. I like book three the most because Shen Qingqiu starts to realise some things — and starts to finally understand Luo Binghe and treat him a little more fairly. And of course, they get their happy ending.
4. Two Rogues Make A Right, by Cat Sebastian. I didn’t choose this just because a major character has TB, but that kinda factors into why I find this so memorable. But I also enjoy how Sebastian’s series usually take a character who seemed an unlikely love interest in a previous book, and get into why they acted that way, and make them worthy love interests after all, and — if I remember rightly, anyway — this was the first book where I noticed that pattern.
5. A Fashionable Indulgence, by KJ Charles. I wouldn’t always expect a first book in a series to be a favourite, but I think there were things I found frustrating or just not to my taste in the latter two books — while appreciating the arc and story over the whole trilogy, and liking the second and third books quite a bit, to be clear! And I do enjoy the characters (and their relationship) a lot in this first installment.
6. Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis. I’m not absolutely positive I shouldn’t pick Voyage of the Dawn Treader here, but on the other hand, this has all four of the Pevensies, and as a kid I ate up the introductory chapters with the secret midnight meetings in the tower…
7. Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan. This book is where that series fell into place for me, and it’s a perfect illustration of how Isabella is as a person (and a scientist). I just had a lot of fun with it, and always do.
8. Feed, by Mira Grant. Honestly, this book has lived rent-free in my head for so long. I’m not as big a fan of the rest of the series — not that I dislike it, just, this is the book that I like the best.
9. Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal. This is another series where it was the second book that made things really click for me. It was very unlike the first book, and went some bold places.
10. Have His Carcase, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Perhaps a controversial choice, compared to Strong Poison or Gaudy Night, and there’s a strong argument to be made for The Nine Tailors, in my book. But ultimately I love Peter and Harriet’s early friendship and the wittiness this particular book is written with.

Those are my choices, and I’m sticking to them!

What about everyone else? Would you/did you find this one difficult to answer?

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “Books I Wish Had More/Less [Insert Your Concept Here] In Them”. I decided to go slightly off-piste and talk about characters I want more of in given books, because there are some characters I’d love to understand more about or see the further adventures of.

Without further ado, here are my ten!

1. Csethiro Ceredin, from The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. She’s really cool, but we only really see her through Maia’s eyes — and early in their acquaintance, at that. I want to know about why she learned fencing, I want to know about all her other interests, and of course I want to know how she and Maia work out as a couple.
2. Liu Qingge, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by MXTX. He’s a fairly prominent character, given the amount of time he spends protecting Shen Qingqiu and fighting Luo Binghe, but I’d love to know about his childhood, how he and Mingyan both came to Cang Qiong Mountain, more about his past animosity toward the original Shen Qingqiu… I just like him a lot, okay!?
3. Ning Yingying, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by MXTX. It’s fairly obvious that her “demotion” from love interest to side character actually allows her a chance to develop and grow. I’d love to have seen more of that.
4. Liu Mingyan, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by MXTX. Pretty much the same story here! And why did she decide to wear a veil, and when? What will she do when she’s not Luo Binghe’s love interest, and with her brother alive?
5. Faramir, from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. This has been a long-term wish for me. I loved the brief glimpse we got of Faramir from a very young age, and that interest in him hasn’t abated at all. How’d he come to be the best of his family, far nobler, braver and kinder in many ways than Boromir or Denethor?
6. Don Abene, from Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells. And her whole group, really. How do they get on after meeting Murderbot? Does Murderbot ever join them again?
7. Tom Wilker, from A Natural History of Dragons (and sequels) by Marie Brennan. He’s a major character of the books, and we do get to see him succeed, but what would he write in his memoirs? What did he make of his life after he and Isabella’s great discoveries?
8. Cal, from Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. He’s a bit-part, really, coming or going as needed by the plot — but I wanted to know more about how he gets along in the world.
9. Thimble, from Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. I think this might just be because he was cute. But also we didn’t get to know a lot about his thoughts and feelings, and I’m curious.
10. Sun Li, from Shady Hollow (and some of the sequels) by Juneau Black. We know a bit about where he’s come from and why, but he’s developing a friendship with Vera and Lenore, and I’d actually like to see more of it — more than just them eating at his restaurant with him, for example. Do they hang out other than that? What does he do with his free time?

In the end, these are books I love just as they are… but it really wouldn’t hurt to see more of these characters.