POST FROM THE DEVIL ORDERS TAKEOUT

Top Ten Tuesday: Beam Me Up!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a top ten list every Tuesday (obviously) centered around a book-related topic. If you’ve got a blog and did a list for this week, feel free to link in the comments so we can chat! If you haven't, feel free to discuss anyways!

This week's TTT topic:

Top Ten Places Books Have Made Me Want To Visit


So instead of writing an entire paragraph, I'm just going to quote from the books and add some photos.

1. Jordan College, Oxford (His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman)
"What was above ground was only a small fraction of the whole. Like some enormous fungus whose root-system extended over acres, Jordan (finding itself jostling for space above ground with St Michael's College on one side, Gabriel College on the other, and Bodley's Library behind) had begun, sometime in the Middle Age, to spread below the surface. Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for some yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above; Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone." — The Golden Compass

2. Minas Tirith (Lord of the Rings)
"For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into the hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each was a gate. But the gates were not set in a line: the Great Gate in the City wall was at the east point of the circuit, but the next faced half south, and the third half north, and so to and fro upwards; so the paved way that climbed toward the citadel turned this way and that and then that across the face of the hill." — The Return of the King


3. Lothlórien (Lord of the Rings)
"The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien, there was no stain." — The Fellowship of the Ring


4. The Night Circus
"The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold." — The Night Circus

5. North Korea (Nothing to Envy, and yes, I have a death wish)
"If you look at satellite photographs of the far east by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 
Next to this mysterious black hole, South Korea, Japan, and now China fairly gleam with prosperity. Even from hundreds of miles above, the billboards, the headlights and streetlights, the neon of the fast- food chains appear as tiny white dots signifying people going about their business as twenty-first-century energy consumers. Then, in the middle of it all, an expanse of blackness nearly as large as England. It is baffling how a nation of 23 million people can appear as vacant as the oceans. North Korea is simply a blank." — Nothing to Envy
6. Wonderland
"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" — Alice in Wonderland
"Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'" — Alice in Wonderland


7. The Nile (Death on the Nile)


8. The Orient Express (Murder on the Orient Express)
"All around us are people, of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages. For three days these people, these strangers to one another are brought together. They sleep and eat under one roof, they cannot get away from each other. At the end of three days they part, they go their several ways, never, perhaps, to see each other again." — Murder on the Orient Express

9. Lord Asriel's Republic of Heaven (His Dark Materials)
"She had seen forges, iron-works, manufactories in her own world: the biggest seemed a village smithy beside this. Hammers the size of houses were lifted in a moment to the distant ceiling and then hurled downwards to flatten baulks of iron the size of tree-trunks, pounding them flat in a fraction of a second with a blow that made the very mountain tremble; from a vent in the rocky wall, a river of sulphurous molten metal flowed until it was cut off by an adamant gate, and the brilliant seething flood rushed through channels and sluices and over weirs into row upon row of moulds, to settle and cool in a cloud of evil smoke; gigantic slicing machines and rollers cut and folded and pressed sheets of inch-thick iron as if it were tissue-paper, and then those monstrous hammers pounded it flat again, layering metal upon metal with such force that the different layers became one tougher one, over and over again." — The Amber Spyglass
... I mean, I'm not saying I actually want another two movies like the first one, but I couldn't find a very nice pic online, so it's somewhat depressing.

10. Westeros

Hang on, scratch that. You were saying?

Note: The above images have all been linked back to the source and don't belong to me. If they're yours and you'd like me to remove them, just let me know on my contact page.

Comment below to chew me out on choosing places most likely to get me killed! Don't forget to leave a link to your own TTT post (or a few books/places combos of your own) so we can fight/debate/eat each other over our choices :D

10 comments:

  1. Yes and yes to those places in Lord of the Rings—although I myself would stop in Rohan before heading home. :) Westeros would be nice, but I feel like maybe it would be better at the end of the series when the entire population has decimated itself, so I can go enjoy the pretty scenery without them...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha! Yes! Maybe sometime in the sixth book, when GRRM described a thousand pages of snow over the entire cast's graves ... can't remember where I read that. Would be nice if baby Drogon stuck around, though.

      Thanks so much for dropping by!

      Delete
  2. The nile? YES. I can't believe I forgot Egypt on my list! (Although...well, actually, I can because my list is basically Europe. lol) I would LOVE to go to Middle Earth, though I'll settle for a trip to New Zealand and Hobbiton. XD
    Here's my TTT!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, to be fair, the Shire is practically the only safe place in LOTR (and I'm not even including Return of the King in that count). I'm pretty proud of myself for including most continents -- although the Night Circus goes everywhere, so that might be cheating, hehe.

      Delete
  3. Great post!!!
    Hope you can have a look on my blog? We can also follow each other if you want. Let me know if you did.

    Sammie
    sammiethestargirl.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great blog you've got going! Thanks so much for dropping by :)

      Delete
  4. This is such an interesting post! Books have such great influence on me and I can't possibly name all the places they have made me want to visit! Haha :D
    I would love to visit Minas Tirith as well:)
    June
    The Journeys of My Beating Heart

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, Top Ten Tuesday has some amazing ideas; check them out at brokeandbookish.com! I was so hyped up when I saw Minas Tirith in the film adaptation, because it was soooo pretty.

      Thanks for commenting :)

      Delete

IMPORTANT: Please use Name/URL instead of Wordpress/OpenID to comment, otherwise Blogger hobbits will eat your words. So sorry about this. Thanks!

I respond to all comments and would love to check out your blog if you leave a link :D Unless it's spam. Then I'll delete the comment and put you on the takeout blacklist, what a shame!