Road Trip Wednesday: Literary Christmas Presents

YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday question this week is "What would you give your favourite characters for Christmas, and why? Would you give Harry Potter contact lenses? Bella Swan a copy of He's Just Not That Into You? Or maybe a lifetime supply of cherry cola to Bianca Piper, so she always has something to throw at guys who don't behave?"

I'm quite partial to giving Bianca Piper a lifetime supply of Cherry Coke, I LOVED that scene. :D

I'm sitting in my bedroom at home scanning over all the book titles on my shelves and thinking about what I'd want to give the characters for Christmas. Mostly it's been going like this:

Jacob Reckless... he needs a hug... he might not appreciate it, but he needs one. Rose and the White Bear? Hugs. Both Will Graysons? Hugs. Gemma Doyle? Lots of hugs - especially if I meet her post-book-three (I'm not the only one who cried, am I?).

This coming from someone who is rather new at this whole hugging thing. Clearly a lot of people in my favorite books really really need hugs.

But I think John Green's Paper Towns provides an opportunity for actual gift-giving.

I would give Margo Roth Spiegelman a new notebook, for when she runs out of space writing over everything in the first one. (Also a hug.)

And Q? Q would get a GPS. (And a hug. Maybe several hugs. He'd probably just push me away and keep looking for Margo, but he'd get the hugs anyway.)

It seems my roommate has well and truly turned me into a hugger. :P

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Road Trip... Thursday?

So I'm sure most of you know about YA Highway and the cool stuff that gets posted over there. I'm especially fond of Field Trip Fridays and the This Week in Random section.

I always glance over there on Wednesdays and read their prompt and think, "hmm, I should do this, that would be a good idea." And then I never do.

But yesterday, when I saw that the prompt was "If you could travel back to any historical era for research purposes, which would you choose?", I said "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO DO THIS."

And then I promptly fell asleep. For the entire afternoon. (Which was great, but did not leave time for blogging.)

But because I am a history dork, I'm going to post this anyway.

What I *should* say is that I'd like to go to Paris right before the Revolution. It would help if this time-traveling involved instant translation (can I go with the Doctor? Pretty please?) so I could wander around and see what life was like in the months before the Bastille fell. I mean, I know generally - no one had enough to eat, etc etc. But how much did the common Parisian girl know about what was going on with the Estates General? How much did she care?

And while that would be the most useful instance of time travel, it wouldn't be my first choice. My abiding obsession... ahem, I mean love, of the Victorian Era would come in first. After all, in my English class junior year, when we were playing the "what time period do you want to be from?" game and everyone was saying the 60s or the 80s, my entire class turned to me and dubbed me reincarnated from Victorian nobility. I don't think I'd want to stay long - maybe about a monthlong holiday, long enough to have fun in period clothes and dancing with gentlemen who can actually dance and such, but not long enough to get bored of making calls every morning.

Seriously, once time travel is invented, someone is going to make a fortune catering historical vacations. I know I'd be first on line.

So... can I go now? Bustles and dance cards? Please?

How about you guys?