Hello everyone! How’s everyone’s week going so far? I’m hoping its good and that everyone is healthy and all that. I only say that because I’m cooped up in bed with a major head cold. Like, I’m pretty sure my face has swollen up to be the size of South America, or so it feels like.
And my boyfriend and I celebrated our five year anniversary and in the next couple weeks I have Valentine’s Day, Gallifrey One (the Doctor Who convention), my birthday and all that this entails, and LADA is putting on an event at the Pasadena Library and so much is going on. And I’m sick. So. Lame.
It so figures.
But the good thing is, being sick leaves me with a lot of free time to watch old episodes of Glee and Vampire Diaries and to write blog posts for you guys!
So enjoy this week’s Top Ten: the top ten people I wish I could meet right now.
10. Suzanne Collins
Honestly, meeting her would just be really cool because she’s a really good author and I truly enjoyed the Hunger Games trilogy. I’d kind of like to meet every single author that I love because I want to ask them questions: what inspires them, how do they deal with writers block, etc etc. Suzanne Collins created three immensely successful books that are becoming equally successful movies and that’s inspiring. More and more over the years, women writers are becoming more successful and more prominent. Its fantastic that these insanely good and successful books that everybody is reading and enjoying are coming from women. Suzanne Collins is a great writer, creating an addicting world and people of all ages, races, genders, etc. are reading her books. That’s awesome.
2019 Update – Met at the Mockingjay Part 1 Premiere!
9. Cinda Williams Chima
This is a much under-appreciated woman, at least the way I see it. I picked up her books randomly at a bookstore one day and fell in love with her books and her writing. She’s a jewel in the heaps and heaps of books that are hitting shelves in the young adult literature section. Because young adult literature is at its prime, and everyone seems to be jumping on board, a lot of the good stuff gets lost in the shuffle and I think Cinda Williams Chima is one of the authors. Her work is amazing, but I haven’t met a lot of people who have read her. Which is sad because most of my friends are bibliophiles like me. I would love to meet this woman because she’s an absolutely fantastic writer, and she creates a unique fantasy world. A lot of fantasies nowadays seem to parallel or mimic Lord of the Rings, or Tamora Pierce, or Star Wars or Harry Potter, to the point of annoyance. Not Chima. Her worlds are so real, she’s put so much work and thought into them. Her characters are fun and you can’t help but love them, the way only a lover of books could. I would like to go up to her and say, hey, maybe the world isn’t falling at its knees at your feet and maybe you don’t have a movie to blow it up but this fan right here loves your work and can’t stop telling people how fantastic it is.
2019 Update – Met her when The Enchanter Heir came out!
8. Gary Oldman
Okay, I mostly have superficial reasons for wanting to meet Gary Oldman. Plain and simple, I think he’s a great actor and he’s a very handsome, sexy man. I mean, look at this picture; he’s obviously a lot older than me, you can see the salt and pepper in his hair, but he is soooo insanely attractive to me. And I think a lot of that comes from the iconic roles he has played: Sirius Black (my favorite HP male character) in Harry Potter, Commissioner Gordon in the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, Sid in Sid and Nancy, and he plays like a hundred different bad guys. He makes a seriously sexy bad guy. He’s a great actor, and many young actors have been quoted, saying that they are inspired from Oldman, that he an aspiration for them. He’s one of those understated actors. He’s not in your face, you’re not seeing him on Entertainment Tonight or all over the papers, but he comes in, does his job and does it well and thats it. Classic.
2019 Update – Still have not met him.
7. Rick Riordan
I feel like Rick Riordan would be a seriously fun guy to meet, mostly because his books are seriously fun to read. I’d also like to meet him so I can go up to him and shake him really hard, yelling “WHY THE HELL DID YOU LET PERCY AND ANNABETH DROP INTO TARTARUS AND END THE BOOK THAT WAY? WHY WHY WHY?!?!?! I’d probably get escorted away very very quickly. But his books are very humorous. Sure, the world is usually in a disaster in his books and Percy or Jason or Annabeth or Piper or Leo or Hazel or whoever has to save it, but there’s always time for that humor and its just so hilarious. I feel like he would be a super fun person to hang out with, and I’d imagine he’d be a really awesome dad, and I think awesome dads are…awesome. Probably because I have one. But I think he’d be a fun person to bounce ideas off of, and I’d like to do that because he’s a good writer, but he isn’t complicated. Its the kind of writing I like to do. I like my stories to be fun, because I just don’t think that I am life changing. Rick Riordan is who I go to for fun and I’d like to learn how to write fun books like that.
2019 Update – Met him at Festival of Books 2018!
6. Libba Bray
I think I’d really like to meet Libba Bray so I can just tell her how absolutely amazing I think that her writing is. I know that A Great and Terrible Beauty once had been optioned for a movie and I am actually pretty okay with the fact that it just never came to be. Her books are just too precious to touch and I feel like the women empowerment that is in her novels would be lost to the big screen. I love that her novels have that feminist touch, in that the females have the power, but they’re aren’t so much so that Bray is beating down on men. Obviously she’s not; she’s married, has a son, and I’d imagine she’s in love. But she presents these stories in worlds where women don’t have power, especially in Victorian England, with her most popular series. I love that Gemma, Pippa, Felicity and Ann are in this world where they have no choices, that their lives are set up for them: debuts and husbands they don’t love for some of them and a life as governess for horrible children for others. But she gives them powers, gives them the link to the realms and gives the powers to make their own futures. Not only are they fun to read, and they have that fantasy element to them, but they’re empowering, they’re inspiring, they’re life changing.
2019 Update – I met her at the first YALLWest – I can’t remember what year that was!
5. Karen Gillan
This one is going to be kind of short. She’s hot. She is way super hot. I loved all the Doctor Who companions but she was the first one where I was like WHOA. I have a huge crush on this one. And yes, its more than just that. Amy is an awesome companion in that she is the Doctor’s equal at times, she keeps him in line and doesn’t listen to a word that he says. Her relationship with Rory is adorable and they make it look so real, while being alternately cheesy and not too cheesy. And she’s seriously gorgeous. I have a redhead thing going on when it comes to the girls (see: Christina Hendricks). So I would really like ot meet her so I could drool a bit in presence.
2019 Update – Still have not
4. David Tennant
Best. Doctor. Ever. The first season of Doctor Who pulled me in, gave me enough curiosity to keep on watching but it was the second season, it was David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor that really grabbed me and made me an addict for this show. David Tennant was able to capture exactly what the Doctor is and should be. He has the youthfulness but also the intellect of someone who is old. He is excited at the little discoveries of his life but he has this worldly knowledge of how he believes things should be. He does his best to save everyone that he can and he does it so well. I love as you watch him go from unknowing to discovery, his process as he figures it out. I love when he gets angry because he shows his anger so well and you believe it, and you know why so many people fear him. When it was time for him to leave, for the Tenth doctor to regenerate, it was heartbreaking because he was SUCH a good Doctor.
2019 Update – Still have not
3. Mike Trout
This guy totally stands out on this now doesn’t he? But seriously I would love love love to meet him. I would say about 50% of that is because the guy is seriously hot, like…wow, I haven’t seen a baseball player this hot in a very long time, and who cares that he’s three and a half years younger than me? But I also do want to meet him because he’s on my absolute favorite baseball team and I worship baseball and Mike Trout is a fantastic ball player. He came onto the scene last season and just blew up baseball. There isn’t a baseball fan out there that doesn’t know Mike Trout. Unanimous decision as Rookie of the Year, and while he had no chance at actually winning, he gave Cabrera some pause as a candidate. More young kids are watching baseball because of him, and he’s brought attention to his small New Jersey town, Millville, which has been struggling heavily in this downturn economy. If you watched the Little League series at all, you saw that most of the US kids said Mike Trout was their favorite player. He’s awesome, he’s hot and I want to be able to say that I met him.
2019 Update – UGH I’VE BEEN SO CLOSE!
2. Tamora Pierce
I’ve written an entire blog post on how much I adore Tamora Pierce. I could go on and on and on and on and on….literally forever on reasons why I would like to meet this lady. Part of it is because I haven’t had the chance to meet her yet, and I’ve been greedily reading her books since I was 15 years old. Ten years, and she’s never made a trip to California that is either near me or that I am able to go to. I would just like to go up to her and tell her thank you, thank you for writing such wonderful books that continue to reach out to readers for over thirty years. Thank you for providing such perfect heroines. Thank you for being an author that I could look up to. Thank you for being something so different in this overflow of books. Thank you for bringing me my pen pal, one of my longest friends. Thank you for just being such a badass writer. That’s why I’d like to meet her.
2019 Update – I met her at the RT Convention in 2015!
1. J.K. Rowling
I think this is the one person in the world where I would fall apart at the seams if I met her. I would cry, and laugh, maybe even pee my pants a little if she was ever in front of me. Remember the way girls were when they used to see the Beatles? How they would cry and scream and faint and just look like they were going absolutely mad? Yeah, that would be me, in front of dear ol Jo Rowling. She has written my seven favorite books in the entire world. She has given me a world to escape to, values and morals to love, characters to love, a person to aspire to be. Harry Potter has done for me what nothing else has ever been able to do. I’m getting teary eyed just thinking about it. This woman and her stories literally changed my life. There is a reason, many reasons, that I have four Harry Potter symbols, words permanently tattooed on my skin. That is what she has given me. I would love to meet her so I could just tell her how much she has done for me, how much that she has changed me and my life. I would like to thank her for her stories because without them, I don’t know who I would have been.
2019 Update – Psh, I haven’t even gotten close…
I’m pretty sure that this list will continue to change, day by day.
A couple people will point out that I didn’t include Andrew McMahon (from Something Corporate, my allll time favorite band), Cassandra Clare or Meg Cabot. Well I’ve met Andrew twice, I’ve met Cassie once and will be meeting her again in March and I’ve met Meg Cabot four or five times, I’ve lost cost.
Who would you like to meet?
