Top Ten Tuesday: Worlds I Don't Want to Live In and Characters I Don't Want to Be

I've been an awful blogger in 2014.   I don't have much of an excuse.  Gil and I got an awful flu which knocked us out of commission for the first week of January, but since then I've just been distracted.  Well, I'm hoping to do better from now on, so here I am linking up again with The Broke and the Bookish.  This week's topic is worlds that I would NEVER want to live in, or characters I'd NEVER want to trade places with.  I've divided it and done half and half.  I've only done fictional worlds, not settings that are based on real life.  If I added in real life settings, my list would be wayyyy too long.

Unappealing Worlds:

1.  The world of MaddAddam (Margaret Atwood):  I love this series, but would never want to visit it.  With the worldwide plague so recent, there are bodies and decay everywhere, not to mention the pigoons and wolvogs.  Also, I think the Crakers would drive me up the wall.  I guess I should be thankful that my survival skills are so limited that I wouldn't last long. :-)

2.  Dystopian Chicago, Divergent (Veronica Roth):  The whole idea of choosing ONE facet of your personality and focusing on that is pretty bizarre.  Add to that the general hatred of factions for one another, and I'll be taking a pass on this world.

3.  The Republic of Gilead, The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood):  Hmm, a world run by fundamentalists where women have no rights at all and every person is suspicious of everyone else.  Sounds delightful...

4.  Panem, The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins):  So much violence and poverty, not to mention the oppressive government.

5.  Oceania, Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell):  Big Brother is watching...

No Thanks, I'll Stay as Myself

1.  Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling):  Make no mistake, I would live in the world of Harry Potter in a heartbeat, but I don't want to trade places with Harry.  He lost his parents so young, and then spent all of his pre-teen and teenage years being targeted by You Know Who and his followers.  There is so much pressure on poor Harry.  I'd rather be a secondary character so I can hang out in the Gryffindor common room and visit Honeydukes without the weight of the wizarding world on my shoulders.

2.  Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy):  Most. Depressing. Book. Ever.  Poor Tess had no options and no support.

3.  Ivan Denisovich (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn): It's a beautifully written book, but I would like to avoid serving time in the Gulag.

4.  Margo (Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn):  Her mother had cancer, and she has a terrible father who now has Alzheimer's.  Her loser brother is married to a full-on sociopath who disappears, and now she's stuck trying to support him during the investigation of Amy's disappearance.  If I were her, I'd be tempted to just say, "Screw 'em all" and hightail it out of town.

5.  Eleanor (Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell):  Eleanor's situation really touched me because there must be so many young people living in those conditions:  Poverty, abusive family, bullying school environment.  I am so blessed to have had a solid and supportive home environment while growing up.