Top 12 Books of 2012

I know for most people that this would be considered a bit late to be putting up a "Best Books of 2012" post. But it's still January, and if it's still January, I think any reminisces on the last year are still fair game. So, whether you consider this late or not, here is my list of the top 12 books I read in the last year (listed in the order in which I read them):

1)Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: My absolute favorite book of the series. I love Umbridge as a villain and how, within the first five minutes, you want her to die way more than you want Voldemort to be defeated.

2)The Fault in Our Stars: Definitely a tearjerker if ever I've read one. John Green once again proves that he is a master of his trade, keeping you laughing and crying all the way through this New York Times bestseller.

3)The Perks of Being a Wallflower: This one's probably an all-time favorite. It's a top-notch book and has just recently been adapted to the big screen. It's movie is almost as fantastic as the book itself . . . and with Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Ezra Miller playing our three main characters, how can anyone be surprised?

4)Stardust: The movie version of this story was good. The book was exceptional. I've always heard that Neil Gaiman was a fantasy genius. Now I understand how he got that reputation.

5)Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury's most well-known novel is an outstanding work of literary fiction. There's no questioning why this book is as famous as it is. It absolutely deserves all the fame it has garnered.

6)Howl's Moving Castle: This was another good fantasy that I saw the movie for first. I fell in love with the movie and then fell in love with the book. I am a firm believer in the fact that the books are (with few exceptions) always better than the movies, but I was blown out of the water when I realized this book really could top its movie.

7)Crusade in Jeans: The only one of Thea Beckman's books to be translated into English, this story was simply captivating. After reading it, I'm honestly considering learning Dutch just so I can have the opportunity to read the rest of her works.

8)Speak: An honest portrait of the severe trauma of a young teenage girl, this book both heartbreaking and hopeful throughout its entirety. It has won a plethora of awards and, honestly, it needs to win a hell of a lot more.

9)Sisters Red: The first book in Jackson Pearce's Fairytale Retellings series, this book have me eagerly turning its pages from beginning to end. I especially loved the strong bonds and unfailing loyalty of its protagonists throughout every trial. Loyalty is a trait I admire above most others in real life and nearly as much in fiction.

10)Lovely, Dark, and Deep: A poetic look at one girl's deep heartbreak and her healing process is the best way to describe this beautiful novel. I can't sing its praises enough. And I can't even begin to explain how deeply beautiful it was. You need to read it for yourself if you want to understand at all.

11)The Disenchantments: This was a tale about growing up and what it's like to become disenchanted with life as you begin to fully understand the deep flaws in the world and the people around you. Yet, even through that, it reminds us that even in its heartache and pain, those beautiful pinpoints of light in the patchwork of darkness that makes life lovely and absolutely worth living.

12)Inkheart: The first in a wonderful trilogy (one I'm still halfway through the second book in), I absolutely adored this book. It's movie adaptation is fabulous, but this book series is something to be reckoned with. I still can't believe it took me this long to get to it.

What were your favorite books you read in 2012?

Top Ten Tuesday: Thought Provoking Books

Over at The Broke and the Bookish, they have this thing called Top Ten Tuesday. Each Tuesday they give other bloggers a chance to participate in making a top ten list with them. This week's topic is thought provoking books! I only chose seven this time around, though I'm sure there are plenty more I could add. Here are the ones I decided to highlight:

1) Paper Towns by John Green
Paper Towns is a personal favorite of mine for many good reasons, but one of the most important of those reasons is the fact that this book really makes you look at the way you perceive others. Throughout this book, the main character (Quentin) realizes that we tend to romanticize our friends and most especially the people we admire and look at them through those rose colored glasses instead of seeing them for who they really are. This is a discredit both to them and to ourselves. I loved that this book challenged me in the way I view others and encouraged me to accept them for who they are instead of who I want them to be.

2)The Cold Awakening Trilogy by Robin Wasserman
I think the Cold Awakening Trilogy easily qualifies for this list. The trilogy's main question permeates each of the books and begs the question: "What constitutes humanity?" Each of the books explores this question and really makes you stop and consider what it means while bringing up multiple other deep questions of morality along the way. 

3) My Secret: A PostSecret Book by Frank Warren
The PostSecret books are essentially collections of secrets that were sent in to Frank Warren anonymously, first as an art project and now as a worldwide community. Each of the books hold a plethora of secrets that allow you to see into the lives and hearts of people all around the world. It reminds you that everyone has a secret and that everyone's hurting.

4) Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
In hearing the story of a girl who underwent a major traumatic experience in the middle her most impressionable formative years, this book lets the reader see into her head and her heart. It allows them to see how earth-shattering that traumatization can be for its victims and causes the reader to reevaluate how they treat others, because it reminds us that you can't always see what's hurting someone but that doesn't mean they aren't in need of rescuing.

5) The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
One of the things that makes the Harry Potter series so memorable and life-changing to its readers is the plethora of questions it asks its readers. As we read these books, we walk alongside Harry and his friends as they discover that the world isn't as lovely or fair a place as we perceive it at first. We see what drives them as they choose how far they are willing to go to reach an end and what means justify those ends. We are given the chance to see them fight for what they believe and lobby for the rights of those who are beaten down by others who are stronger and more outspoken. Rowling invites the reader to make these decisions along with Harry and therefore analyze the way we think and the decisions we make.

6) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
I think that nowadays it is easy to downplay the offensiveness and overall nastiness of racism, especially for those who haven't personally experienced racism or that type of stigmatism. It's also easy to believe that the issue of racism is outdated and no longer applicable to our time. Both of these assumptions are very, very wrong. This book reminds us that racism was beyond rampant less than fifty years ago. In fact, it was a household prejudice and widely considered acceptable. The Help reminds those of us who might have forgotten that this is still an evil to be fought against and one we ought to stomp out entirely.


5) Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
I am almost to the end of this book (the actual review ought to be up by the end of the week) and I am definitely loving it. One of the reasons I love it so much is the fact that it reevaluates the meaning of childhood and adulthood, as well as deciphering where the line is between being a good person and a monster. 

Top Ten Tuesday: Summer TBR List

Over at The Broke and the Bookish, they have this thing called Top Ten Tuesday. Each Tuesday they give other bloggers a chance to participate in making a top ten list with them. This week the topic at hand is this summer's To Be Read list. This is meant to be each person's top ten books they are excited about this summer. They could be new releases or old favorites that you're planning on rereading: whatever you choose!

I thought this sounded like a lovely blog post idea and couldn't pass up the chance to do it. Seeing as I'm currently incapacitated right now due to some burn wounds I recently sustained, I thought this would be a fun activity to keep me occupied for a couple of minutes. 

Anyway, here's my list, in no particular order. I don't have all of the books I'm going to read planned out, so obviously these are the ones I know I'm pretty certain about reading and that I am intensely excited about. 

Enjoy!:

1) Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

I saw the movie adaptation of this book a little over a year ago, I believe, and I loved it. I'm a pretty big fan of Greek mythology and any storyline that incorporates that into it is definitely something I want to check out. 

2) A Modern Look at Monsters by Daniel Cohen

Sounds creepy to some, I'm sure, but this book caught my eye at the library and I'm super excited to read it. I like finding out the origins of things and this book will likely prove a good arsenal for creating fictional dangers as an author.

3) American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent

This is another book I just happened to stumble upon the other day at the library. Being a self-proclaimed nerd, this book immediately appealed to me. Besides the title and cover both put a huge smile on my face. I'm sure the interior will do the same.

4) Those Amazing Ringlings and Their Circus by Gene Plowden

After reading in Vintage Tattooing about how the origins of tattooing in America are closely tied with circus folk, my curiosity was piqued. I wanted to learn more about how circuses used to work in the early nineteenth century and such, so I picked up this book. I can't wait to see what it has in store. 

5) Paper Towns by John Green

To be fair, I've already read this. If you've read blog for a while you'll already know that this happens to be one of my all-time favorite books. Still, it merits rereading and this is the summer to do it.

6) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I adored this book. Like Paper Towns, I've already read it and it is also one of my all-time favorites. That is enough reason to reread it in itself, but the movie adaptation is also coming out later this year, thus it is near imperative. 

7) Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Like Percy Jackson, this is the beginning of a series, but one I've been dying to read for a while now. It looks wonderful and highly original and it's about time I went about reading it.

8, 9, & 10) The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

I know, I'm a terrible nerd. . . but I've seen all the movies more times than I can count. That doesn't really help, but I'm going to amend that. I've had this trilogy on my to-read list for a long while now and I'm going to finally buckle down and do so.

What are your top ten or even top five books to read this summer? Are you planning on reading any of the same ones I am? Or have you already read some of them and want to give your input? Leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you!

Patterning Works

I'm currently in the midst of reading Book by Book by Michael Dirda, basically a book written about the importance of reading and how books and learning change our lives. Look forward to the review of it soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share a particularly interesting passage at the beginning of Dirda's book. It is essentially a list of books one ought to read in order to have a good grasp of world literature and a firm foundation in one's reading.

I have already read some of these, but there are plenty here that I haven't arrived at just yet. Rest assured, they are now being taken into consideration when it comes to books I need to read in the near future.

Anyway, here's the passage. You may do with it what you will:

What should a person know of the world's literature? It has always seemed obvious to me that the great patterning works ought to lie at the heart of any structured reading program. By "patterning works" I mean those that later authors regularly build on, allude to, work against. There aren't that many of these key books, and they aren't all obvious classics. Here's a roughly chronological short list of those that the diligent might read through in a year or two. For such famous works you can hardly go wrong with any good modern editions, though for the Bible the Authorized, or King James, Version is the one that has most influenced the diction and imagery of English Prose.

The Bible (Old and New Testament)

Bulfinch's Mythology (or any other accounts of the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths)

 Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey

Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Dante, Inferno

The Arabian Nights

Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur (tales of King Arthur and his knights)

Shakespeare's major plays, especially Hamlet, Henry IV, Part One, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest

Cervantes, Don Quixote

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen

Any substantial collection of the world's major folktales

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 

2012 Book List

In follow-up to my last post, I've decided to post which books I'll be reading in 2012. I am eagerly awaiting the stories each has to tell or the knowledge each is ready to impart. I can hardly decide what order they should go in.
These are books currently on my shelves, just waiting to be read and reviewed.

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
• Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Dear Bully (70+ author compilation)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
• Hawkes Harbor by S.E. Hinton

These are just the beginning. I frequent my local bookstore with a consistency that ought to have the salespeople asking about my family each week. I also hope to be able to reread some of my favorites of last year, such as Paper Towns and possibly the Hunger Games trilogy.
In addition, I'll be borrowing books from my brother soon enough as well. He is currently the owner of my home's only copies of the Harry Potter series (I still have to read books four through seven) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (let's not forget the Hobbit, as well).
I can't wait to find the adventures awaiting me!

One Year: Fifty-Five Books

I told y'all in this post that my goal for the year 2011 was to read fifty books. I reached fifty-five. *insert happy dance here*

Anyway, I decided I would fill you in on which books those were, in case you wanted to read them as well. Most of these I would recommend for a good read, unless I note otherwise.

1) The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks.
2) Elyon by Ted Dekker & Kaci Hil.
3) Pearl in the Sand by Tessa Afshar.
4) DragonKnight by Donita K. Paul.
5) The Slave Across the Street by Theresa L. Flores.
6) What He Must Be by Voddie Baucham.
7) DragonFire by Donita K. Paul.
8) DragonLight by Donita K. Paul.
9) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling.
10) Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke.
11) And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.
12) Love's Enduring Promise by Janette Oke.
13) Comma Sense by Richard Lederer & John Shore.
14) Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie.
15) The Doctor Trap by Simon Messingham. (This is one of those Doctor Who spin-offs, so if you don't watch the show, it's probably not worth reading.)
16) Love's Long Journey by Janette Oke.
17) The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil.
18) Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis.
19) Kiss by Ted Dekker.
20) Starlighter by Bryan Davis.
21) Forgotten by Cat Patrick.
22) Eragon by Christopher Paolini.
23) Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
24) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
25) Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.
26) Looking for Alaska by John Green.
27) Brisingr by Christopher Paolini.
28) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.
29) Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. (This one wasn't very good at all. It wasn't bad either, but it was incredibly boring.)
30) The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.
31) Paper Towns by John Green. (This is easily one of my new favorite books. John Green really outdid himself with this one.)
32) After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away by Joyce Carol Oates.
33) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.
34) Brother/Sister by Sean Olin. (This book was really good, but creepy. . . and it may have ruined the Wonder Twins for me. Haha.)
35) Soft Spots by Clint Van Winkle.
36) Purge by Sofi Oksanen. (I didn't really enjoy this one. It was interesting, to say the least, but not my type of good reading.)
37) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.
38) The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
39) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.
40) Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton.
41) That Was Then, This Is Now by S.E. Hinton.
42) Tex by S.E. Hinton.
43) Stop Pretending by Sonya Sones.
44) Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.
45) Brutal by Michael Harmon.
46) He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo. (Only decided to read this book because it was $2 at Helping Hands. It ended up being surprisingly good.)
47) Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.
48) Dark Water by Laura McNeal. (Not that great.)
49) Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan.
50) An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. (Almost as good as Paper Towns. Definitely worth reading more than once.)
51) The Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon.
52) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
53) Hero by Mike Lupica.
54) Taming the Star Runner by S.E. Hinton.
55) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.


I'll try to write reviews on a couple of the more recent ones when I get the chance. In the meantime, here's a good list where you can find some books for the New Year. Hopefully, you're resolutions have something to do with reading more, because it's definitely worth it.

I'm going to read 75 books this year. Hopefully, you'll come along for the ride in at least reading the reviews of each.