Best Books of 2013

This year has been one of the strangest reading years I've had in a very long time.  Professionally speaking, I've felt more pressure to split my reading up so that I can not only find great reads to take into the classroom, but also keep up on my A game and know about great literary reads for my AP students.  In the end, that means that I now have a new 3 part reading personality: a YA/Pop Lit. reader, a classics/literary reader, and an I-don't-care-what-this-book-is-as-long-as-it-helps-me-escape reader.

Having said that, let me share my three categories with you!  Let's start with my top reads in the YA/Popular Lit. category for 2013.

 

What was not to love about this book?  I loved the escape to Paris, the realism in the way the characters dealt with their situation, and yet the total, "Holy crap! I would never run away to Paris for one day like that!" that I felt when reading it.  Seriously, I loved this YA read in 2013.

I'm not often a huge sci-fi reader, but James Dashner's The Eye of Minds came out of nowhere and really knocked me off of my feet!  This book was insanely action packed and full of Inception-like ideas such that I couldn't stop flipping pages.  Honestly, I couldn't stop recommending it enough to my students and friends.  Now I have to wait around the next read...

 Okay.  Yes, I am a bit of a Man of Steel fan (*cough* Henry Cavill *cough*), but I've always been a bit of a Superman fan, believe it or not.  I just didn't remember some of these old school comics.  I've been picking up some of the new All-Star comics, but I wanted to go back and read up on some of the pivotal comics that shaped Superman mythology.  How can you pass up the one where Superman literally gives up his life to battle Doomsday?  I Rest. My. Case.

Now, let me share my favorite AP English/Literary Reads for 2013.  This was an interesting category for me.  I didn't set out looking for favorites in this category, but actually just sat down and picked out my favorite reads for the year and noticed how many of them fell under this category.  

 

This was voted Best of 2013 on Goodreads, so I don't think I'm alone in saying this book was amazing!  I still haven't even written my review because I haven't put full brain energy behind what I read, and now I'm not sure I can go back and really give it justice.  Needless to say, I really loved it.  This is probably my favorite of the three books he has written.

 

When I started reading Wolf Hall, I started to question all of the crazies who had given it 5 stars.  Seriously?  How in the world did they keep all of the characters straight, not to mention the simple pronoun "he" matched up with the right character!  I thought I was going batty at some points.  By the time I hit about page 300--and yes, that's a long way into the book--I started to feel connected to the story of Cromwell and Henry VIII's court.  I think I'm geared up to keep moving on to the second book now!

 

I'm now a Thrity Umrigar fan.  Sold.  Going back and looking up her previous novels.  Now.  I really found myself drawn in by this novel of four friends battling family, religious, and political tensions beyond our imagination.  The World We Found was sobering, yet powerful, and made me a fan of Umrigar for life.

 

This was just a short novella by Elie Wiesel about his open heart surgery last year, which might sound strange that I selected it as one of my favorites for the year, but it was so touching that I as still thinking about it.  Having gone through a life threatening surgery or my own, I was blown away by the beauty of language that Wiesel found for something like facing mortality.  Open Heart captures his own vulnerability in a really beautiful way.

The final category is really my Favorite "Escape Read" Category for 2013, which deserves an extra award for helping me unwind from the stresses of life!  I did notice that a lot of these books tend to fall into the romance category.  What can I say?  At the end of the day, let me get away from what I normally do with a fun, modern chick story.  Here were some of my favorites this last year.

 

This was my last review for 2013 and such a great one to go out on.  Honestly, I love Bridget Jones and felt that Fielding did a good job of honoring her story and staying true to her characters.  No, the situation was not ideal, but the story was still honest and real.

 

The Chocolate Thief was the book that snuck up on me from nowhere!  I saw several book bloggers raving about these books by Laura Florand, such as Angieville, and had to give them a try.  Around Fall Break, I checked this out from the library and devoured it in one sitting.  Now that's an escape read!  My only regret was that I didn't have a box of chocolates to eat when I read this sweet read!

 

Here was another read that I couldn't put down!  Blackmoore was a book that had me in tears and flipping pages almost faster than I could read.  This was a book that I handed out and passed around to my friends, but ended up losing to someone!  That was how popular it ended up being.  Such a great read.  I highly recommend it.

 

Megan Mulry has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary romantic reads.  I've loved this Unruly Royals series so much!  Her characters show a lot of range and I love to see what they are each going to do.  These are sexy little reads, so hang on for the ride!  I've loved each and every one of them, but I have to admit that I keep thinking about A Royal Pain, about Bronte Talbot.  Maybe it was because Bronte was the first one to learn her guy was a royal and that's an exciting prospect, but I really liked this first book and it was my introduction to Mulry's fun style.  I'm excited to read more in the coming year!

Okay.  Like everyone else, this book blew me off my feet and probably blew out a few tear ducts!  I had seen this one floating around a bit and really didn't think I'd be interested, but how in the world could so many people be giving it a solid 5-stars on Goodreads?  I finally folded and checked it out on audio book at the end of October to listen to back and forth from work.  The audio book was really amazing, but it was too slow to listen to, so I had to return it before I could finish it and had to buy a used copy of it to tear through the end of the book on my own.  Yes.  I cried and then reread the ending.  I'm still thinking about it.  That's a great read.

Well, that's my year!  2013 was a great year for reading and I look forward to seeing what 2014 has in store.  I hope you all have a great one as well and would love to hear what book(s) you loved this last year!

Top 12 of 2012

I tried to boil my list down this year to just 10, but after seeing I had a solid 14, it was all I could do to toss two and call it my top 12!  Honestly, there are so many books that I really enjoyed this year, that I focused on the ones that kept me thinking (or feeling) long after.  Here are my choices for the year:

 

 I first heard about The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight on Angie's blog over at Angieville.  Her glowing, emotional review of this book got me to put it on my list and finally get it read not long ago.  Since then, it's all I could do to stop recommending it to everyone I knew.  Emotional, gripping, and beautiful, this had to be on my list this year!

 This was a graphic novel that I found during nominations for the "Best of" on Goodreads.  I quickly found myself looking up and checking out books that were nominated, and thankfully our school library had this one.  Told in pictures, news articles, and text messages, the story unfolds in a pretty surprising way.  I was intrigued by this story and liked the literacy skills you had to use to read it.

 

This little jewel was sitting on the "New Arrivals" shelf in our school library.  Seeing it was told in verse, I snatched it up and decided to read it to possibly recommend to my students.  The story of a young girl loaned (and paid for) by another homesteader to help he and his new wife survive on the prairie.  Her story is gripping and gut wrenching.  Honestly, a perfect read for anyone wanting to dabble in verse literature.

 

I know I'm a bit late coming to this party, but better late than never.  Divergent is another dystopian novel with a real twist.  In this story, people are put into factions and must learn the skill of that group.  What happens in you don't fit into any of those factions though?  Where do you go and how do you develop a "divergent" number of skills?  How do you go against a system bigger than yourself?  A great read, and one I was excited to teach to my Popular Literature students this year.  They loved it!

 

I'm a big fan now of all things written by Harriet Evans.  Her stories tend to not just be wistful and joyous happiness.  Instead, they feel real and emotionally raw as her main characters deal with what life has set in front of them, often times to realize the beauty of love and friendship right in front of them.  This one made me literally cry, gasp, and talk aloud as I read it.  Stick with it, and you will be justly rewarded with an amazingly deep story and set of characters.

 

As a newbie to graphic novels, I've loved discovering the emotional depths that these stories can reveal through pictures.  In Stitches the main character has grown up in a highly dysfunctional family, coupled with a hideous health problem that changed his ability to deal with life.  This was not a graphic novel for the squeamish or easily offended, but one that I could not put down and found emotionally raw, honest, and inspiring in the bravery of the human spirit.

On my 8th birthday, my parents surprised me with The Little House on the Prairie series.  From that time forward, I read and reread this series at least a dozen times, completely escaping into a story of frontier living and a quainter time.  Because of that love, I was an easy audience for The Wilder Life, about Wendy Mc Clure's journey to recreate and discover the places, recipes, and real stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I loved this piece of non-fiction and would love to take the same journey into Laura's world!

 

Sophie Kinsella's stand alone novels have to be some of my favorite reads.  This one was no different.  The text flirting and misunderstandings made it a delightful romantic comedy of sorts.  By far, a favorite read of 2012!

One of my best friends from high school is the author of another choice of mine from 2012, Breaking Beautiful.  I didn't pick this just because I happen to really like the author either!  :)  Set up as a type of mystery, with no magic or paranormal elements, this is just a great story with great characters and conflicts.  I'm happy to say that this realistic fiction was one of my favorites this year!

Cake Boy was a surprising find this year, and yes, it's a cookbook!  I really love the layout, pictures, fonts, and recipes featured in this cookbook.  I've tried to stop purchasing cookbooks, in favor of checking them out from our local library, but this one was a quick exception.  The cakes and desserts in this great cookbook are simple and amazingly delicious.  If I had one cookbook to recommend, this would be it.

I am SO late to this phenomenon that I'm almost embarrassed to just now be putting in on my list.  I'm not sure what I thought it would be about, but I just didn't buy the hype and avoided it until this summer.  I had to attend a conference in Idaho, followed by a quick return home to teach at a different conference.  This was one of the only audio books they had on the shelves, so I gave it a try.  Since I could only listen to it in my car (and it was a great reading) and I quickly was pulled into this gripping love story, I grabbed the book and finished it on my own.  Honestly, I reread the last couple of chapters three times before the tears subsided, and I felt sad to let it go.  If that doesn't count as a top read of the year, then I don't know what does.

Finally, I had to include Ransome Rigg's quirky and unpredictable story.  Coupled with spooky black and white photographs, we follow a young man who wants to understand where his grandfather had lived as a young boy and the mystery surrounding his life.  The story is unpredictable and fresh, something that I really love.  As far as interesting and new, this was one of my favorites of 2012

There we go for 2012!  Earlier in the year I wondered if I would find my top reads, but you never know what a year will bring.  Thankfully, I also met my goal of 100 books this year, and have actually read around 106.  That's a new record for me!  With my "40 Book Challenge" with my students at school, and my own voracious reading habit, it has been a great year.  Here's to another great year ahead!