It's officially 2010 and time to re-cap my super swell 2009 reading. I bet you've been waiting anxiously for my thoughts.
First of all, I read a whopping 99 books! It sounds more exciting than it actually is. I read tons of short, young adult books. I also spent three weeks on the road traveling for work. I had loads of layovers and nights where I had to read to cure my work-induced insomnia.
Here are my Top 10 2009 picks:
This book was truly extraordinary. I really expected it to be terrible, but I heard so many positive recommendations I thought I'd give it a chance. It had a lot going against it -- the main character is Death, it's set in Nazi Germany, it's written in a
very unique style. I'm glad I gave it a chance, though. I thought it was a wonderful story about a very young girl who finds her own way to do what's right, even through the very simple act of stealing a book.
People often ask me for book recommendations. This is always the first book I recommend. I read a lot of weird crap, so this is the most mainstream book I read last year. The entire thing is written as a series of letters. Normally, I would hate that, but these letters are amazing...warm, chatty, full of life. I wanted the main character, Juliet, to be my best friend and write me letters like that.
This is written by the same dude who wrote The Book Thief. It's a completely different sort of book, however. It's about a young man who is a complete loser. He's a taxi driver, he pines for the girl of his dreams from afar, he lives an isolated life and he has a dog named The Doorman. He starts getting instructions in the mail of places and times. When he shows up, he witnesses different types of situations. Sometimes he is moved to get involved, sometimes he struggles. It's about creating your own community and finding ways to connect to others.
This book was one of the saddest I've ever read -- and also one of the most amazing! It's about the apocalypse, so definitely not cheery. The writing was spectacular, however. You never even find out the main characters' names, but you end up feeling so much for them.
The Hunger Games trilogy is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorites! This is Book 2. It's a post-apocalyptic, young adult book -- but it's so dang good!
Soapy fun! This is such a fun young adult series. I like to think of it as Gossip Girl set in the early 1900s.
This is another post-apocalyptic book. (Yikes! I was on a kick last year -- must be all the 2012 stuff I read about!) This was told as a series of interviews with survivors from a zombie war. I really enjoyed the different voices and how the story unfolded. It wasn't linear -- you pieced it together from all the different interviews.
This is really a vote for the entire series. It was definitely inspired by Harry Potter -- but I LOVED Harry Potter so that made me happy. I thought the series was a lot of fun - great friendships, adventures and heroics!
This was one of the last books I read last year, but I really enjoyed it! It had a fascinating writing style --you jumped between the point of view from a young woman and that of the great-aunt she didn't even know she had. Very interesting story!
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