Read by Theme discussion

We're getting really close to the end of 2012, so I was wondering if anyone would want to talk about their reading experiences of the past year! So, with inspiration from an old Top Ten Tuesday prompt, what were your favorite books read in 2012?

I've blogged this prompt, but my choices were:

this may sound weird since its a classic but I just cant get it out of my mind! My top book so far is 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 2. Johnny Doesnt Drink Champagne 3. Playing with Fire (last book of Millennium series and first book of 2012) 4. The Hunger Games (ill finish the rest of the trilogy in 2013)

1. Zahrah the Windseeker
2. Gathering of Waters
3. Guns Will Keep Us Together (& the other 3 books by her)
7. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Alison wrote: "this may sound weird since its a classic but I just cant get it out of my mind! My top book so far is 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 2. Johnny Doesnt Drink Champagne 3. Playing with Fire (last book..."

I'm looking forward to reading The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest in 2013! :) Though I'm disappointed to hear that the movie adaptations are a few years away still.

Based on my reading of 2012? I would say Divergent and Insurgent. Or are we supposed to pick books from 2012? In that case it would be Insurgent.

Kristell wrote: "Based on my reading of 2012? I would say Divergent and Insurgent. Or are we supposed to pick books from 2012? In that case it would be Insurgent."

Based on anything you've read in 2012, not just books published this year.

And I've heard so many good things about the Divergent series this past year! I think I'll definitely be reading at least Divergent in 2013; hopefully I'll enjoy it and get around to Insurgent and the upcoming third book, too.

What a tough question! I've read some amazing books this year and even found 2 new favorite authors while rediscovering loves for authors that have long sat on my shelf.

The first ones that come to mind are:


I could go on for a long time, I read a lot more than usual this year thanks to a hefty injury. My top list is probably 30 or so picks that I've shoved at everyone I know this year, haha.

Tiffani wrote: "What a tough question! I've read some amazing books this year and even found 2 new favorite authors while rediscovering loves for authors that have long sat on my shelf.

The first ones that come t..."

I'm really looking forward to reading both January First: A Child's Descent into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her (after having seen both the Discovery Health documentaries about Jani) and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Great to hear you enjoyed them both! :)

I also read some great, thought-provoking books this year.

My favorite YA books were:


My favorite "grown-up" books were:


It was a fabulous year in books. I just wish I had as much time as I do books to read.

I discovered new authors this year and have to say that Silver Sparrow (Tayari Jones) & Meji: Book One (Milton Davis) had the greatest impact on me in 2012. Fledgling (Octavia Butler) is a 2012 book by one of my favorite authors.Published in 2005 before Butler's death, it didn't disappoint.

I forgot to mention that Johnny Doesn't Drink Champagne is a free book from Barnes and Noble if you have a Nook. Its a vampire/time travel book by Cody Young. She is now one of my new favorite authors. I just cant find anything else by her!

Amara wrote: "Tiffani wrote: "What a tough question! I've read some amazing books this year and even found 2 new favorite authors while rediscovering loves for authors that have long sat on my shelf.

The first ..."

You'll have to let me us know what you think when you get around to them. I loved them both, respectively. I think you'll particularly be engrossed by Jani's story after seeing her documentaries; it makes the book much more real feeling.

The story of Henrietta Lacks fascinated me. The writer was a bit wishy-washy at times but overall it is a story that direly needed to be told.

I'm a habitual top ten list keeper. I have top tens in every genre that I read and a top ten of non-genre fiction. Of course I keep a top ten of the year and update it every time I read something really extraordinary. That's why I'm not going to post the top ten now. For all I know the book I'm reading now might belong on that list.

Right now my favorite fiction book of the year is Lucyby Laurence Gonzales. My favorite non-fiction book of the year is Clean Break.

My favorite 2012 books were In One Person by John Irving and Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. I

It's too hard to nominate one favourite book for 2012 (my favourites 2012 list features 22 books at present) - the best I can do is narrow it down to five, which were:
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Lola Bensky by Lily Brett
11/22/63 by Stephen King
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
and Broken Harbor by Tana French
However, I also discovered author duo Kaaberbøl & Friis, whose thrillers I thoroughly enjoyed, as well as Australian author Honey Brown with her suspenseful read After the Darkness. See my dilemma?
Then there is Libba Bray's new book The Diviners, which I only just finished and really enjoyed.
So ... bring on 2013 with more good books to read!

Tiffani wrote: "You'll have to let me us know what you think when you get around to them."

Definitely! I actually have January First right now, but I'm not sure if I'll get to it before it's due back at the library. Hopefully soon, though. :)

My favorite books of 2012 are:

My favorite books in 2012 are...



~Lauren Kate♥



~L.J. Smith♥





~Suzanne Collins♥

My favorites from the books I read this year were:

My favorite fiction reads this year (in no particular order):


My favorite non-fiction reads this year:

I tried picking some random books this year in an effort to branch out my reading some and found a lot of books I thought were ok and some that suprised me as to how much I enjoyed them! It has been an interesting reading year.

Some books that suprised me as to how much I liked them were:


Some books that I really liked from authors I hadn't read before were:


and some books I loved from authors I have read a lot of were:

Amara wrote: "Alison wrote: "this may sound weird since its a classic but I just cant get it out of my mind! My top book so far is 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 2. Johnny Doesnt Drink Champagne 3. Playing with ..."

About the movies, you could always watch the original Swedish movies in English. They're great!

Jenny wrote: "Amara wrote: "Alison wrote: "this may sound weird since its a classic but I just cant get it out of my mind! My top book so far is 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 2. Johnny Doesnt Drink Champagne 3...."

That is a good idea; I'll have to see if I can get my hands on them after I've finished reading the series!

Books that I've read this year that really stuck with (AKA haunted) me:



Amara, thanks for starting this thread -- such a good place to mine for new books to read (if I'm ever at a loss; anyone else worried their to-read shelf might topple over & kill them? Ha ha.)

Some of my favorite books I read this year were
The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset
A Clockwork Orange
1984
2001: A Space Odyssey
4:50 From Paddington
A Caribbean Mystery
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Farewell to Arms.
I went on a "classics binge" this year, and decided to try out Agatha Christie. These were the books that really stood out for me. But "A Confederacy of Dunces was by far my favorite book this year to read.

Bevin wrote: "Amara, thanks for starting this thread -- such a good place to mine for new books to read (if I'm ever at a loss; anyone else worried their to-read shelf might topple over & kill them? Ha ha.) "

Of course! :) And I definitely know what you mean; my virtual shelves are overflowing, and closet's filled almost complete of books I need to read!

After I rank all the books I read this year, I will post the top ten. Might be a day or two.

House at Riverton. Very unlike what I usually read and I felt like I was there in the story. Now I find myself looking for more stories like it!

Decided to post my top 20 instead. Can't wait to see what great books I read this year!

1. Castle Waiting Vol 1 – Linda Medley (GN)
2. Castle Waiting Vol 2 – Linda Medley (GN)
3. The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
4. The Art of Fielding – Chad Harbach
5. Nation – Terry Pratchett
6. Maisie Dobbs – Jacqueline Winspear
7. Wonderstruck – Brian Selznick
8. The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
9. Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise – Ruth Reichl
10. Mrs. Roberto (Moosepath League) – Van Reid
11. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
12. Dragon Slippers – Jessica Day George
13. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette – Jeanne Birdsall
14. The Matters at Manfield (Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery) – Carrie Bebris
15. Fire – Kristen Cashore
16. Graceling – Kristen Cashore
17. Mysterious Benedict Society – Trenton Lee Stewart
18. The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
19. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce) - Alan Bradley
20. A Dance of Dragons – George R.R. Martin

Amara wrote: "Definitely! I actually have January First right now, but I'm not sure if I'll get to it before it's due back at the library. Hopefully soon, though. :) ."

I must know, were you able to get around to it?

Tiffani wrote: "Amara wrote: "Definitely! I actually have January First right now, but I'm not sure if I'll get to it before it's due back at the library. Hopefully soon, though. :) ."

I must know, were you able ..."

Not yet, but I still have a few weeks left before it's due. (As long as no one places a hold on it, the checkout times allowed can get surprisingly long.) Since you reminded me, I'll start it this weekend. Shouldn't take me too long to read it. :)

I just finished January First.

(view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)]

This is going to be a hard one to review.

Amara wrote: "I just finished January First. This is going to be a hard one to review."


I giggled at the image beneath your tags. I'll be curiously awaiting your opinion on it! I'm not sure I was ever able to write out a review for it.

I'll admit I looked around for an appropriate image for a while. Then I saw that and yup, exactly what I needed. XD

My first thought is that it's really great to see the story from an inside perspective instead of just the Discovery documentaries. On the other hand, it went a long way toward flipping my perspectives of Susan and Michael; watching the documentaries, I sympathized more with him. After reading his memoir, I sympathize more with her. I think I'll need her to write her own before I can make a fair judgement. ;)

But beyond that, it really hit me that the narrative ends in 2009. Because earlier this year sixth months ago, when Discovery Health aired the Jani's Next Chapter update to Born Schizophrenic, they mentioned that (view spoiler)[Bodhi's starting to show signs of schizophrenia, too (hide spoiler)]. Just adds an extra layer of irony and sorrow to the whole thing.

:S

my favorites were

My favorites were Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola and Accidents of Providence by Stacia M Brown.

My favorites in 2012 were:
The Round House.
Canada
God's Hotel.
Arcadia

My favorites were:


The Name of the Wind one of the favorite ever

The Secret Garden I hope I have a chance to read it to my children

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
very bittersweet

A Song of Ice and Fire I read all five one after another, so I just count as one

Wszystko czerwone hilarious

Tima wrote: "Amara wrote: "I just finished January First. This is going to be a hard one to review."


I giggled at the image beneath your tags. I'll be curiously awaiting your opinion on it! I'm not sure I was..."

I finally got around to writing up that review, by the way. It's here if you're interested. :) Quite a hard one to write!

Just joined, so I'm getting this in a bit late :-) What an interesting assortment everyone has here--some definite additions to my "TBR" list!

My 10 would be:

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. It's one of the Canongate Myth series, which is a fascinating group of authors. Atwood tells The Odyssey from Penelope's POV, and the hanged maids are the chorus! It's very short and very wonderful.

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace DFW's suicide left many of us shocked and bereft. This was one biography I literally could not put down.

The Thirteenth Tale This gem is Setterfield's first novel. It reads like Jane Eyre, both in the sense of literary style and mystery. Our book club loved it.

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines This is a strange and fascinating/disturbing book--a work of fiction, but based on the real life stories of the great mathematician, Kurt Godel, and the father of computers, Alan Turing. The author, Janna Levin, is an astrophysicist trained at Cornell--but the writing is that of a mystic.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal I can't resist sharing the "Author's Blessing", which sets the tone Moore hopes to achieve and is one of the best prefaces I've ever read:

"If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it. If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil. If you seek an adventure, may this story sing you away to blissful escape. If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions. All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not. May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them. May you find perfection, and know it by name."

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close The first page alone is absolutely amazing. This quotation is in my Commonplace Book:

p. 245 "I thought about all the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped."

The Graveyard Book The only other book that left me with the feeling of this one is Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. It's not just that Bod, the main character, is a boy (like William and Jim)facing evil, but Gaiman has woven a world that has the same eerie magnetism Bradbury created.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There are both about 12 year old September. I love them--a combination of Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz, but more magical than both.

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing I bought the entire Thursday Next series :-) Once again I've enjoyed the rollercoaster ride that is the Fforde world of Thursday Next. His website is fun, too. http://www.jasperfforde.com/

American Gods Neil Gaiman is one of my favorites, and I've read this book 4 times.

Julia wrote: "Just joined, so I'm getting this in a bit late :-) What an interesting assortment everyone has here--some definite additions to my "TBR" list!

My 10 would be:

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. I..."

I really liked American Gods too, but I found The Penelopiad so-so. I orefer other books by Margaret Atwood, like Oryx and Crake or The Handmaid's Tale.