S's 2012 Book Wrap Up

note:  If you've ventured here from my other blog, The London Diaries, I apologise for the repeat post--this is cross-posted from the original blog post at TLD.

It's been a long year for me with lots of mammoth reads including a few from Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series and Cronin's second book in the Passage Trilogy.  So without further ado, here's the 2012 book wrap up (with December's books included in the mix).

Books Read:  52

1. Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
2. Moon Over Soho - Ben Aaronovitch
3. The Hungry Ghosts - Anne Berry
4. Island of Lost Girls - Jennifer McMahon
5. Before I go to Sleep - SJ Watson
6. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
7. Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga
8. The Leftovers - Tom Perrotta
9. Londoners:  The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love it, Live it, Left it and Long for it – Craig Taylor
10. The Woman in Black – Susan Hill
11. The Dogs of Babel – Carolyn Parkhurst
12. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3) – George R.R. Martin
13. I to I: Life Writing by KY Feminists - Elizabeth Oakes and Jane Olmsted
14. A Blade of Grass - Lewis DeSoto
15. Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir - Jenny Lawson
16. The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson
17.  Stuart: A Life Backwards – Alexander Masters
18. The Poison Tree – Erin Kelly
19. State of Wonder – Ann Patchett
20. The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness
21. A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4) – George R. R. Martin
22. House Rules – Jodi Picoult
23. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer (Sister Read)
24. We Are All Made of Glue - Marina Lewycka
25. War of the Wives - Tamar Cohen
26. Ours Are the Streets - Sunjeev Sahota
27. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
28. Vaclav and Lena - Haley Tanner
29. The Small Hand - Susan Hill
30. The Hour I First Believed – Wally Lamb
31. The Story Sisters – Alice Hoffman
32. Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Andersen (Sister Read!)
33. Jezebel – Irene Nemirovsky
34. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
35. The Hypnotist – Lars Kepler
36. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
37. Lace – Shirley Conran
38. The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry – Jon Ronson
39. The Woman in the Fifth – Douglas Kennedy
40. When She Woke – Hillary Jordan
41. The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey
42. The Casual Vacancy – JK Rowling
43. Daughter of Smoke & Bone – Laini Taylor  (Sister Read!!!)
44. Savages – Don Winslow
45. Florence and Giles – John Harding
46.  The Twelve (The Passage, #2) – Justin Cronin
47. Behind the Beautiful Forevers:  Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity – Katherine Boo (Sister Read)
48. The Greatest Love Story of All Time - Lucy Robinson
49. A Passionate Love Affair With a Total Stranger - Lucy Robinson
50. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight - Jennifer E Smith (Sister Read)
51. The Final Confession of Mabel Stark - Robert Hough
52. Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

Books Abandoned:  6

1. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
2.  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggars
3. The Strain – Guillermo del Toro
4. The Dead Room - Robert Ellis
5. 77 Shadow Street – Dean Koontz
6. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo  (Got to be too depressing.  I do plan on finishing this one in 2013 but it'll be a work in progress)

Books in Progress - 1

1. On the Island - Tracey Garvis-Graves

It's always really fun going back and seeing what I read throughout the year, remembering which books I loved and others that weren't so hot.  

So which ones were my favourites this year?  That's a tough one to call.  I nearly peed myself laughing while reading quite a few of these... Lawson's "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" was definitely a highlight for me this year as were both of Robinson's books.  It seems like the funny/sweet books I read this year were the most relished and well received.  Sometimes you need a bit of humour in your life, I guess.

So that's the list for 2012.  My goal was 75 books so I was a bit short from that, but I'm totally okay with that as a lot of the books I read were pretty hefty (thank goodness for my Kindle).  2012 also saw the beginning of Two Sisters Reading; hurrah for that!

So what are my reading plans for 2013?

Well, for starters, I'm not aiming for a specific "body count".  I'm perfectly happy with quality over quantity this time around.  I plan on picking up "Les Miserables" off and on and working my way though that as well as giving other books I've left off on another chance.  In exciting news, Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" is finally being released for Kindle in March (I've already pre-ordered it) which means I'll be tackling that in the Spring.  So excited for that... what a mammoth book!  I'd also like the opportunity to do more pre-release reviews as I did for Robinson's "A Passionate Love Affair With a Total Stranger" so if anyone reading this would like to throw some books my way, I'd be happy to review them!

That's all from me for 2012!

X

S

D's Reading Plans for 2013

Hello all! I'm super excited for several reasons. First off, finals are over and it's Christmas Break! Additionally, S and her husband N finally made it home last night. I'm so so so glad they're in town, I simply wish that I could spend more time with them. Whatevs, S is probably tired of me already.

Lastly, I'm excited because it's almost time for a new year. I'm normally not overly sentimental about the calendar, but 2013 will bring many important things for me: I'll get my driver's permit, I'll go on my first airplane to my first destination outside the U.S. on my first mission trip, and I'll get to enter the joy (and by joy I mean utter disaster) that is junior year. More relevant to this blog, however, it'll also be a year of classics: everything that I read will be a literary classic, with exception of sister reads (so you don't have to be bored, never fear) or the unlikely event that I finish everything on the list.

You must be thinking, "now why on Earth would D do this to herself?" Well, it mostly has to do with the fact that I call myself a literature nerd and yet there are so many important books I haven't read. Chick lit and YA mystery thrillers are of course important to read, but the classics aren't dead, either! I really do want to read them, and this gives me the opportunity to do it all at once.

Below you'll find my current list of must-reads for 2013. Feel free to make suggestions, so long as they are considered a part of the major literary canon. Also, not Pride and Prejudice. S and I may not have everything in common, but our unmeasured hatred of that particular book is our greatest bond. I can bear watching a bit (and only a bit, mind you) of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a Youtube series that takes a modern spin on P&P. That's as close as I'll ever get. So yeah, not Pride and Prejudice.

Anyway, here's the list. There are several books on here (like Little Women and The Great Gatsby that I attempted to read when I was younger and they were either too much for me to understand or too boring  at the time. These are in no particular order:

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
2. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
3. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
7. 1984 by George Orwell
8. Animal Farm by George Orwell
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
10. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
12. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
13. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
14. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
15. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
16. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
17. Silas Marner by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
18. Middlemarch by George Eliot
19. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Quite an extensive list, I'll say! It would be nice to have an even twenty, though...hmm, could YOU be the one to help me out?

That's all for now! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and whatever else you celebrate, I hope it goes well for you too.
Bye now,
~D

December Sister Read: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith

Synopsis (as taken from Goodreads):  Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

Today should be one of the worst days of seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan's life. Having missed her flight, she's stuck at JFK airport and late to her father's second wedding, which is taking place in London and involves a soon-to-be stepmother Hadley's never even met. Then she meets the perfect boy in the airport's cramped waiting area. His name is Oliver, he's British, and he's sitting in her row.

A long night on the plane passes in the blink of an eye, and Hadley and Oliver lose track of each other in the airport chaos upon arrival. Can fate intervene to bring them together once more?

Quirks of timing play out in this romantic and cinematic novel about family connections, second chances, and first loves. Set over a twenty-four-hour-period, Hadley and Oliver's story will make you believe that true love finds you when you're least expecting it.

D’s Rating:   ❤❤❤  (out of five hearts)

S’s Rating: ❤❤❤❤1/2  (out of five hearts)


D’s Thoughts:

After reading such a dark and frightening work--Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo--last month, it almost felt necessary to throw in some easy-read chick lit this month. Right before reading TSPoLaFS, I read Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (and by read, I mean devoured). That's how badly I needed the chick lit. Coincidentally, the two books are somewhat similar: the main male protagonist is British, both girls have "bad" dads and are suddenly enlightened that the guys have much worse by comparison,  there are multiple airport exchanges; the list goes on.
Now then. TSPoLaFS (what an initial-ism  right?) was...how should I put it? I would have probably understood it a bit more if I myself was madly in love with someone, or had at least experienced romantic love before. I still thought some of the things Hadley and Oliver did were cute and sweet and "awwwww"-worthy, but at the same time I often found myself wondering how Hadley could be so irrational. I'm only 15, though. Maybe I'll understand eventually.

Many novels told from the perspective of a teenage girl just so happen to be about a girl who is extremely well-spoken, if only so that the author can use fancy metaphors without losing the girl's identity. This was not the case in TSPoLaFS: Hadley rarely said anything incredibly deep or inspiring because that's not who she was. She was, quite frankly, the typical moody teenager. I'll gladly accept that if it means a more authentic character. Bonus points to the author.

Finally, I have a love-hate relationship with the setting and voice of the book. I enjoyed the compact, 24-hour long plot. It was never tiring. However, the brevity of time made some of Hadley's decisions even more irrational than they already were. Additionally, the book was told in the present tense. It wasn't technically or grammatically incorrect, but it simply felt odd and less settled.

So, I give the book 3 hearts. What did you expect, a Dickens masterpiece? Read this book when you're bored with classics or tear-jerkers. That's when you'll appreciate it the most.

Standout Quotes:

"We all knew. And nobody talked about it. Somewhere along the line, someone made the decision that we'd all just be quietly miserable, and so that's what we did."

"[Big weddings] are all for show. You shouldn't need to prove anything if you really mean it. It should be a whole lot simpler than that. It should mean something.
"It does mean something. It's a promise."
"But not everyone keeps that promise...And even if you do, it doesn't matter that you once stood in front of all those people and said that you would. The important part is that you had someone to stick by you all that time. Even when everything sucked." 


Album to listen to while reading this book: We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things by Jason Mraz (and what a beautiful mess Hadley and Oliver were)

S’s Thoughts:
Ah, me... this month's book hit really close to home for me.  N (my husband) and I met for the first time in an airport.  Sort of.  And by sort of, I mean we'd been chatting online for over a year and then he flew over to see me and that's when we met for the first time... in the arrivals area of the airport in my hometown.  Sweet, no?  Except in my version (which is of course the truth) he looked right through me because he didn't recognise me and I had to call out to him to get his attention.  Maybe not so sweet, but things have definitely improved since then.  God... I feel as though I've spent my life searching for N in arrival lounges and saying goodbye to him at the security gates.  I'm pretty sure the first year or so of our relationship was staged in airports.

Anyway, onto TSPoLaFS.  I loved this book... really.  I don't give out five stars (or hearts) much so this one got four and a half.  That's pretty strong, in my world.  It was lighthearted, cute and just an all around fun read which I really needed at the time.  (Heck, I still do which is why I've been zoning out with serious chick-lit lately.)  I thought Hadley and Oliver were just freaking adorable and I totally saw myself in Hadley's shoes when she sets off into London on her own to track down Oliver; totally something I would have done for N in a heartbeat.  (Instead I settled for googling his postcode and obsessing over which house in the grainy satellite image might be his.  Stalk much?)

One of my favourite things about this book is how it's staged over the course of 24 hours.  That's it... all of the action (or as in on the plane, non-action) is staged in just one day.  Smith does a fantastic job of keeping us from being claustrophobic and the action from being static on the plane through flashbacks and engaging dialogue. 

I don't think there was anything I didn't like about the book.  Yes, the plot and outcome were totally predictable but then again, why shouldn't they be?  It's YA fiction blurring into the realm of chick-lit... it's not as if it's going to have some worldly Dickensian theme running throughout it (y'see what I did there?).

Standout Quotes:
"In the end, it's not the changes that will break the heart; it's that tug of familiarity."

"'When you're on the other side of it,' she says, 'fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes.'"

Album to listen to while reading this book: Sappy, yes, but my wedding playlist is what I listened to while reading TSPoLaFS.

 
January’s book is S’s choice and is "Before I Fall" by Lauren Oliver.
*Note from S* - I had actually chosen "Hate List" by Jennifer Brown, a book about a school shooting and the aftermath facing those left behind, two weeks ago before the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Given the horrible nature of Friday's events, I didn't feel right choosing this as our next book.  It's just too current for something so raw. I didn't think I could emotionally deal with hearing all of the news and seeing all of the reports about the tragedy and then reading a work of fiction about another shooting.  There's only so much about the dark side of human nature one can take in a short space of time. I do plan on reading "Hate List", probably as a Sister Read, in the future.  Just not right now.
 
S will also be posting a super awesome review of the new book by Lucy Robinson, "A Passionate Love Affair With a Total Stranger", which she was lucky enough to be given an advanced copy of.  Great laughs!

See you soon! S & D