Faves of 2011: The Year in Reading

It's been an awesome year for reading, people. Thus, I have a lot of ground to cover.

I tried to edit myself, I swear! I just have so much book love to spread!

Favorite Newly Discovered Authors of 2011

Requirements for this category:

1. I have to discover them this year.
2. Then, I must become so obsessed with them that I read ALL their books.
3. They must have more than one book out, because with each book, my love for that author exponentially increases.
   

(Last year, the only author in this category was Melina Marchetta, but she is SO awesome. My love for would put her on the list three times. I actually turned around and reread ALL her books again earlier this year, because I just missed her so much.)

Stephanie Perkins, author of Anna & the French Kiss and Lola & the Boy Next Door

You knew this lady would be on here, didn't you? I've already talked about her a lot this year, especially in this post and this post.

But what you might not know is that her blog is pretty awesome. And she likes to recommend books on it, which led me straight to the other two authors...

Sarah Addison Allen, author of Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, and The Peach Keeper

I think of her as the Southern Alice Hoffman. Tales of magic, love, heartbreak, and healing set in small town, probably North Carolinian Appalachia. I devoured all four of her books in the space of two weeks, and I've been giving them as gifts ever since.

Laini Taylor, author of The Drowned, Blackbringer, Silksinger, Lips Touch, and the recently released, chart-topping Daughter of Smoke & Bone

She could always write a gorgeous, lush, gut-wrenching story, full of the most marvelous stuff, objects you would risk a curse to go purchase at a Fairie Market. But Lips Touch and Daughter of Smoke & Bone are where she really starts to shine, hooking all the threads together in a tapestry of WOW. Note: Taylor uses the whole spectrum of tones here, people - gruesome and glorious, so she's definitely the dark/gritty to Perkins's light/fluffy.

(Fun fact: Perkins and Taylor are critique partners and good friends! I like it when my favorite people like each other.)

Favorite Books of 2011

For Early Readers

The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless, by Allen Woodrow

Funny, evil, and my very favorite super-villain-in-training of all time. Please read for zucchini-flavored gum, scary squirrels, and a loyal best friend. Probably best for fans of Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants books.

Cinderella Smith, by Stephanie Barden.

Sweet, humorous, and heartwarming. This book is about an absent-minded, lovable little girl, who gets nicknamed "Cinderella," because she has a terrible habit of losing her shoe. Probably best for fans of Sara Pennypacker's Clementine books.






(Disclaimer: I've already written about most of the following, so click on the title or cover of the book if you want to read more about it.)

Middle Grade

Winner of the Most Exciting New Series Award!

The Books of Beginning #1:
The Emerald Atlas,
by John Stephen

Winner of Best Tearjerker Contemporary Award!

Flyaway,
by Lucy Christopher

Winner of Best Tearjerker Fantasy Award!

Breadcrumbs,
by Anne Ursu

Honorable Mention: Liesl & Po, by Lauren Oliver
(They were neck and neck, but Breadcrumbs is just slightly more my cup of tea.)

Winner of the Best Humor with Heart Award!

The Origami Yoda Books,
by Tom Angleberger

(The second might even be more wonderful than the first.)

Winner of the Full of Sheer Awesome Award!
(a.k.a. the "there's nothing else like it" award.)

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland
in A Ship of Her Own Making,
by Catherynne M. Valente

Honorable Mention: Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick
(There is something like it, though. It's called The Invention of Hugo Cabret.)



Young Adult

Winner of the Most Exciting New Series Award!

Divergent,
by Veronica Roth

Winner of the Tearjerker Contemporary Award!

The Sky Is Everywhere,
by Jandy Nelson

Honorable Mention: If I Stay, by Gayle Forman
(The Sky Is Everywhere made me cry slightly more.)

Winner of the Humor with Heart Award!

Hexhall and Demonglass,
by Rachel Hawkins

Adult


Winner of the Contemporary Tearjerker Award!

One Day,
by David Nicholls

(One of my best friends made me read this. It made me cry, and then she made me give it back to her. That almost made me cry too.)

Winner of the Best Paranormal Romance Award!

The Shadow Reader,
by Sandy Williams

Winner of the Best Nonfiction Award!
(Those Pulitzer People thought so too. :-P)

Cleopatra, A Life,
by Stacy Schiff

The Home Genre (and an excuse to list my Favorite Books)

I have a theory about people and the genres that we prefer.

I googled "book that looks like a house" and this is what came up.
Cool, right?

There's one genre that feels like home, one where we spent the majority of our creative and recreational time, the one we have grown up around, our true literary love. Most of our favorite books come from this genre. Well, maybe some people have more than one, but every reader has a preference for a certain kind of book.

This is in small font. It's so that you can skip it if you like.

We are most likely to forgive the faults of whatever comes out of that genre, because it already speaks our most beloved language, so to speak. Just by existing in the domain we know the best, that kind of novel already has a lot of the elements we love the very most.

But you should know something about me: I have a lot of theories, and even though I believe in them passionately, I'm fully aware that they may not be accurate.

Now, for something to make our favorite list from outside our home genre, it has to be really and truly exceptional. This is where we start to use phrases like TRUE ART and MASTER WORK and MAGNUM OPUS and THE BEST THING EVER. It has to be the very best of the best, the cream of the crop, the stand-out.

My theories just sound so plausible. My mom calls me the Princess of BS (my father is the King), so I can make said theories sound good. That's what makes them dangerous.

You have been warned.

In other words, those books need to be the Best Versions of Themselves. (Do you like how everything cycles back to the B.V.O.T. scale? I'm particularly proud of myself.)

But check it out! It's actually a LAMP.
Click through to take you to the original site.

Now, for me, that home genre is the middle grade fantasy series: over half of all the reading and re-reading I've done in my life comes from this subcategory of awesome. That means I'm more than willing to read 500K+ words by one author, following a group of characters from book to book to book, just so that I can watch them grow and change and conquer their greatest fears.

This genre encompasses my favorite, most reread books ever: the Narnia books, Harry Potter (of course!), Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, Madeleine L'Engle's the Time Quartet (although it's a trilogy to me, because I've never read Many Waters), Percy Jackson (also, of course!), Patricia C. Wrede's The Enchanted Forest series, Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness, the Immortals, and The Protector of the Small series.

I could go on, you guys, listing my favorite books until the end of the world - or next December, whichever comes first. :-P

The next related subcategory with the most favorite books is the Middle Grade Fantasy-Adventure novel with Plucky Heroine (usually a fairy tale retelling of some kind): the Blue Sword, Beauty, Rose Daughter, Spindle's End, Crown Duel, Ella Enchanted, Sabriel (but is this YA?), Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Wait Till Helen Comes, The Goose Girl, Graceling (this is definitely YA, but I'm slipping it in anyway).

And dear reader, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I've started writing books that have a foot in each of these realms.

But some of my other favorite books in the entire universe coming from other genres are: Haroun and the Sea of Stories, A History of Love, Everything Is Illuminated, The Alchemist, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Bridget Jone's Diary & BJD: The Edge of Reason, the Book Thief, Sharon Creech's Chasing Redbird, A. S. Byatt's Persuasion, Francesca Lia Block's Echo, The God of Small Things, The Time Traveler's Wife, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (no, really - I read this one for FUN), The Last Unicorn.

The funny thing about that last bunch is that most have ended up on bestselling and/or award lists. :-P

But I limited these lists to books that were favorites BEFORE I STARTED WRITING FOR SERIOUS. Which means that the lists don't include what I've read in the last 2 years. From those, I limited myself to books I've read more than once (except for Middlemarch. I didn't finish the reread. I got to the part where Lydgate and his wife are arguing about money for chapters and chapters on end, and then I skipped ahead to the end where Dorothea and Will get together).

Just know, peeps, this list could be a lot longer.

Moral of the Story: People are going to like the books that they're going to like. And they'll surprise themselves by loving the books which are super awesome.