I have read so many amazing books this year. This here is a list of my favourites (which is probably going to be every single one, but…oh well.) Keep in mind, these aren’t every book I read, so if I miss a few months, don’t be alarmed.
From January 11th to February 10th 2011, I read the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling from start to finish for the first time. Ever. I know, it seems late, but better late than never, right? Like any teen who’s read them, I loved every book, chapter, paragraph, sentence and word of these books to death.
A few days after I finished Harry Potter, my sweet, wonderful mother bought me the fourth book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. The problem was, I hadn’t read any of them beforehand, so I was kind of forced into reading these ones. I wasn’t disappointed. The stories were fun and I fell in love with every character, laughing with them and wishing they were real. Yes, I am that much of a loser. I read the whole series from February 14th until March 3rd.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins came next. I’d already read them before, but the second time I took in the words a million times better. I started on March 13th. The first time I read them, I sort of just skimmed Catching Fire and Mockingjay, so I didn’t even really have a very good idea of what happened. The second time, however, I read the first book in a total of thirteen hours, Catching Fire in three days, and I finished Mockingjay in five, starting two days after I finished its predecessor. That left the date at March 24th.
After those three amazing series, I had a hard time finding more that I liked as much, sadly. I broke down and read Twilight, though only the first one before I felt like ripping my brains out. I was lucky to find The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley, after only finding and reading the first two books in my old school’s library. Only one book store in my town carries them, so I bought two books at a time, every so often, to read whenever I had nothing else to read.
Somewhere in all of this mess, I read a lot of single books, too, books that weren’t a part of a series, like Bridge to Terabithia and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which both made me cry, and I read a lot of storybooks that I had when I was younger, like The Giving Tree and The Lorax.
That put me into July, after school ended. I was going to see the Broadway musical Wicked on the 15th and had to find a book to read for the car ride. Across the Universe by Beth Revis was what I chose. It took me awhile to get through, but with eight hours in the car, it was a good choice. It kept me reading right until the end.
In August, I started reading The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, which were fairly good, as well. I read the first one because I’d bought it when we saw Wicked and hadn’t gotten around to reading it, and I was pretty happy with it, so I recommended it to my best friend and started reading the second. The first and the second each took me around five days or so to read. I read the third book in the series, City of Glass, in one full day of obsessive reading. It was for sure my favourite. I didn’t like the fourth one nearly as much, but when I read Clockwork Angel, the first book in The Infernal Devices series by the same author, I was pretty happy with it. I’ve yet to read Clockwork Prince.
As the new school year rolled in, I read not as often or as much, but I still found books I loved. The Invention of Hugo Cabret somehow found its way into my grasp sometime last month, and I read it in a total of a few days. I started rereading a lot of the books I’d read in the past year when I couldn’t find that I really wanted to read at the library, even though I already have quite a few books in my bookshelf that have barely been opened (other than when I smelled them when I first bought them…).
The two books that tie for my favourite of 2011, though, are definitely The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. The way each book’s characters wormed their ways into my heart, the very different writing styles and genres of each author, and especially, how much I loved those books. They are definitely two books that I will forever love and hold near and dear to my heart.
Goodbye, 2011. Hello, 2012. I hope you have some pretty frickin’ amazing books, because I have some fairly high standards.
Yours sincerely,
TotallyCaesar
