top five books of 2012
Top 5 Books of 2012
This list only contains books that I read for the first time in 2012.
01. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
I read this book three times and listened to it on audiobook once. Four times in one year. I have never done that with a book, ever. This novel is so perfect, I can't even begin to articulate all the reasons why I have been obsessively and obnoxiously been reccing it to everyone since January.
02. The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness
[The Knife of Never Letting Go / The Ask and the Answer / Monsters of Men]
I couldn't pick just one book from this trilogy, it had to be all of them. (Although, if forced to choose, I think the first is my favorite.) This trilogy will rip your heart out and jump on it with cleats many, many times but it is 100% worth it. It's incredible.
03. The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde
I really, truly, fucking love Thursday Next. God, I love this series so very, very much. I love Thursday and Landen and their marriage and their complementary limps, I love Friday and how responsible he's gotten, I love Tuesday and her genius, I love Jenny in her non-existence, I love Aornis in her mind-fucking-ness, but I think most of all in this 7th book of the series, I love the way it portrays librarians. Librarians in Thursday's world are the baddest of badasses and - as weird as this sounds - this book made me proud to be in library school.
04. Redshirts by John Scalzi
If you love awesome science fiction, cheesy science fiction, meta, sci-fi tropes, really clever stories, narrative-specific physics, alternate dimensions, and/or books that are both hilarious and poignant - you have to read this book.
05. The Yard by Alex Grecian
This book was recced to me by a coworker who knows that I love Jack the Ripper stories and this book is fantastic. It's the author's first novel (he's a comic book/graphic novel writer primarily) and he's off to a fantastic start. The novel takes place shortly after the Jack the Ripper murders, when a new serial killer begins killing and the Scotland Yard is determined not to make the same mistakes and continue to be a joke. It's an intriguing mystery that allows you to delve into the lives of several of the detectives, and all the while the legacy of Jack the Ripper looms. I just really enjoyed it.
Honorable mentions: A Monster Calls written by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay (beautiful quick read about a boy, his sick mother, and the monster that haunts him); Frozen Heat by Richard Castle (shut up, I love the Nikki Heat books.); The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King (an older Sherlock Holmes takes on a teenage girl as his apprentice); Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher (transgender teen in a small town); Who Could That Be At This Hour? by Lemony Snicket (not quite as good as ASoUE but it's Snicket so it's still entertaining); Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (great YA dystopian, deserving of the awards it has won); Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks (graphic novel about a homeschooled girl going to high school, making friends, dealing with her four older brothers, and seeing a ghost); Cinder by Marissa Meyer (futuristic retelling of Cinderella with Chinese cyborgs, hehehe).