IN WHICH The Girl Lists Things

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. I'm double parking on this one. The list I really want to do - top ten books I've read so far in 2015 - is actually from a couple weeks ago. I'll throw in today's question - last ten books to come into my possession - as well.

Best Books of 2015 Part I

My Goodreads goal for 2015 has jumped up to 150, and I'm nearly halfway through (just one book off). Even though I've read 74 books this year, I still get stressed when Goodreads tells me I'm 5 books behind schedule. Stop pressuring me! Here are my favorites in the first half of the year. I had an incredibly hard time narrowing it down and can hear the runners-up yelling, "Why didn't you choose me???" in my head.

The Literary

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book will creep into your mind and never let go (see what I did there?). It's like watching a car crash; you just can't look away. I think my eyes were wide open in fascinated horror throughout the whole book, which I read in almost one sitting. The less you know about the book going in, the better, so I won't give anything away. My favorite so far.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. As one of the bestselling books in the last couple years, this one isn't much of a surprise. However, critics and regular old readers have hotly debated its merit. I really enjoyed it. Many people have called it Dickensian for good reason. It's a sprawling coming-of-age tale that despite its length (all 800 pages) actually left me wishing I had more details about the missing moments of Theo's life. And boy does it have some entertaining minor characters with great names: Pippa, Welty, Toddy, Hobie, and Boris.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. I have mixed feelings about Atwood's work, but I liked this little book a lot. We all know Penelope faithfully waiting for Odysseus, but she's got her own tale here that she is more than willing to provide from beyond the grave. It's a weird combination of styles, everything from memoir to chorus song to play, and deeply feminist. But Atwood's got a biting wit here that pulls me in.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I read this once before, but it was over ten years ago, and all I remembered was that putting salt on your food while at a dinner party deeply insults the host. Tan provides multiple perspectives on the mother-daughter relationship with all of its expectations, misinterpretations, and twisted acts of love. I found it best to read each story separately because it's a little like getting punched in the heart. Sometimes the losses each of these women experience are so subtly mentioned that they are all the more heartbreaking. Tan just has a beautiful way with words.

The Fantastical Adult

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. What if you were a monster and didn't know it? The Girl with All the Gifts is a new take on a old genre. It's not a genre I usually enjoy, but I found the character portrayal and the moral complexity interesting. I actually found myself losing a bit of interest once the book moves on to more action and less introspection. The book works better if you don't know the topic (though I think most people already do), so I'll just stop here.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Once upon a time, a little girl went into the forest and never came back. A common tale but I've rarely read a story with a forest as terrifying and alive as this one. The villagers must sacrifice one girl every ten years to the "dragon," or wizard, who protects the residents from the Wood. But the Dragon doesn't pick the expected girl, and the world starts falling apart. The complex relationships between the characters makes this fantasy stand out from all the others.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Man, I just want to live inside the world of this book. It's just so magically magical. In the book, two magicians start a contest between their young protegees. As the contestants age, their entire lives, and the lives of everyone in the Night Circus, revolve around this duel they know little about. Inevitably, the competitors fall in love and must find a way to break free. Morgenstern's language is incredibly visual, and I can easily picture how the circus and all of its inventions would look on screen.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Another unusual spin on a common genre. It follows the lives of several characters before and after a flu takes out all but a handful of the population. Beyond displaying the tragedy of witnessing an apocalypse and the harsh reality of living in its wake, Station Eleven focuses on the creative outlets people need to survive. For example, the two most prominent perspectives are of a Shakespearean actor and a Traveling Symphony. While most dystopian novels involve intense action and drama, Mandel's book is understated and elegant.

Youthful

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black. I must have a thing for scary forests lately. I don't always like Black's novels; they have a grittiness that leaves me checking for dirt on my skin. However, I loved this one. I read it back in January and it still keeps popping up in my head. Again we have villagers living on the edge of a dangerous forest - though this one is set in the modern world. Black plays with the childhood interest in fairy tales. Did you fight imaginary monsters as a child? Did you imagine a prince or princess trapped in a magical forest who would one day awaken and fall in love with you? The Hansel and Gretel-esqe main characters do both these things, but in their case fairies are real and the prince does awaken. But fairies are not always nice and both children have been dreaming of the same prince. Adventures ensue. Also, I like that this book is a standalone, which is rare in the young adult fantasy genre.

Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan. You might be able to tell I love the fantasy and science fiction stuff. Unspoken wonders whether being able to read someone's mind is a good thing. Kami never really lost her childhood imaginary friend, but has convinced herself the voice inside her head is not real until the day he shows up as an actual person. Rees Brennan does a remarkable job at showing the complicated inner thoughts of her characters. It also brings up some intriguing questions about how we define our selves as unique from others and where we draw the line on sharing our deepest thoughts. Do you really want your best friends or significant others to know everything inside your head? The rest of the series doesn't quite live up to the first book, but it's an enjoyable read.

I have read so many young adult books this year that I couldn't fit nearly enough of them in here, so here are some honorable mentions: Angelfall, The Raven Boys, Shadow Scale, The Court of Thorns and Roses, Scarlet, and The Girl of Fire and Thorns.

And now for my recently acquired books, I will provide a picture of my latest haul from the used bookstore.

Happy reading all!

IN WHICH The Girl Ventures to Fantastical Lands

"I didn't know assassins like to read." - Throne of Glass

I'm not an assassin, though I certainly wouldn't tell you if I was. However, it turns out assassins are awfully fun to read about, at least kick ass girl assassins in young adult fantasy novels. Despite the fact that I never got into the Game of Thrones books, I've been steadily reading more and more fantasy novels over the last year. I particularly like the young adult fantasies (big surprise), which I found initially through reading The Midnight Garden blog that reviews young adult literature for adult readers. I love the total suspension of disbelief required in fantasy. If you want to forget the worries of your own life, why not jump into a world of magic, sword fighting, royalty, and a dragon or two?

Now to my understanding, there are many sub-genres of fantasy, but many of the ones I have read recently exist in completely new worlds, so the author must create an entirely new land and society for the reader, which essentially means anything can happen. The more successful novels do a good job of world building. My recent favorite is the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. Beyond focusing on a totally awesome assassin as the heroine, Maas establishes one land and set of characters in the first book, a good chunk for readers to swallow without choking on too much new information. She then continues to grow the story's world, in terms of both traveling to new and interesting lands and introducing a larger set of characters. As the series develops, the story becomes more complicated and compelling.

There also tends to be a medieval bent to many fantasy novels. They are set in warring lands run by monarchies, sword-carrying guards play a large part (and are frequently romantic interests), the non-magical fighting involves daggers, swords, and arrows instead of guns, and most characters must travel by walking, horse riding, or boarding a boat. Again, it is a world very different than our own today, even if these elements have existed in the real world.

And then there is the magic. Many plots revolve around how one country does or does not have access to magic. Gots to have the power! In Throne of Glass magic has been erased from one country and the characters must find a way to get it back. In Finnikin of the Rock an entire land is sealed off by magic for more than a decade, and in The Girl of Fire and Thorns a society of sorcerers invades the main land looking for the natural source of magic hidden there. Many of the characters have special abilities due to magic as well, though this often makes them outcasts. For example, in Graceling the heroine is born with a talent - or magical grace - for killing, making her a great assassin but terrifying to befriend. So many girl assassins!


The little feminist in me adores all the emphasis on powerful women in these novels, and I tend to read the ones with female protagonists, though Finnikin of the Rock's main character is male. I can see why so many young girls would like the focus on independent heroines who can protect themselves. At points, however, I'm a little worried about the focus on violence, but that is nothing new to young adult literature and honestly adds a lot of excitement to the story. At the very least, most of the characters aren't killers by choice. Lastly, the teenage girl in me likes the romances. I mean these leaders of the king's guard always seem pretty sexy. But practical things - like saving a nation - often get in the way of love, and I appreciate that romance usually remains a small portion of the plot and never becomes the sole focus of the story (take that Twilight).

Over the winter break, I read The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy, which had a heavy religious focus that weirded me out a bit but was still a good story. Now I need to figure out what's next. I've got The Iron Trial on loan from the library at the moment and want to check out several others, including Shadow and Bone, The Winner's Curse, and The Raven Boys. I'll just continue this trek into nerdier lands.