2013: A Year in Books | The Favorites

Image Credit: Abhi Sharma

The year is almost over, and you know what that means: it’s time to write our “Best of” lists and anger people with our terrible choices. But fear not! My impeccable taste guarantees a list filled with nothing but great recommendations… That, and I’m aware of how obnoxious and pretentious some of these lists are, which is why this year I’m going with “Favorites” instead of “Best”. So even if you violently disagree with me, at least you know that I consider this my list and not the list.

Before I get to it, though, I wanted to thank you all for the wonderful year I’ve had. I know I was a bit of a slacker, yet you’re still here even when I only blog once a month. But consistent or not, 2013 was a lot of fun and that’s all thanks to you blogger/twitter/reader/author friends who make the Internet welcoming, interesting and highly addictive.

I’ll resume my not-so-regularly scheduled blogging next month, but in the meantime I leave you with my favorite books of the year (in no particular order). Let me know if any of your favorites made the list.

Heroine Week, Day 5 – The Other Brave Girls of YA by Sarah from Clear Eyes, Full Shelves

I discovered Sarah’s blog last year and immediately became one of my go-to places to find book recommendations, insightful discussions and more recently, a must-listen podcast. Also, her mom is one of her co-bloggers!

*****

The Other Brave Girls of YA by Sarah from Clear Eyes, Full Shelves

In the young adult fiction universe, there’s a common association with strong characters and their physical strength. I love some of these tough female characters. Katniss’ fierce loyalty to her sister is admirable in The Hunger Games; I loved Cassie’s tenacity and unflinching willingness to do what it takes to survive in The Fifth Wave’s post-apocalyptic world. But, the YA novels that speak most to me are those featuring heroines whose journeys are fraught with internal conflict.

Being a teenage girl is hard, and sometimes the bravest choices aren’t whether to pick a faction a la Divergent’s Tris, but rather the bravest choice is that of living one’s own truth.

This is something that today’s YA authors do very, very well. They acknowledge that growing up is hard; that young people often deal with grown-up problems all alone; that secrets are kept, that lies are told; that family and friendship are often messy. The fictional teen heroines who tackle realistic challenges in YA novels aren’t often labeled as “brave” girls, like Katniss, Cassie and Tris, but in my eyes, they’re the most courageous.

I’ve highlighted twelve (I tried to limit myself to ten, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be) brave heroines from the YAverse whose personal journeys speak to the struggle of finding their path. I’ve actually omitted a few of my favorites, because I think they’re quite well-known already. The Jessica Darling series, for example, is one of my favorites in terms of the messy realism of growing up. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks is another that’s quite popular which would definitely qualify as a brave YA heroine, the same with multi-award winning author Sara Zarr’s heroines.

2012: A Year in Books | The Best

Winter Berries by Michelle Buntin

This year I tried to choose books that were both the best and my favorites (although “best” is still quite subjective). The end of the year is plagued with awards, but most of the time the winners are the popular books and not necessarily the best. I want this list to reflect entertainment but also quality, because one of the reasons this year was less than stellar, was because of the rise of many books that were more unfinished product than anything else. And one thing I wish 2013 brings is higher standards. I believe quality and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive, and all the books on my list should reflect that.

Review: Something Like Normal by Trish Doller

Source: we received an e-ARC of the book through NetGalley for review purposes.

The reason I read this book was because the main character and narrator is a guy, something I seldom see in YA. It also seemed like a different type of story and I was intrigued. So I requested it months ago and read it, which turned out to be a mistake because I’ve been dying to talk about it since March.

Something Like Normal tells the story of Travis. He’s back home for a short stay before he has to go back to Afghanistan. It’s not the ideal situation because things at home are far from perfect. His girlfriend dumped him and is now with his brother, he has a poor relationship with his dad, and even if he doesn’t want to admit it, he’s suffering from PTSD. He has two choices: he can either ignore all his issues, or he can confront them. To be honest, all he wants to do is get away, it was the reason he enlisted in the first place, but his issues are hard to ignore so confront them he will.