Best Reads of 2010

I have been sick with the plague for the past week, which is why there has not yet been a blog post about Gemma's first Christmas. I am working up to it. In the meantime, here is a quick and fun (at least, fun for me) post: my annual list of the best books I read in the previous year. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie; The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag)

2. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Infinitely better than the Twilight books. I was not a fan of the sequel, however.

3. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. It's been years since she published The Historian (which was fantastic), but The Swan Thieves was worth the wait.

4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. There was so much hype about this book that I put off reading it because I thought I would only be disappointed. I was not.

5. The Hunger Games & Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (read these twice actually). I was wary of this one too since people were comparing it to Lord of the Flies. It is nothing like Lord of the Flies. Mostly because it is fantastic and Lord of the Flies is terrible. Mockingjay (the third volume of the trilogy) was horrible.

6. Graceling by Kristin Cashore.

7. Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, and Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran.

8. Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. Another book that was seriously hyped, yet managed to live up to its reputation.

9. The City and the City by China Mieville. I was really not into this book when I first started reading it. It took me a while to get interested, but then I couldn't put it down. After I was finished, I thought about it a lot and developed a growing appreciation for its subtle brilliance. Then I *attempted* to read his new book, Kraken (because I loved The City and the City, and being a little bit obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean, I was pretty pumped about a kraken, but it was so bad I couldn't even get through 75 pages! It was totally bizarre and I had no idea what was going on!)

10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is a really odd book, and had some inappropriate scenes that I wasn't crazy about, yet it was very well-written and weirdly fascinating.

11. River God by Wilbur Smith - Historical fiction set in ancient Egypt = good times.

12. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson - I wasn't a huge fan of book 2 of the trilogy, but I liked the way the trilogy ended with this one.

13. Faithful Place by Tana French - not as good as her previous two, but still thoroughly enjoyable.

14. The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett - Wow is really all I can say about this. The word epic is so overused these days, but if anything deserves to be described as epic, this is it. Also enjoyed watching the mini-series this year as well.

15. Juliet by Anne Fortier - an interesting new spin on the well-known (and overdone) Shakespeare tale.

16. Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs - I randomly started watching Bones on Netflix earlier this year and then decided to try Deja Dead since I had never read anything by Kathy Reichs. I was hooked. I ended up reading everything she's written.

17. Cold Magic by Kate Elliott - An obscure but enjoyable book. Probably only interesting to serious fantasy/sci-fi fans.

18. The Host by Stephenie Meyer - I finally got around to reading this. It was nothing like what I expected, but I enjoyed it very much. I thought it was much better than Twilight, actually.

19. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE KATE MORTON! And her books just keep getting better!!!

20. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. I had downloaded the first book in this series onto my Kindle ages ago and for some reason, had never bothered to read it. I kept hearing about his new series (Leviathan, Behemoth), and checked Leviathan out from the library. It was decent, and while waiting for the library to get a copy of Behemoth for me, I decided to read Uglies. I was instantly hooked. I plowed through Uglies and downloaded Pretties. Then I plowed through Pretties and downloaded Specials. I wasn't so sure about Extras, since it featured a different character than the original trilogy. But I went ahead and read it too...and it ended up being my favorite of all of them!

21. A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels by Libba Bray - I promise my interest in these books has nothing to do with the fact that the main character's name is Gemma! (Although that might make me a bit impartial to said character.) I downloaded the first of this trilogy ages ago at the same time I downloaded Uglies. After Uglies turned out to be so good, I decided to give the Gemma Doyle Trilogy a try also. Not as good as Uglies, but still really good. YA fantasy set in Victorian England, told from the point of view of a girl named Gemma. Um, this book was clearly just screaming my name! I haven't read the third installment yet, but it is next up on my reading list.

And, just for fun, some books that were so awful I couldn't even finish reading them:

1. The aforementioned Kraken by China Mieville

2. The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls by L. J. Smith - love the show, love the original books. No idea what she was thinking when she wrote this.

3. The Naming by Alison Croggon. I was pretty excited about this - it's a fantasy, quest-type YA read. But it was soooooo boring I literally kept falling asleep while reading it and couldn't even make myself finish it.

4. The Passage by Justin Cronin. Okay, I actually did finish this one, but only because I made myself. This book had a ton of hype, and when I started reading it, I was actually very interested. The first couple hundred pages are really good, and it's a unique vampire story (which is hard to do with the vampire craze going on). But the book really should have ended there, and not 500+ pages later after which point I was thoroughly confused and no longer interested at all.

5. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. After reading his two medieval epics, I was pretty excited about his new Century trilogy. Oh my gosh. I was so bored. I read a little over half, then skimmed to the end. I will not be reading book two. I was glad I got this from the library and didn't waste my money.

6. Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellstrom - I got an ARC and was pretty excited, since it was being compared to Stieg Larsson. It was nothing like Larsson. It seemed like the English translation was done very poorly, so that may have been part of the problem. Either way, very confusing and not worth my time.

And a P. S. - I am already reading a fantastic new book by Julie Klassen (LOVE HER!), The Girl in the Gatehouse, that just came out on January 1. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, but I can already tell it will be making my 2011 list!