According to Goodreads, I read 42 books last year. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s a definite improvement from 2012 where I only read 26 books. I hope to increase last year’s number even more in 2014.
My favorite book (and one of the best books I’ve ever read) in 2013: City Of Thieves by David Benioff (he’s one half of the team who created and adapted George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series into HBO’s Game of Thrones). Anna Torv was right. This book was a great read. It was heartbreaking, it was sad, it was funny. It had everything you could want for in a book.
Honorable mentions include: Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, Malinda Lo’s Huntress, Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed, Ken Follett’s Winter of the World, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear, Rae Carson’s Fire and Thornsseries, and JacquelineCarey’s Santa Olivia.
The award for worst book I read last year goes to Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. My goodness, what a fucking mess of a book. The only reason why I even read this was because I was a big fan of The Da Vinci Code. If this is the last book left on earth, please do yourselves a favor and burn it to keep yourself warm. It is not worth your time. I was so pissed after I finished it. I was already through one-third of the book before I realized how idiotic the characters and story were and by then it was too late to stop reading.
I stopped reading The Mortal Instruments series after book two because I couldn’t take the whole Jace/Clary nonsense and because Jace just seems like an asshole. Good riddance to that series.
First Row:The Teleportation Accident (Ned Beauman). City of Thieves (David Benioff). The Diviners (Libba Bray). Vacations From Hell (Libba Bray, others). Beauty Queens (Libba Bray). Digital Fortress (Dan Brown).
Second Row: Santa Olivia (Jacqueline Carey). The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Rae Carson. The Crown of Embers (Rae Carson). Graceling (Kristin Cashore). City of Ashes (Cassandra Clare). City of Bones (Cassandra Clare).
Third Row: Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer). The Arctic Incident (Eoin Colfer). House of Secrets (Chris Columbus). Reached (Ally Condie). Matched (Ally Condie). Crossed (Ally Condie).
Fourth Row: The Dark Wife (Sarah Diemer). The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle). A Study In Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle). The Hound of Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle). The Valley of Fear (Arthur Conan Doyle). The Sign of Four (Arthur Conan Doyle).
Fifth Row: Winter of the World (Ken Follett). The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank). The Cuckoo’s Calling (Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling). Someday, Someday, Maybe (Lauren Graham). The Fault In Our Stars (John Green). Ammonite (Nicola Griffith).
Sixth Row: And the Mountains Echoed(Khaled Hosseini). Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison (Piper Kerman). Origin (Jessica Khoury). Huntress (Malinda Lo). Ash (Malinda Lo). Reconstructing Amelia (Kimberly McCreight).
Seventh Row: The Woman Upstairs (Claire Messud). The Will of the Empress (Tamora Pierce). Talking With My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater (Gail Simmons). The Help (Kathryn Stockett). The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer). The 5th Wave (Rick Yancey).