2016 in Books

So there was  a lot of bad in 2016 but this post is going to focus on the good...specifically the good things I have been READING this year! My friend Karissa posted her top 5 reads from this year HERE and I loved the idea so I am stealing it and doing my own...only I have a horrible memory so I had to consult with GoodReads to find out what those favorites were. Before I tell you I must first say...my rankings on GoodReads are not very consistent. Sometimes I think I am just in a good mood and I love books and I rate everything high....other times I am more critical and rate things low. Later the ratings don't really mean much. Haha. I really just keep it to remember WHAT I read. So....take the ratings with a grain of salt remembering how moody I am! but here are the top 5:

Love is the Higher Law - David Levithan (5 stars from me)

This is a tiny book about the events of 911 and how they effected several young people in New York and the areas surrounding it. I have to admit that I normally shy away from books like this as I assume they go for the emotional "get" and are just trying to make you cry for the sake of crying. This book DID make me cry but I felt it was truly genuine and helped me to understand and see this event in a way I never have before. It was very personal and very hard to read at times, but very significant and important. I am better for having read it.



Between Shades of Gray - Ruta Sepetys (5 stars from me)

So this is another book I just normally would never even pick up...apparently 2016 was the year for new things bookwise for me. Historical fiction has never been a favorite of mine but I saw this author at a literature festival and was so impressed with her that I immediately sought out the book and was so glad I did. One of the things I most appreciated about this book was that it taught another side to a story we all know, a side so often ignored. Hitler was not the only one committing atrocities during World War II and yet we never hear about what is happening in the Eastern European Countries, which is where this story takes us. One of many quotes that stood out to me was this, "There were only two possible outcomes in Siberia. Success meant survival. Failure meant death. I wanted life. I wanted to survive." This is the journey of one girls survival in the face of unimaginable - and yet very real horror.

*****So these were the only two books that I awarded 5 stars to - they were obviously the 2 that impressed me beyond any others. I then had 34 of my total 89 books marked as 4 stars...like I said, sometimes I am pretty easy with my ratings. So I went through the list and choose the next 3 that I remember really standing out to me*****

When We Collided - Emory Lord 

This book, at first, I thought was just a YA love story about a girl and a boy meeting after the girl moves to a new town. Kind of the same old, same old you know? But it is so much more. The girl is actually suffering from a mental illness, which is unknown to everyone in her new town - and the boy has recently lost his father and is dealing with his own grief and the subsequent breakdown of his mother in the wake of that event. The book beautifully and realistically shows the raw feelings of both characters and how they both help and hurt one another as they find love and deal with their individual issues.







George - Alex Gino

This book, I am sure, has made a lot of lists. Not all of them good ones. I can see it being on a lot of banned book lists in the future and causing a lot of waves. It is the story of a very young boy named George who believes in his heart he is not a boy at all but a girl. It follows his struggles to tell his best friend and his parents and his triumph of trying out for the "girl" part of Charlotte in the school play. It was startling to me to see these issues played out in such a young character. It was important for me to realize that is a reality. This book is very simple and very easy to read and I think an important starting place for those who wish to gain an understanding of transgender people and the realities they face every day. It changed me and I am grateful for it.




Red Queen - Victoria Aveyard

All of the other books I have chosen are fairly heavy and important - this one is so much fun! It impressed me most because it seems to defy any real lines of genre and fits several of my favorites - fairy tale elements, sci fi elements, magical or supernatural elements, dystopian elements...I am sure there are more! I love that it does not fit any one of those but plays in each. And I should not have implied it was NOT important, we read this book in my student book club and it led to awesome discussions on class divisions, race, gender and much more. This was a definite favorite of the year for me.





My goal for the year on GoodReads was only 50 and I WAY over reached that hitting 89 with 3 books currently almost read (will probably only finish 1 of them by the end of the  year though). I also had a goal this year to read at least one book by every author who spoke at the literature festival YALLFEST that I attended in November and I am very proud to say that I achieved that goal! I love being introduced to new authors and kinds of literature - that festival has become one of my favorite things to do every year! If you want to see the other books I read this year you can check out my GoodReads 2016 list HERE. I am excited to read & write more in 2017!!

The One Wonder If I am Getting Dumber

I created a GoodReads account in 2008. I was so excited because I remember having a conversation with one of my uncles when I was younger and he told me he wished he had kept a list of all the books he ever read. I thought that was an amazing idea, however I did not follow through. I never started my own list, but I wished I had many time. When I first heard about GoodReads, then, I was totally on board. I created an account and started trying to remember everything I ever read. Ummm...yeah that didn't work. I couldn't remember exactly which of the million Nancy Drew books I might have missed. And then to think about  Curious George and Corduroy and all the millions of other books I would never remember...it totally overwhelmed me. I gave up.

In January of 2009 I started a NEW GoodReads account. I simply kept track of all the books I read that year. I have been doing it ever since and I love being able to go back and look at what I read. If I am trying to remember that book I wanted to tell so-and-so about, it is right there for me! It is great. I looked the other day and realized since I have joined I have read 296 books. Not bad...but then I started to notice other things too.

I went to a section called 'favorite genres' and since I had not filled it out they simply populated the fields of books I have entered. There weren't that many. Mostly YA Fiction books, particularly anything supernatural, fantasy or dystopian. Those are my favorite books. That is pretty much all I read.

WHAT???!!!! Suddenly the intellectual in me freaked out. Why I am spending so much time reading this stuff? My college self that read several theological books per week was...well to be honest, kind of ashamed. When was the last time I read something to teach me something? When was the last time a book made me angry b/c it was so wrong that I had to go write something in response to set it right? When was the last time...hmmm.

I find I am split. On the one hand, my job is the IRC librarian. One of my major responsibilities is to order children's and YA books. Our goal is to keep on top of what is new and trending in those genres so we can provide that information to new teachers and/or alumni who might be at schools with less resources. It is, in fact, part of my job to stay on top of these things! But let's be honest, I would read them anyway. I love reading them. I am inspired by them, but in different ways. I am inspired to write myself. I have started writing myself and I am excited about it.

On the other hand, who cares if I write one more fantasy YA fiction book? What does that do to change the world? To make it a better place for someone? (well as a book nerd I could answer that all day, but this side of me is more pragmatic). I wonder if I am wasting my time reading this stuff, and maybe even more in attempting to write it. Maybe I need to be reading about politics or theology or social justice or something...Maybe I am becoming one of those people in our culture that are dumbing down our culture. I mean not only reading fiction all the time but not even adult fiction? What is wrong with our society?

Oh wait...I LOVE reading this stuff.

But it doesn't MEAN anything.

But.....agggghhhh!!!!

I truly don't know where I come down. The two sides of me are very different. I think I have become more comfortable with the side of me that reads to be inspired, that reads for fun and for comfort and because I love it.

But the side of me that is both egotistical at times and always ideological thinks I have got to get back to the important things of life.

What do you think? I am very curious to know if others have faced this kind of question before and what your opinions are. I am going to continue to think, on both sides, and eventually I will try to fashion an answer to myself. I do not think this will be an easy assignment though!


P.S. I am seeing this for the first time several days later and just noticed my title...apparently I AM getting dumber and I am going to leave it that way....gah!

Day 8: Book that makes you think

I struggled with which book to choose again today, because I feel that almost every book makes me think, and there are many that make me think A LOT! The one that was my gut instinct choice is the one I am going to go with, though as I try to think how to write about it I realize it has been many years since I have read it, and that I really need to do that ASAP! My memory is not good enough to do this book justice but the book that really made me think is

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

(I could not find a cover of the book I actually own but liked this drawing of the 3 brothers)

I was first introduced to Dostoevsky in college when a friend bought Crime and Punishment for me as a gift. I loved it, and read several other of his shorter works and was always impressed. Nothing prepared me, however, for reading this book! The book has so many complexities and story lines happening that it is actually somewhat hard to tell you what this book is "about". It follows these brothers though and deals with the ways in which they interpret and live life. There is much about their theology, philosophy, character, relationships etc. and how they both differ from one another and yet can learn from each other as well.

As I said, it has been so long since I read this book, but the impact it made on me and the hours I spent first devouring it and then thinking about it and realizing new implications that it had for me will always remain with me. I look forward to taking this book down and seeing how a re-read at an older age will make me think even more.

Karissa chose one of my FAVORITES that I have already mentioned in my choices for her book today. Check it out! I love how our choices have occasionally overlapped. It is interesting to see different perspectives on the same things!