Are you looking for some of the best reads from 2011? The staff members at Powell's each selected their top 5 titles of the year. There are picture books, middle grade novels, young adult titles and plenty of adult fiction in here. It's a fascinating collection of lists that has given me some new titles to start of 2012. Hop on over and take a look at Staff Top 5s of 2011.
If asked to select your 5 favorite reads of 2011 could you do it? I'm going to try and I hope you'll join me. Here is my list (in no particular order).
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd - I read this one on the plane ride home to see my mom. Big Mistake. I sobbed through the last portion of the book, probably frightening those around me. Given what I know about the untimely death of Dowd, it made the tale even more moving.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor - I loved Karou and her relationship with Brimstone and got swept up in the mystery surrounding Karou's history. I was enchanted with Prague, the art, the chimaera, and Akiva (of course!). However, the kicker for me came at the end of the book. Just as I thought things were winding up -- no way! I should have seen it coming, and darn, now I must wait for book 2!
Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto by Paul Janeczko - Heartbreaking, shocking, and brutally honest, Janezcko's poems pack an emotional punch. There is beauty in this collection, even though readers repeatedly experience loss and death. The humanity and strength of the victims, the depravity of the SS, and the horror that was the Holocaust is evident in Janezcko's carefully chosen words. Reading this is like watching a train wreck—you want to look away, but can't. I wanted to stop reading, but couldn't put it down.
Okay, I've got to head out to a meeting. Books 4 and 5 when I return. Until then, won't you join me in listing your top five of 2011?
Daughter was so lush and evocative, and then -- that ending! I was peeeeeeved!!!!!
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