Friday, December 30, 2011

My Best and Worst of 2011 and Most Coveted of 2012

Yep, those good old year-end posts where book bloggers get all nostalgic about the books they read and loved during the year. Me? I also get nostalgic about what I don't like because bad books and good books are equally important to me. First, here are my top five favorite books read in 2011 in reverse order (links go to my review of the book):

5. Nevermore by Kelly Creagh
4. Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John
3. Shine by Lauren Myracle
2. Entwined by Heather Dixon
1. Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

And now we get to my five least favorite reads of 2011 in reverse order (links go to my review of the book):

5. Halo and Hades by Alexandra Adornetto (They tied.)
4. Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini
3. Flecks of Gold by Alicia Buck
2. Born at Midnight by C.C. Hunter
1. Watched by Sharde Richardson

Honestly, I think the Halo/Hades duo is the worst of all of them despite it not being number one, but I expected those to be bad. In my twisted little mind, books I expected to be good but were bad are much worse than books I knew would be terrible.

Part three of my post: My most coveted novels of 2012! There are so many beautiful, interesting books lined up for 2012 and these ten (in no particular order) are the novels I'm looking forward to the most. Links go to the Goodreads page:

1. For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund
2. Body and Soul by Stacey Kade
3. Enshadowed by Kelly Creagh
4. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
5. Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin
6. Spell Bound by Rachel Hawkins
7. Immortal Hearts by Ellen Schreiber
8. Hallowed by Cynthia Hand
9. When the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen
10. Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Ah, 2011. A year of shit going down in YA (Katie Crouch's badly-received Slate article, the YA Saves movement, the Bitch Magazine debacle, the YA Mafia, the Wicked Pretty Things anthology pretty much falling apart thanks to its editor, Shine being nominated for the National Book Award and then withdrawn to much outrage, just to name what comes to mind immediately), plenty of good books, just as many bad books, friends made over books, friends lost over books, authors behaving quite naughtily, the loss of some great authors, and a partridge in a pear tree the discovery of great new authors.

I think I'm looking forward to 2012. More good books, more bad books whether or not I know they'll be bad, big changes coming in my life, and so much more. I wish everyone a happy new year and may you read as many great books as you can stand!