Posts About favorite books

my reading year in review and favorite books of 2015

December 29, 2015

This was a solid year of reading with some excellent books, even though I didn’t read as many as I usually do. (Blame it on the kids, like I do everything. But I read twice as many as last year when we were adjusting to having two!) Today I want to share a few statistics about my reading year, as well as my favorite books! The graphic above is from Goodreads, which I use to track all my reading. Here are some additional stats that I was interested in: Percent fiction – 62.5% Percent nonfiction – 37.5% Percent female authors – 50% Percent diverse authors – 17.5% See all of the books I read in 2015 here. Now on to…
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favorite scary books

October 29, 2015

I’m not much of a scary book reader, but since it’s that time of year I figured I’d share my favorites all the same. I could only come up with four that would qualify, so as a bonus I turned to my husband David who loves this stuff. Here we go! IT by Stephen King – David turned me on to Stephen King as a writer, and although I tend to stay away from his horror stuff, I did tackle IT and man was it good. Yeah there is some scary stuff in there, but you’d also be surprised to know that there is a beautiful coming-of-age story within it, as well as a lovely portrait of childhood friendship. (P.S. –…
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favorite coming-of-age books

October 30, 2014

Coming-of-age is more of a theme than a genre, I suppose, but I tend to really like books that can be categorized this way. Maybe it’s the nostalgia (I am very prone to it) or the fact that all humans share the adolescent experience so it usually resonates with me. I think, also, that any good novel will have characters that change over time (usually when they encounter some sort of difficulty) and coming-of-age provides a perfect framework to make that happen. I don’t know, do you think the term “coming of age” has any real meaning when it comes to books? Is it too broad? Regardless, here are my favorite coming-of-age books at the moment: A Prayer For Owen…
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favorite nonfiction books

February 20, 2014

I use Grammarly’s grammar check because although you might not be able to tell from the way I look when I drop Meredith off at daycare right now or the frequency of baths taken around here, I DO have some standards. I read a whole lot more fiction than nonfiction, so when I do read it I try to make it the good stuff. A lot of the nonfiction books I read are faith-related, but since I’ve already written about my favorite books on faith I didn’t include any of those on this list. Here are the ones I absolutely loved. Nicholas & Alexandra by Robert K. Massie – This biography of the last Tsar of Russia and his wife really is a case…
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favorite books i read in 2013

January 2, 2014

This is the best wrap-up of last year that I have in me this year. It was a year, things happened, life is about to change a lot, and through it all I was reading books. Here are my favorites. The Passage by Justin Cronin: This is not the kind of book that I would normally just pick up, but it was a book club pick and I’m so glad. To me, it had it all and I got seriously invested in the characters. This reminds me that I need to read the sequel ASAP. Abhorsen by Garth Nix: Just one of the best and most unique young adult fantasy series I’ve ever read, and the awesomeness of this finale…
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