2011 End of Year Book Survey!

I know I've been going on about it lots, but I am so intensely little kid excited about coming to the end of my first year of blogging! I've read such awesome stuff this year and added to my already disgustingly giant TBR pile, and a huge amount is due to blogger recommendations. Mostly to try to get all the awesome I've read straight in my head, I'm completing Jamie's End of 2011 book survey. Feel free to read on or not, as the mood takes you!

1. Best Book You Read In 2011? 
I think this is the first time I have ever been able to answer this question straight away, without even thinking about the answer. I did add another couple of titles to my answer about two seconds later, but still, result!
Immediate answer - The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Totally lived up to the hype and made me want to read it again, immediately after finishing it.
The two I added two seconds later - Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (my first foray into non - fantasy graphic novels - totally opened my eyes)

2. Most Disappointing Book/Book You Wish You Loved More Than You Did?

Franny and Zooey by J.D Salinger. I've been a giant fan of The Catcher in the Rye since I was about fourteen, and this book has been on my TBR literally forever, but when I did get around to reading it, I just couldn't love it like I wanted to...

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2011?

An Abundance of Katherines by John Greene
East of Eden by John Steinbeck

4. Book you recommended to people most in 2011?

How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran. This is still the most hilarious book I've read all year and just so entertaining. I get the giggles just thinking about sage and onion stuffing now.

5. Best series you discovered in 2011?

Probably the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, or Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. I love Percy Jackson despite it being slightly childish in tone, the books are just brilliantly quick entertaining reads. Thank you Hanna for sending me the first one!

6. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2011?

Sarah Addison Allen, Erin Morgenstern, Carolyn Turgeon, Marjane Satrapi (all women... :-/)

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you?
Before this year I hardly ever read any YA. If I'm honest the snobby 'I have an English LIterature Degree' part of me still dislikes admitting that I do, but my stats for the year beg to differ so... Having said that, The Hunger Games trilogy earlier this year was a total revelation for me. I absolutely adored the series and I go between extreme excitement and apprehension about the upcoming film!
8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2011?

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern again! If you haven't read this book, you really really must, it is so incredibly beautiful and captivating. Also Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants which I keep forgetting about but completely adored for being so suspense building and darkly gorgeous.

9. Book you most anticipated in 2011?

The Night Circus or The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Browne (which was good, but not as great as I was expecting...)

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2011?

In Your Face by one of my most favourite authors ever, Scarlett Thomas

 

11. Most memorable character in 2011? 

I know she was only in it for like a really little while, but Rue from The Hunger Games. I loved her, she was so brave she broke my heart.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2011?

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley

13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2011? 

Reading Lolita in Tehran made me rant at people about women's rights and feminism a LOT. I felt strongly enough about it to do a giveaway (rare occurrence!) just to be able to pass the awesomeness on!

14. Book you can't believe you waited UNTIL 2011 to finally read? 

East of Eden and Tender is the Night. Both amazing, brilliantly written and much more engrossing reads than I expected.

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2011? 

From How to Be a Woman - sorry if it's not to people's taste, but I find it HILARIOUS:(in reference to periods)

"As part of being a hippy, my mother doesn't 'belive' in painkillers and urges us to research herbal remedies. We read that sage is supposed to help and sit in bed eating handfuls of sage and onion stuffing, crying. Neither of us can believe that we're going to have to put up with this for the next 30 years.

"I don't want children anyway,' Caz says, 'So I am getting nothing out of this whatsoever. I want my entire reproductive system taken out, and replaced with spare lungs, for when I start smoking'"

16. Book That You Read In 2011 That Would Be Most Likely To Reread In 2012? How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (because I want to re-read it just from going through trying to find the above quote)

The Night Circus because, as previously mentioned, it is entire bucketloads of awesome.

17. Book That Had A Scene In It That Had You Reeling And Dying To Talk To Somebody About It? (a WTF moment, an epic revelation, a steamy kiss, etc. etc.) Be careful of spoilers!

It's probably kinda bad that I can't really think of one...There were some scenes in The NIght Circus (surprise surprise), and a few in The Last Werewolf I think but nothing specific springs to mind..

I shall be doing more talking about 2011 before the end of the year, including some stats that I find interesting but probably nobody else will....

Les Miserables Readalong, Narnia Project and a slight pre-emptive 2011 round - up...

I remember when I was six and the year that I was six seemed to drag out forever. So much of the stuff that happened in my childhood took place in that year. I have absolutely no idea how it is that we're almost at the end of another year - I've been living in Kent for an entire year now, and I've survived! We've just moved house for the second time, to a much bigger, nicer place, and we are (hopefully) finally starting to feel really settled! The weeks seem to fly by now, and sometimes it seems like the only way to measure a month is by how many posts I've managed to write! 

All in all, I'm really pleased with how 2011 has gone... At the beginning of the year I was still fairly relaxed about the wedding planning, only working a few hours a week and living in a one bedroom flat navigating my life around my books. Now I'm living in a two bedroom flat with a reading room, working full time, and most excitingly of all, I'm married! I'm starting to feel like a proper grown up, and while that is scary it's also necessary I think. Although it's not quite the beginning of December and there is still another month of 2011 to go, as I plan to spend most of it re-reading old favourites and finishing off the few Noel Streatfeild books I have on my shelf before the year is up (all of which will be re-reads), I thought now would be as good a time as any to talk about some of my favourite books of the year, and some of the books that I wouldn't have read or bought if it weren't for blogging!

From January 9th 2012 until 14th I'm going to be hosting an awesome giveaway for my first blogoversary! For this giveaway, there will be a question you will need to answer in order to win one of the books from my list of favourites from 2011, my first year of blogging! There are a fair amount to choose from, and I'm thinking that I will pick a couple of winners - probably one from the UK and one international, just so everybody can share the excitement! I cannot stress enough how glad I am that I started keeping this blog back in January. It has had such an effect on my reading life, and has got me through some really lonely, homesick times. It has really helped to know that whatever happens there are always blogs to read, and always awesome people I can talk books (and randomness) with, and I so appreciate that :-)

These are a few of my favourites from this year that I've not had time, internet connectivity, or words to talk about before and I thought if I did it here then there would be a point of reference for people entering the giveaway. These will just be very condensed reviews, and the first up is my favourite of all,

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - About a circus which mysteriously appears without warning, I was so blown away by this book that I still have no proper words to describe it. It's magical, awe-inspiringly written and much more complex and entangled than it appears. A tale of love, magic, adventure, brutality, and so, so much more. You must read this book.

Garden Spells & The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen - Apart from Morgenstern, Sarah Addison Allen is my favourite discovery of 2011. Her books are gorgeous - fairly lightweight, full of magic, food, and feisty women, they always have happy endings without every being completely predictable. Just beautiful.

Howards End is On the Landing by Susan Hill - A non - fiction book subtitled 'my year of reading from home', Susan Hill sets out to read only the books she already owns for a year, and it's basically my favourite kind of book. Full of literary discussion, exploration and lists upon lists, I came away from this book with a headful of questions and pages and pages of lists of books I now want to read. Very well written and enjoyable.

Going Out by Scarlett Thomas - As some of you may know, this lady is one of my all - time favourite authors. The author of eight novels, for some reason her first five are extremely difficult to get hold of, however my awesome husband managed to do just that for me this year, and I've now read all of them! Going Out is about Luke, a boy who is allergic to the sun, and his best friend Julie, and what happens to them when they decide to go out. Summed up like that, it seems kind of lame, but I promise it isn't. It's daring, funny, and as always with Scarlett Thomas, very human, intelligent, and candid.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - I read this after I watched the BBC adaptation with Jason Isaacs (which I completely loved), and I liked the book a lot. Basically a story about Jackson Brodie, an ex - police officer turned private detective who mostly investigates missing cats, and his foray into the world of real cases, I liked it because Atkinson really humanises her characters, and because the plot was very well thought out. I've recently got my hands on the second in the series, and I'm looking forward to it!

A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters- the latest in the Amelia Peabody series of historical crime fiction, based around Egyptology, this confused me intially because it is published out of sequence with the rest of the story. If you like this genre and want an easy read that is hilarious and engaging, Peters is your woman! Amelia Peabody is one of my favourite heroines, because she's such an unlikely one, and such an independent woman :-)

So, that's pretty much that. Now onto yet another thing I've signed up for in 2012....

Kate is hosting a year long readalong of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables in 2012. The idea is to read small chunks of the books to a schedule with the other participants and then talk about it. I've not had much luck with French literature this year - I've DNF'd both Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, and Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I'm hoping that my enduring love for Les Miserables the musical will help sustain me through this one, wish me luck!  

Rikki's Teleidoscope is hosting the Narnia Reading Project in 2012. I love this series and am way past due for a re-read so I'm going to join in! There is no schedule, so I will just post about the books as and when I read them! To sign up, use the link above :-)