Favorite Books 2012

It's that time of year again when I post about the books I loved most during the year.  Mostly so I can remember what I liked, but partly because I love to recommend books to other people. I'm secretly a wanna-be librarian at heart! Also, one of my New Year's Resolutions this year was to read one non-fiction book per month and I did really well.  It turns out I can keep my resolutions as long as they involve books! So here are my top 10 fiction books (in no particular order), top 5 non-fiction, and 10 books to read to your kids, and one book that really disappointed me. Boo Hoo!

FICTION:
1)  The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh:  This was a beautifully written book about a girl who grows up in foster care but now has to make her own way in the world.  It was very good and I loved how the author connected the language of flowers (how different flowers mean different things, such as a red rose means "love") with this girls life.  It does have 2-3 F words in it but other than that is clean.

2) Al Capone Does my Shirts (and Al Capone Shines my shoes) by Gennifer Choldenko:  This is a Newberry Honor book about a boy growing up on Alcatraz Island (his dad is a guard) and has a sister who is autistic (though they never call it that because the story takes place before Autism was a diagnosis) A great coming of age story.

3) Entwined by Heather Dixon:  I'm a sucker for fairy tale re-tellings and this was a great one based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses.  I also read Princess of the Midnight Ball which is based on the same fairy tale, but this was the best of the two.

4) Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman: Another great coming of age story. Very heartwarming.

5) Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs: This is a fantasy novel but not high fantasy with dragons, witches, people who turn into trees to save the world, etc.  It has some very X-men like elements with kids with extraordinary abilities.  Some people think this one is weird because of the creepy pictures (yes, it has pictures! Yay!), but I thought it was great.

6) I am Half Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley:  Another Flavia de Luce novel and that Flavia is one spunky character.  I love all of Alan Bradley's Flavia series.

7) Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen:  A spin on the Robin Hood story that was really fun.

8) The Fault in Our Stars by John Green: This one is sad, but very powerful.  I loved it.

9) The False Prince by Jennifer Nielson:  This reminded me a lot of Meghan Whalen Turner's "The Thief" but for a little younger crowd.  (If you haven't read The Thief, then start with that before reading anything else.  It's fabulous!) Lexi read this one and loved it too.

10) The Distant Hours by Kate Morton:  I just discovered Kate Morton.  I read her novels The Forgotten Garden, The House at Riverton and The Distant Hours this year.  The Distant Hours was my favorite, though I liked the others a lot too.  It's long but worth the time commitment.

NON-FICTION:
1) Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand: This is about Louie Zamperini who was a WWII POW, amongst other things.  It's a fascinating look at someone's experience during the war and almost seems like it couldn't be true, but it is.  I kept finding myself having to go read some more so I could "get Louie out of his latest mess!"

2) Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly:  Tyson is not a big fan of Bill O'Reilly (yes, the political pundit) so I wasn't sure I'd be allowed to have this one even in the house!  My dad recommended it though, so I decided to give it a try.  It was a very approachable history surrounding Lincoln's last days and John Wilkes Booth.  So interesting and I learned a ton!

4) Alicia: My Story by Alicia Appleman-Jurman: I'm usually not a fan of autobiographies but I enjoyed this one.  Normally you hear about people who survived the concentration camps of WWII but this shows the struggle of the people who were not in concentration camps but suffered greatly anyway.

5) One World, Many Religions by Mary Pope Osbourne:  Yup, Mary Pope Osbourne, the Magic Treehouse author.  I never said all my non-fiction choices were massive tomes.  This one is written for the 10 and up crowd and it is about the 7 major religious ideologies in the world, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucionism.  Of course it's very basic and doesn't delve into a lot of the doctrines, but it's a great overview. 

KID BOOKS: These are the books we read for our family book club.  The ones in bold were our favorites.
1) Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls
2) Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
3) The Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
4) The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Catling
5) The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
6) Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
7) A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
8) The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
9) The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
10) If You're Reading This, It's Too Late by Pseudonymous Bosch (the book we're currently reading, it's good so far but I didn't put it in bold because we'll have to wait and see!)

And now for the big disappointment of my whole year:

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling:  Ohhhhh....I was so excited for this one.  I had it pre-ordered months ahead. I was secretly hoping it was really about Harry Potter: The Grown Up Years even though I'd heard that it was something totally different.  Well, let me just say, that when she said she was writing an ADULT novel, she meant it!  I only got about 60 pages in and gave up because the language was atrocious! And there were already references to things of a graphic sexual nature that I'm sure come into play later in the novel.  The writing style was still great and I'm sure the plot is probably good but I couldn't get past the adultness of it.  Give me a Newberry book instead.

Well, there's my list!  I hope there's something that catches your eye and makes you want to rush out to the library.  And, as always, leave me a comment if you have a recommendation for me! Maybe your favorite will become one of my new favorites!