My Best Books of 2013 (for me)

It's almost Christmas, which means it's almost New Year's, which means it's almost the end of my reading for this year. I thought it might be a nice way to round out the year by listing my top reads in order of, well, awesomeness.

Five Top Books of 2013.

1. The Fault in our Stars.

From the minute I put this book down, I knew that nothing was very likely going to move this from the top of a list like this if I ended writing one. This was the first book I ever read from John Green. I found it at times hilariously witty and at others... challenging... (by which I mean I put it down for a week because I couldn't deal with ALL THE FEELS). I'm glad that I persevered, though. This book has stayed with me ever since I read it.

I make it a habit not reading the back of books before I've started reading them for myself. Several years back, I went through a period where I kept reading the blurbs and turning myself off reading a number of books before I even opened the first pages. 

What I knew about this book was that John Green had written it. I knew that I loved a lot of the quotes I was seeing of him from this and other books and I knew that a couple of my friends had picked up books from him and liked them. Oh, and I knew he was one of the Vlog brothers, which I suppose didn't really have much to do with my choice to read the book, as they are completely different mediums.

What I did not know about this book was that it's a "cancer book". 

For the full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/596788262

2. Gentlemen and Players.

I've read other books by Joanne Harris before. None of them have come even close to touching me in the way that this book did.

In my experience with her books, I've come to learn that there is a place in the middle where the plot lags, or the characters irritate me, or something just slows down enough for me to put the book down and pick something else up before going back to it.

That point didn't happen in this book.

For the full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/662451038

3. The Book Thief.

I'm not usually a fan of stories told in a time of war. They usually tell too much about how awful things were without giving much in the way of either plot or characters.

Instead of being unrelentingly confronted by the atrocities that happened during this time, we are given glimpses into the life of Liesel Meminger - the book thief, as judged by Death, our narrator.

This is not just a 'war story'. Far from it. At times sad, at others uplifting, this book explores themes of family and belonging, loss that has nothing to do with the war, friendship, community and kindness. It shows a shared passion for books and stories and the power those stories can have for a wide range of people. 

For the full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/605049612

4. Delirium.

There have been a lot of different dystopian fictions to come out in the last couple of years. I've read them all and I can honestly say (as much as I enjoyed Insurgent particularly), Delirium was my very top favourite.

Delirium is set in a world vaguely similar to Hunger Games and Legend where the government has taken over and decided that certain changes must be made to the clumsy way life used to run. In this case, the change was to love and desire. It is discovered, more than sixty years before the beginning of this book, that love is in fact a disease, causing delusions, erratic behaviour and, in the end, death.

What is truly insightful about this book is that most of the arguments given early in the book are so hard to argue against. 

For the full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/544856971

5. The Night Circus.

This book is part young adult, part literary fiction, part mystery and all a very arresting book from an author I hadn't heard of before this.

I think that this novel is none of these things and perhaps all of them. That is the beauty of this kind of book. It's something that just kind of exceeds expectations.

Second person passages continue every so often throughout the book, giving the reader a sense of being one of the circus goers that eventually form a culture of their own within the story. From beginning to end, this story is breath-taking, whimsical, beautifully lyrical, evocative and a whole bunch of other adjectives I could fill the page with.

For the full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/616513683

Talking about YA fiction.

When I was young, the television shows I watched would be about saving the planet (Captain Planet, Widget the World Watcher) and young adult fiction was either about the finding a real life threat inside your video games (Space Demons, Skymaze), running off into some wonderful fantasy world where young women could be heroes with a sword too (Songs of the Lioness, The Blue Sword) or finding romance (The Vampire Diaries).

There's still a lot of interest in the latter, as evidenced by the television show The Vampire Diaries. You might even recognise this handsome man as the visual inspiration for one of my own characters. :)

There has also been the popularity of such series' as Cassie Clare's The Mortal Instruments, which I believe they are making into a series of movies due to come out later this year. I've also been a long time fan of Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series, which I've made no bones about loving and having almost a whole shelf dedicated to in my bedroom.



There's also the retold fairy tale genre which is really big at the moment, and includes novelists like Sarah Cross, Alex Flinn, Robin McKinley, Juliet Marillier, Francesca Lia Block and Malinda Lo.

However, there's another kind of genre within the young adult umbrella that has been pushing itself forward. We saw it in The Hunger Games novels (and movie). Marie Lu's novel Legend was another good example of it. Instead of the worries about the environment that categorised the 90s, the media aimed at young adults seems to hold a message that is: don't be so complacent that the government can rule you. Sort of a 1984 for kids, just like Space Demons might have been a good early read for people who would go on to love Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.


Two months ago, I read a book called Delirium by Lauren Oliver and read the follow up sequel Pandemonium this month. Lauren's main character, Lena, lives in a world where love has been labelled a disease for which a cure has been found. (For the full review, click here.) What I thought was amazing was how little the love angle would have mattered at all if not for the backing plot of the story. The same scenario was offered in The Hunger Games; Katniss simply couldn't spend any real number of pages simply falling in love with either of the guys. She was too busy fighting just to stay alive.

I love coming back again and again to the books in this genre. It feels as though there is so much more in YA to read today than there was 10 or even 15 years ago. Subjects like loneliness and alienation are still being tackled, but are now widening to include stories told about interracial and gay, lesbian or bisexual minorities. I read this really interesting interview by two of my favourite young adult writers recently that made me feel really proud to be reading this genre I love so much.

"Both Holly and Sarah are not shy about discussing the difficulties of promoting diversity in Young Adult literature. And they were willing to discuss their experiences in crafting their own works as a way of offering advice to other authors who are seeking to do the opposite of what has been the advice offered time after time to write what they know rather than what they may imagine." (read more)

This interview opens with questions like what advice they would give for writers who want to write outside of their own experiences with gender, race and sexual orientation and goes on through some interesting observations on the way race is depicted both on screen and by readers of these novels, including a quick look at Katniss' depiction in the recent movie The Hunger Games.

June 2013 Reading List

HELLO! I'm here, I'm still here. I swear it.

So, for anyone interested in the continuation of this post, I have now quit my previous job. My partner and I are the happy owners of an Aussie Farmer's Market franchise and I am... dare I say it, happy. Well, at least not waking up and dreading the day ahead. I won't speak too much about that (truthfully, I'm still working out the kinks of just spelling the word 'franchise'), but suffice to say that it's taken me away from my reading in the last two weeks of the month and, I suspect, will continue to do so for at least a little longer.

Added to that, my writing muse has come back! I blame it on this book, by Patricia Briggs. The last time I tried to pick up this novel in February, it sparked renewed interest in writing my Shadows of Melbourne series. This time, not only did it end my writer's block, but I also finished the damned thing in two days. Two days! It's a good read; the whole Mercy Thompson series is highly recommended.

Still. This month, I'm not expecting to get a whole lot of reading done. Maybe I'll use any excess time I have to finish up reading Game of Thrones.

For this next month, I've been hanging on from last month for two books in particular. These are:

Pandemonium.


3/5 - Not as good as the first one. Nowhere near.
Somehow, in my excitement of putting together my list of books for the month of May, I completely forgot to include a young adult title. This will not happen again. I've even added a whole new list of YA titles on my Goodreads.com account to ensure I will not run out. I love YA.

Seriously... I'm Kidding.

3/5 - Enjoyable but episodic. No unified story.
After reading and enjoying Portia de Rossi's memoir in April, is it any surprise that I've hardly been able to wait to read Ellen DeGeneres' memoir? I'm expecting a completely different tone for this one. Actually, I have no idea at all what to expect about this one. Maybe dolphins.

The Mad Ship.

4/5 - While enjoyable, not the best thing she has written.
Another title I've been looking forward to. Ship of Magic left a lot of questions unanswered and, I suspect,  will do the same, being as it's a second book in a trilogy. Still, my heart looks forward to sailing with Althea once more!

A Storm of Swords.

2/5 - A hard slug and a very thick book.
Actually, that idea above was a really great idea. I have about two hundred pages left of reading this, and glances through have proven to me how different it looks than the end of the HBO series so I won't be confused when I pick up A Feast of Crows.

Cry Wolf.

3/5 - Its only failing being that it's the first book in a series, yet seems to start in the middle.
I don't usually read two novels by the same author in two consecutive months, but I was planning to read this book last month until the library lost it. Also, it is the first book in a different series; Alpha and Omega rather than Mercy Thompson. As I don't actually have this title on my personal bookshelves, I had to wait. Then, lo and behold, it was ready today!

I suspect I shall have to staple my wrist to my forehead and cry 'woe!' for having to read two Patricia Briggs novels in as many months.

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As always, follow my progress this month at my Goodreads.com account: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6878229.Nicole_D_Fergusson

April 2013 reading list

Alright, so March is done.

I am absolutely looking forward to this month. My list may be a little bit ambitious, but we're going to see how we go.

First up!

Delirium.
5/5 stars. 10/10! Flawless read.

My YA novel for the month. I have heard so many great things about this book that I don't even know where to begin, so I will say again a huge big 'Yay!' for the reading party this weekend that ended up with me taking away a free copy of this novel for my home library, and I will probably be following it up with other books in this series pretty soon.

Brave New World.
3/5. Far from flawless, but I can see why this is a classic.

This is my Goodreads.com group read of the month. It has also been sitting on my shelves for a long time, having people tell me that I really must read it, so I'm happy to be giving it a shot. I'm sure it will blow my mind.

Wormwood.
4/5 stars. Some stories were really amazing, some were really gratuitous. 

This is a bit of a cheat book for me this month. I've started this book already, but I need a good excuse to finish it. Poppy's books are kind of like stepping into another world. Truth be told, I am a little bit worried about the shape my mind is going to come out by the end of this month... Still, in pages to be read, I'm more than making up for it with--

Ship of Magic.
4/5 stars. Not as good as her previous writing, but only just.

This book is on loan from a friend and if I don't start and finish it soon, he's probably going to take it away from me. As it is, he's already started asking why it was so urgent for me to get it to him when it's taken me two months already to even get to it. Not my fault! I protest, I love all books equally. I promise I'll at least start this book today. (Whether I finish it this month is a completely other story...) I absolutely loved Hobb's writing for both the Assassin and the Golden Fool trilogies, so I suspect it will be no hardship at all to get through the 880 pages this book boasts.

Dear First Love.
DNF. There is one book every month, and this was this month's.

This novel totally stole a title I would have loved to use but, if it's a good read, I'll forgive it. This book is my NA (New Adult) novel for the month. I totally meant to write up a post before the end of last month exploring the realms of this new genre that seems to have captivated the imaginations of authors and publishers alike, but somehow never quite found time for it. Hopefully I can find time sometime during this month. In between all these books...

Unbearable Lightness.
4/5 stars. Depressing, not particularly well written, but still completely drew me in.

Last, but certainly not least, I look forward to this book for so many reasons. A couple of them are personal, one of them is the fact that I'm really digging memoirs right now. This one has been sorta vaguely on my list since I saw it sitting on a shelf in a bookshop I used to work at. I have a lot of expectations for what I expect this book will be. If it makes me cry, I'm going to be real happy. If it makes me think and reflect, better yet. Just so long as it's written articulately, I'm sure it's going to be great.

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As ever, for anyone interested in following my progress throughout this month, feel free to follow me on Goodreads.com: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6878229.Nicole_D_Fergusson