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Unfortunately I haven't been keeping up with these, but school and a couple other projects are done so I have a little more time now--plus, I really like this theme. It's been an amazing bookish year so far for me, with a lot of really great books read--38 read so far total. It's actually fairly surprising to me that all of the books below (with the exception of The Walking Dead) I rated 5 stars--something that I don't do very often, so to have 11 books (because of ASoIaF) already this year with 5 stars is pretty awesome.
June 25: Top Ten Books I've Read So Far In 2013
- The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. Definitely my favorite book this year. This book is truly amazing--everything about it is fantastic, and I hope to be reading it again soon, even though I'm trying to re-read less books since I have so many unread books I want to read.
- A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin. Specifically, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows. I'm waiting to read DwD until it comes out in paperback because I'm slightly OCD in wanting the whole series to be the same type of book. Anyway, these books are amazing, with the exception of the adult content, and are definitely all 5-star books.
- The Prestige, by Christopher Priest. I watched the movie before reading the book (unfortunately--I always like reading the book first), but both were still amazing. It’s very rare when it’s hard to choose which is better: the book or the movie. Most of the time, it’s the book, but either way it’s always fairly easy to decide which was better—even if both were enjoyable. For The Prestige, it truly is hard to decide which is better (the book is one of my favorite books, and the movie is one of my favorite movies). I absolutely loved the book and everything Priest did, particularly with the structure of the novel. But the film was just as amazing (as expected, coming from Nolan), and is shown in another great way. So this is perhaps one of the few times that I'm not even going to try to say which I liked better--they were both amazing works of art.
- Holes, by Louis Sachar. I've blogged about this book before, so I won't say much here, but it was definitely one of the most enjoyable books I've read so far this year.
- The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. Basically tied with Holes. Another amazing book that I've blogged about before, and definitely one of my favorites.
- The Floating Admiral, by members of the Detection Club (including Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, & G.K. Chesterton). Really an enjoyable book. I love classic detective mysteries (Agatha Christie, etc.), and this one worked really well. Sure, there were a few jarring transitions--to be expected with each chapter written by a new author--but overall it was definitely really well-done.
- The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. Full review here. Quite the amazing and heart-wrenching book. Highly recommended.
- Human Chain, by Seamus Heaney. Quite possibly the greatest poet alive, Heaney is fantastic, and this book of poems of his was quite enjoyable. My favorite poem by him, however, was not in this collection: "From the Frontier of Writing". Still a great collection, though.
- A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This one I actually hesitated slightly to give 5 stars. It's an amazing book, but the second half does drag on quite a bit, and doesn't seem completely necessary. However, not only is it the first Sherlock Holmes, but it's really quite commendable how much thought Doyle put into the character of the killer, to be able to go that in-depth with him (again, even if it did drag on). Plus, I also enjoyed it slightly more than The Sign of Four, possibly just because I had already seen the Jeremy Brett TV movie version several times, and knew the story.
- The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman. And also the first graphic novel I have read. Definitely entertaining and well-done. Having already watched the TV show, it was cool to see the similarities and differences. I hope to read more of these in the future.
What about you guys? Any amazing books you've read so far this year?
~ Velox
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