(Warning: some spoilers below)
At first I didn't think I had read enough books in 2013 to create a "best of" list. Then I thought, well, it's not as if there's some sort of book police lurking in the shadows. So, here I go.
1. Wild
I wrote an official review here, but to sum up: this was my favorite book of the year. It was inspiring and gritty, honest and incredible. I enjoyed both the flashback sections and her raw descriptions of the hike itself. I wanted to strap a backpack on and hit a (much shorter/less treacherous) trail after finishing it, and I also wanted to write the author a thank-you note.
(I didn't do either, but maybe I should have.)
I didn't know a thing about this book (other than that a few of my favorite peopled loved it), so it was refreshing to dive into a story completely blind. The dialogue and main character reminded me a little of Marian Keyes' books (good thing, she's one of my favorites), though the underlying plot points and the ending were in a league their own. It was just beautiful, quite honestly.
I didn't know what I expected from the end -- would it end this way or that way or another way altogether, I wondered while reading -- and when I got to the very last page, I sighed through my sobs. It would end that way, and it was perfect.
3. Eleanor & Park (with Fangirl being a close runner-up to it)
I love John Green and really loved The Fault in Our Stars (review of the latter here) and Eleanor & Park certainly reminded me of John Green, with both books' flawed teen characters falling awkwardly but naturally in love. I liked E&P better, though. The dialogue felt a little more natural, and I loved both characters just so, so much. It reminded me of my own first love.
I thought the ending was perfect, too. Damn, I love a perfect ending. (Not a happy ending and it's not that this ending isn't happy, it's just that I love when an ending feels completely true to the rest of the story that came before it.)
Fangirl (another from Rainbow Rowell) is a bit lighter and about college-aged kids vs high-school ones, and I enjoyed it almost as much.
Elizabeth sent me this book for my birthday last year (thank you, E!), and I put off reading it for a while. The first few pages never grabbed me, after I tried them a few times. I finally read it over the summer and was blown away. What a beautiful book. (The saying should be "never judge a book by its first three pages.")
A memoir of grief, written by a woman who lost both her mother and father by the age of 25. I highlighted passage after passage, devouring the way she strung words together. (About her time in New York, for college: "In those early days I swayed under the weight of the buildings towering above me. The ribbons of people on the sidewalk pulled me to and fro, and I learned quickly to just give myself over to it all.") As much as her story was inspiring and relatable and raw, I was equally inspired to just write more. Her writing made me want to write.
While I'm lucky enough to have both my parents alive and well and just a phone call away, I lost my dad on a daily basis at the age of nine, when he left our family to immediately start a new one. That's not an extraordinary event, happens every day, but it literally wasn't until I read this book that I really understood that so many of my feelings over the last twenty-odd years were feelings of grief. Grieving for a dad and family I'd simply never have.
Another author I want to write a thank you note to. Maybe I'll write more of those in 2014.
What was your favorite book this year?