She Likes Purple

My Top Ten Favorite Books from 2015

First, moment of silence, because I did not finish the 52 books I set out to read in 2015 (I finished 44), so this post is clouded in a thin layer of shame. BUT, beyond that, it was not my best reading year. I read QUITE a few books I was not a fan of, that I actively eye-rolled my way through, and even more books I was just so-so about that once I got to the last page, I wanted to streamline a Netflix show instead of seeking out my next book to read. 2016, let's improve on all THAT, okay?

Regardless I read some real gems. Here are all the books I finished in 2015 and below are my top ten. These ten I either loved, really liked, could not put down until I finished, or just could not stop thinking about once I had.

(Spoiler note: I've included some top-level spoilers and favorite passages below, although I tried to be careful about spoiling the actual reading experience or specific plot points, of course, but if you're a reading purist, maybe tread lightly?)

Anyway! In no particular order, except for the last two, here we go:

10. You.

I could not believe this book. It was INSANE and, in fact, I read a part of it while sharing a hotel room with a colleague on a work trip, and I kept saying aloud to her while reading it, "ADRIENNE, THIS IS INSANE." But, I also couldn't put it down. The writing was engrossing, and somehow the author created a main character that you hated but then didn't? It's hard to explain, other than to say terribly unsympathetic characters that an author somehow makes sympathetic (under, again, INSANE circumstances) interest me. I'm all in for interesting. 

The sequel comes out this spring, and I've already pre-ordered it.

9. Lucky Us.

This was an unexpected gem, as it started pretty quiet. The writing was just lovely, though, and the story was so sad and uplifting, all at the same time. It's such a human book, telling stories of people who you feel actually lived out there somewhere, with real loves and losses. It's one of the books I've started gifting the readers in my life, which is always a sign of a book that really grabbed me. And while I loved so many of the book's passages (read some top ones here), I particularly loved this:

You know, the crisis passes, the crucible cools, and there we are, slightly improved, not much altered.

I read this basically in one sitting, on a plane ride back from California, and I cried as it ended and turned to Mike as I cried to say, "I just love when a book makes me feel like this."

(Don't worry. He's QUITE used to what weird things and in what weird places his wife is capable of crying at/in.)

8. The Girl on the Train.

I feel like it might be no longer cool to admit how much I enjoyed this book -- okay, not enjoyed, the book was supremely depressing, but was enthralled by? -- because it was THE book of 2015, in a lot of ways. (Goodreads agrees!) But, damn, I could not put this book down, and I cannot wait to see it as a movie.

Personal vent: I've softened on Gone Girl as time's gone by (I had big ole' issues with it after first reading), especially after seeing the movie and after thinking about Amy in these terms, making the book all the more interesting to me. All said, this is no slight on Gone Girl, I swear, but can we please stop comparing every single modern mystery with a flawed female main character to it? I get it, keyword search is big, but this book was solid all on its own, no need to compare it to a book in the same genre but otherwise completely different.

7. Station Eleven. 

Hell is the absence of the people you long for. 

This quote, from this book, is just one of those things that grabs you at just the right moment. I caught my breath on the plane, as I read this (I apparently read a lot of favorite books on planes; more trips for me, I guess). 

And the book itself was just downright wonderful. Terrifying but hopeful, and I loved the parts of the book that gave us a look into the characters' backstories. 

A book that felt not a far throw from what could actually happen to us, or what might actually happen to us, but a book surprisingly brimming with hope and heart and humanity.

I loved it.

6. P.S. I Still Love You.

To All the Boys I Loved Before was on my list last year, and the follow-up was just as charming and lovable. I really would read a dozen more books about Lara Jean.

These two books are everything I love about YA -- sweet and romantic and a little eye-rolly, sure, but mostly just refreshingly optimistic and lovely.

I feel like the CW should make this into a show. Or hire me to make it into a show. 

 

5. Blue Lily, Lily Blue.

I read the whole Raven Boys series this year and loved it all, but the third book (this one) was my favorite. I swooned over this book. It's certainly a different YA series. It's weird and supernatural-y and fantastical but also ... beautiful and real and pure. 

I fell so in love with these characters, these friendships, the love stories weaved throughout all the characters, that I'm almost NERVOUS about reading the last book. Ohhhhh please let that book -- not end well, no way it's ending well -- end right. Just let it end right.

I've already briefly spoken (very bottom of that post, by the way!) about the beautiful scene that inspired my next tattoo, but it should also be said there's a scene in a car that's basically two characters touching fingers that was written with more sexual tension and believable feeling than 75% of the actual sex scenes I have read in my day. So if you're into straight-up ROMANCE that is not packaged as romance in the slightest, this weird series (and this particular book) might be for you.

4. Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

This book. It was realistic, romantic, sweet, awful, sad, funny, and I ended the book being the characters' biggest cheerleaders because they could have been people you actually wanted to know and love and root for 15-20 years ago (hold me, I'm old). 

Please more books about actual teenagers dealing with actual things like navigating relationships as a boy who just happens to be gay, with the focus on the teenager, not the issue. Let it be this inclusive moving forward, those out there who love to write books, and let us pick these books up and celebrate them as often as we can, those of us who love to read. 

3. The Royal We.

I put off reading this book because a zillion years into being an active reader and I still think I know what I'll think of a book before I read it. SELF, YOU CAN BE DENSE. I thought, ohhhh I dunno, I'm not a huge Royals person (like, is Royals supposed to be capitalized? Not sure) and it sounds a little too fluffy for me.

I WATCH THE CW RELIGIOUSLY BUT SURE, THIS WAS SURE TO BE TOO FLUFFY.

It was long but only because it was so good I wanted to know how it ended 15 pages into it. I would have read 17 more books about Bex and Nick after it ended.

Look, if you don't enjoy romantic fiction, you probably won't enjoy this book but if you don't like the Royals and know little about William and Kate and THAT'S keeping you from reading this, read it immediately, let my idiocy be your teacher. 

2. Between the World & Me.

I don't know how to talk about this book. And I honestly don't know how to talk about the countless race issues facing our country today. Because they feel so big, and I feel so inadequately small, and I want to say a million things, and I fear they'll all be wrong.

But that's what this book gifted me, the desire to talk about all of this even if my words are messy and clunky and wrong. Because the only way to better anything so broken, like our country and our country's collective conversation and view on racism and racial issues is for people who care to keep on talking.

This should be required reading for all humans, front to back. There are endless quotes that should be studied, written on post-its, tattooed on bodies, because that's how important I feel this book will become to us one day, but here are a couple that I cried my way through reading (keeping in mind that this book was about race in America but also a letter to the author's son):

My wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.

It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.

Read this and read it immediately. 

1. A Little Life.

(Trigger warnings are important, and I wish we had a better way to communicate them as I personally understand their worth. So please know this book is potentially full of triggers for physical and sexual abuse and also self-harm, and I encourage you to research the book further if you're considering reading it but are someone who struggles to read about those topics, in any way.)

Where the last book should change all of us, this book changed me. I read it, all 700+ pages of it, with a sob lodged in my throat. And I had to put it down so many times so I could give the sobs the time they needed. That sounds like a terrible endorsement for a book -- who really wants to sob their way through any book, let alone such a long one -- but don't misunderstand me. I am better and kinder and more open and more alert to other human beings because I read this book. 

It's a masterpiece. It's unbelievably written. It's painful and terrible and horrible and you might ask yourself while reading, "Come now, are we expected to believe any one person could suffer so much?" and then you drop the book on your lap when you realize how silly that question is because, come now, how privileged are we to ever think this book captures the worst suffering a single person might endure.

And yet it still manages to be a beautiful love story, full of mighty love that can light up the darkest of hearts. This book showed me what it means to be loved for all our broken parts, in a way all the hundreds of books I've read before never did. Love is not an eraser but love sure doesn't know that. And seeing it try so desperately to fix, no matter how futile, is beautiful even if it's also tragic, and this book captured all of that.

I know this may sound silly, to anyone who doesn't fall in love with books and stories and words the way that I do, but I carry Jude with me every day, as fictional as he might be. Because, ultimately, I know that he isn't fictional at all.

His ghosts are out there, walking around, unnamed, and they need us to see them. 

My Five Favorite Books of 2013

(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.)

2. Me Before You

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.

4. The Snow Child

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.") 

5. The Rules of Inheritance

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?

The Great Gatsby Book & Movie Review

*Spoilers about both ahead...

The Book

I hated The Great Gatsby in high school. In hindsight, I can't really pin-point why because I remembered almost nothing about it, but I do remember we had to examine the book first to last page and it just wore me out. All that symbolism is a lot for a 15 year old to truck through, especially when some of that symbolism (while no doubt intentional and important) annoyed me more than intrigued me. Okay, okay, I'm sure Gatsby dropped the clock in Nick's house because it symbolized the passage of time and not because he's just rather klutzy. Can we move on please?

Anyway, I did get to re-read it kind of wonderfully with a fresh slate. I remembered bits and pieces but not the twists and turns, and certainly not the ending, so it was like I was reading it for the first time.

One chapter in, and I have to hilariously say that it kind of reminded me of an episode of the Real Housewives. So much wealth and mid-afternoon cocktails while lazily spread out on a couch, complaining about privileged lives. But, even then, you can't deny this book is beautifully, nearly perfectly written. It's the kind of book you highlight passage after passage in because words are woven together the way words were meant to be woven together. 

So, ultimately, I liked it a helluva lot more than I did in high school. Perhaps you can just appreciate such a well-written book at my age more than you can as a teenager and perhaps because there was no homework that came after reading it (thank everything), I could just...read it. Whatever the reason, I'm glad I re-read it.

But, oh man, did I hate nearly every single character in this book. These were terrible people, just terrible, and not terrible in the way I usually like my characters--terribly flawed but so terribly human that you relate to them and end up incredibly fond of them. Terrible as in, YOU ARE TERRIBLE, JUMP OFF A CLIFF. 

All of them! Even Gatsby, who I suspect you aren't supposed to find terrible, I found terrible because he thought that a woman who couldn't love him penniless was worth all he went through to win her back. He was in love with a coward and he wasn't even in love with her despite that, he was in love with her without realizing it, and that made him infuriating to me.

Most of the characters were disgustingly rich and disgustingly terrible and disgustingly lazy and also disgustingly drunk most of the book, and I would have hated almost all of them if I had somehow turned up at a party with them. In short, it was a beautiful book about truly terrible people. I have been known to like a sad ending, though, and this book certainly had that. 

Still, let's talk about some of my favorite lines in it:

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired." 

"It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well."

The last, perfect line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The movie

Well, the movie stayed pretty damn true to the book, didn't it? The words literally appeared on the screen and entire scenes were played out exactly as written. For that, I liked it. It came to life as I had read it, quite honestly, and I only had very small issues with it, including:

1. Leo did a great job, honestly. To me, he's far more attractive in movies than in pictures, and I almost always buy him in a role more than I think I will because he's just better on the screen. (Hello, The Departed, one of my favorite movies of all time.) But he still felt a litttttle old for this role. He's not that much older than the character (6 years), but he felt much older, for some reason. 
2. Speaking of, Daisy was dark-haired in the book (right?) and I think Carey would have looked even better dark-haired in the movie, so why the blonde choice, producers?
3. The ending! One of my favorite parts of the book was how Nick tried desparately to get people to attend the funeral (going into the city to visit Winebrenner, even) and everyone disregarded him. Then, Gatsby's father showed up, and it was this sadly poetic look at how Gatsby built his life around people who didn't matter and abandoned the people who did. I wish they would have showed that scene as written.

At the end of the movie, though, I thought the same things I thought at the end of the book. Such terrible, selfish, bored people. 

I don't know if all this means I ultimately loved it or still hated it.

Probably a little of both.

Cookbook Recommendation: Joy the Baker Cookbook

In the past, I'd write this kind of thing over at Food Lush (I miss that place) but this is my only space to ramble these days, so lucky you.

I made a goal this year to cook one recipe a week from all the cookbooks I currently own, and let me just say that was a stupid goal. I edited the goal (my goals, my rules) to cook 30 recipes from my cookbooks anytime over the year. Just whenever. At my owwwwwn pace. I love making my own rules.

(I'll make a 10-recipe feast in December, for sure.)

Anyway, I'm seven recipes down. (You are BLOWN away by the time I spend in my own kitchen, aren't you?) And I noticed five of those recipes are from the Joy the Baker Cookbook. Guys, you really need this cookbook in your life. 

Every single thing I've made has been delicious and that's a pretty good track record. Mike raves! Mike is kind of picky and hates about 50% of the things I make. (He eats them all! He just requests I don't add any of those things to the regular rotation.) (I glare at him a lot.)

I made this goal to see what cookbooks I really love (since I paid money for all of them) and this is one I'm so glad I own. 

It's also like 75% chocolate, which is an excellent percentage in my book. 

Book Review: "Wild"

(Warning, spoilers ahead.)

Oh, Wild. This book was just an absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful joy to read, I can't think of a better way to say it. I had heard it was good, of course, it hit lists and Oprah loved it and I saw it reviewed just everywhere, but I didn't really think about reading it until I saw it on Elizabeth's best of 2012 list. (You might remember, I'm reading all her picks as one of my 2013 goals.) 

I am so glad that lady has good taste in books. 

For those who don't know, Wild is a story of a woman (Cheryl Strayed, the author) who lost her mother, then her marriage, then herself and wanted to reclaim the latter by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Southern California to the Washington border. She hiked alone for months, at the age of 26. She faced bears, rattlesnakes, dehydration, hitchhiking, aggressive men, lost toenails, pain, hunger, and more. 

If only I could be a fraction of a badass. 

You know what I loved about this book, among many many many things, was how she made me (the reader) feel like I could scale my own mountain, face my own obstacles. I might not ever hike a trail for two months, but I can do tough shit too. This all sounds very cheesy, but there was such a real mix of inspiration and relatability to her writing that I just want to take the woman out for a drink sometime and toast her and thank her. 

(Probably won't happen but I can still WANT that, right?)

Anyway, I have a pretty good life, but we all have demons and we've all been young and broken (at some point) and full of loss, and Cheryl wrote so flawlessly, so descriptively, that I cried over my own broken 20-year-old self even though I haven't faced any of the particular things Cheryl faced. Oh, it was just a gem of a book.

Some of my favorite parts:

"Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked."

"The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer--and yet also, like most things, so very simple--was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay."

(about her father) "The good things aren't a movie. There isn't enough to make a reel. The good things are a poem, barely longer than a haiku. There is his love for Johnny Cash and the Everly Brothers. There are the delicious chocolate bars he brought home from his job at the grocery store. There are all the grand things he wanted to be."

"He seemed like someone I'd always know even if I never saw him again."

Obviously, I loved it. It'll stay with me for a while as the best books do. I'll think of parts of it on my commute to work, and I'll be jealous of each of you who haven't read it yet because you still have the chance to read it for the first time. 

So, read it. Please.

The Books I Read On Vacation

(Taking a quick vacation-recap break to talk about books!)

I got a Kindle Fire for my birthday, not sure if I've mentioned that before, and it's been such a life-changer. Okay, wait, that sounds kind of dramatic, so maybe I should say it's been such a gadget changer? Book-reading changer? Anyway, it's awesome, let's go with that. It's especially perfect for traveling because I packed ten books onto it for my trip and my bag's weight DID NOT CHANGE. I was a little worried the glare would prevent me from reading on the sun-soaked beach, but I bought this pack and they worked great. 

So, what books did I read on my Kindle while sitting on the beach? Glad you asked! 

(I know, you didn't ask.) 

1. In the Woods. This is not a book I'd recommend you read on the beach -- it's a mystery about the murder of a young girl -- but I was reading it when we left home, and I physically can't stop reading one book for another unless I'm done reading the first book for good. (And, this was a book club pick, so I couldn't abandon it.) I really didn't like the beginning, it was just slow slow slow and every other word was an adjective. Hey, I like an adjective as much as the next reader, but you don't have to describe every noun. You really don't. 

But, around chapter five I couldn't stop reading. I skipped a beach trip to read in bed and then on the porch and then by the pool. (Okay, so these aren't bad consolation prizes.) 

The ending was one of those beautifully haunting endings that I should have hated -- it's not how I wanted the book to end, and I kept willing for the book to turn sharply to the right or left toward those last few pages -- but it felt ... ok, somehow. Then, the more I thought about it, the more it felt like the only way the book could have ended, like the entire book was leading up to that ending. 

I'm ridiculously excited about our next book club meeting, to talk about it. 

2. Looking for Alaska. I think we all know how much I loved The Fault In Our Stars, so I was excited to read what many have said is John Green's best book. It was good -- a quick, enjoyable read -- but I wanted it to be better. John Green seems to enjoy writing female characters that are beautiful messes, and I can't decide if I love or hate that. I think I like it in theory, but then again what I enjoyed so much about The Fault In Our Stars is that the main character was dealing with a whole helluva lot, but she was also normal. She was smart and unassuming and young and idealistic, but she was refreshingly average.

There was also a twist of sorts that all the characters obliviously ignored while I was like ARE YOU KIDDING, THIS WAS COMING A MILE AWAY, and that annoyed me. (Okay, not that much. My default setting is kind of ALL-CAPSY, you should know.)  

I did love the narrator's quirk. He loved finding out famous people's last words, and I kind of loved that. 

3. I've Got Your Number. Sometimes, you just need to read something soapy and fluffy and full of cheesy dialogue that you both don't believe for a second but love love love all the same. While the main character could be cluelessly annoying many times throughout, this book was still totally adorable. Enjoyed!

Have you read anything awesome lately?

Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars

I first read John Green when I picked up a galley of Paper Towns at BEA a few years ago. I devoured it within a day or two and enjoyed it a lot. I had issues with the end, though, which I feared might be John Green's Thing, so I didn't pick up his other books (Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines) even though I'd heard great things about both because there's nothing more annoying than loving a book EXCEPT FOR THE ENDING of that book, am I right?

The buzz I heard about his newest book, The Fault in Our Stars, (and who I was hearing the buzz from) became too loud to ignore, though, so I finally read it over the weekend.

It's the best book I've read in a year, since I finished Water for Elephants, and if I will ever be so lucky as to create an Official Required Reading list for my friends and family, this book will be on it.

(Warning: Very slight spoilers ahead, so read with caution.)

It's a story about Hazel, a teenage cancer patient who's terminal but has been bought some extra years through an experimental cancer drug. She's withdrawn from her life, stays at home with her parents most of the time, except when she begrudgingly goes to a local support group. It's there she meets Augustus, another cancer patient who charms her, saves her, breaks her, and together they experience all the beautiful things you experience when first falling in love, especially when you're young but also possess that rare perspective dying can gift.

It sounds like a plot that could get depressing and fast and it's not that it doesn't. (I cried a lot reading this book.) It's just that it's so beautiful. I like YA fiction, but so often the story and character development (and especially the dialogue) can feel disconnected and safe. A little too watered down and appeasing, if that makes any sense. Not this book. Everything just felt right and earnest and honest to me.

Some of the vocabulary felt a little bit grasping -- would a 17-year-old really use that particular word? -- but I often believed these characters actually would. I also liked both characters, which is another rare thing in YA fiction. It's just tough to write likable, relatable teenagers who are also still clearly teenagers but I found myself really enjoying these characters beyond the plot.

One other (kinda small) thing: I often hate how teenage girls are written as being beautiful but never believing they're beautiful. A "He was staring at me and I couldn't figure out why!" kind of thing. (It was one of my few issues with Katniss in The Hunger Games, actually.) The Fault in Our Stars started to do this, and I felt myself getting annoyed, but then it quickly (and thankfully) changed the pace and tone. You believed this young girl was beautiful and she never really had to be convinced that this attractive boy liked her even if she didn't see what he saw. It was ultimately more about her being unassuming than being a girl who thought she wasn't worthy of him.

I highlighted so many exquisite parts of this book -- and one thing I love about the Kindle is that you can look at all your highlights and notes in list form, which is much more efficient for revisiting than my old system of flipping to each doggy-eared page -- and I thought about sharing some here, but there'd be no context, so just please read the book and when you get to the very, very end, re-read the last few lines and tell me if they don't punch you in the gut, over and over, in the very best possible way.