Top Ten of 2011, a fab­u­lous week of look­ing back at the best of the best this past year, is hosted by Lisa from A Life Bound By Books, Rachel from Fik­t­shun & Jaime & Patri­cia from Two Chicks on Books and Jes­sica from Con­fes­sions of a Booka­holic.

This is almost cruel. Cruel I tell you! I can’t pick just 10!

Soooo I cheated. A lit­tle bit. I cre­ated a Top Ten… and an Hon­or­able Men­tions list, which… also has 10 books on *whistles*.

I’m pretty sure on any given day if you asked me my ten top reads this year it would keep alter­nat­ing between these 20, depend­ing on my mood. Because I loved them all. Loved loved loved. And those I put under the Hon­or­able Men­tions cer­tainly deserve to be read just as much as those on the offi­cial top ten.

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Top Ten Books Read in 2011

*in no par­tic­u­lar order*

Click title to read reviews

1) Nev­er­more by Kelly Creagh

This is how you write a para­nor­mal YA that’s going to hold my inter­est. Dark, unique, shar­ing the awe­some­ness that is Edgar Allen Poe, and a rather gor­geous goth who made me won­der why the hell I’ve never found lip rings attrac­tive before now.

”Gwen,’ he said in acknowledgement.

‘Your Darkness-ship,’ she returned with a bow.

His eyes remained on Iso­bel as he began a slow back­ward walk. He was doing it again, speak­ing to her with his eyes. She remained trapped in his stare, try­ing to hear him, to read the under­ly­ing mes­sage. Finally his gaze broke from hers and he turned away, walk­ing off through the cafe­te­ria doors.

There was a pause before Gwen spoke. 

‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘Right now, you’re try­ing to decide if that was hot or annoy­ing.’ She paused, as though for­mu­lat­ing her own opin­ion. Finally she said, ‘It was so totally hot.’ 

~ page 265

2) Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Stephanie Perkins is the Queen of con­tem­po­rary romance and I sim­ply adore her books. All two of them. They per­fectly cap­ture the gid­di­ness of falling in love for the first time. I don’t think I stopped smil­ing from the moment I picked this book up until I fin­ished it.

‘St. Clair is drunk.

His face is buried between my thighs. Under favor­able cir­cum­stances, this would be quite exciting.’

~ page 137

3) Jel­li­coe Road by Melina Marchetta

Every­body told me. I didn’t quite believe them. But Jel­li­coe Road is truly one of the most amaz­ing books I’ve ever read, let alone this year. It’s utterly heart­break­ing and beau­ti­ful and won­der­ful. I’ve become a lit­tle bit of a Melina Mar­che­tta fan and have made my way through almost all her books this year. Jel­li­coe Road was the first, and my favourite (though Sav­ing Francesca is a very close sec­ond), because Mar­che­tta writes the kind of raw and hon­est and beau­ti­ful friend­ships that make you wish these char­ac­ters were real, so you could spend your life along­side them.

And because of the boy in the tree. I loved you the most.

‘My father took one hun­dred and thirty-two min­utes to die.

I counted.

It hap­pened on the Jel­li­coe Road. The pret­ti­est road I’ve ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tun­nel to Shangri-la. We were going to the ocean, hun­dreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said it was about time the four of us made that jour­ney. I remem­ber ask­ing, ‘What’s the dif­fer­ence between a trip and a jour­ney?’ and my father said, “Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll under­stand,’ and that was the last thing he ever said.

We heard her almost straight­away. In the other car, wedged into ours so deep that you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. She told us her name was Tate and then she squeezed through the glass and the steel and climbed over her own dead — just to be with Webb and me; to give us her hand so we could clutch it with all our might. And then a kid called Fitz came rid­ing by on a stolen bike and saved our lives.

Somone asked us later, ‘Didn’t you won­der why no one came for you sooner?’

Did I wonder?

When you see your par­ents zipped up in black body bags on the Jel­li­coe Road like they’re some kind of garbage, don’t you know?

Won­der dies.’

~ page 1

4) The 10 pm Ques­tion by Kate Di Goldi

Frankie, you dar­ling, I love you so. You are hilar­i­ous and heart­break­ing and I just want to give you a big hug and make sure no one messes with you.

‘Last Sat­ur­day when they’d been there he’d had his annual unsa­vory col­li­sion with a plas­ter. There was noth­ing more revolt­ing in Frankie’s view than free-styling your way, inno­cent and bliss­ful, into the path of a used plas­ter. In Frankie’s hier­ar­chy of squea­mish expe­ri­ences, the casual caress of a stained plas­ter was right up there with acci­dently catch­ing sight of writhing mag­gots in a for­got­ten rub­bish bag. He’d had to get out of the pool imme­di­ately last Sat­ur­day and lie on his towel in the sun to recover.’

~ page 37

5) Ptolemy’s Gate by Jonathan Stroud

To be hon­est I could have cho­sen any of the Bar­ti­maeus books in this won­der­fully tril­ogy (you can see my review for book 1 here), but I even­tu­ally went with the third for one sim­ple rea­son, the ending.

Per­fec­tion.

‘In prin­ci­ple there’s noth­ing shame­ful about strug­gling when a build­ing falls upon you. I’ve had such prob­lems before; it’s part of the job descrip­tion. But it does help if the edi­fice in ques­tion is glam­ourous and large. And in this case the fear­some con­struc­tion that had been ripped from its foun­da­tions and hurled upon me from a great height was nei­ther big nor sump­tu­ous. It wasn’t a tem­ple wall or a gran­ite obelisk. It wasn’t the mar­bled roof of an emperor’s palace.

No. The object that was pin­ning me hap­lessly to the ground, like a but­ter­fly on a collector’s tray, was of twen­ti­eth cen­tury ori­gin and of a very spe­cific function.

Oh, all right, it was a pub­lic lavatory.’

~ page 12

6) Sav­ing June by Han­nah Harrington

This was a sexy, beau­ti­ful, heart­break­ing tale of love, loss and mov­ing for­ward. I loved every sec­ond of it. It made me heart race in one moment and left me in tears at the next.

”“I still go to bed sad, and wake up sad, and it still hurts like hell, but there are moments dur­ing the day when it hurts less. Some­times I can think of June and not want to burst into tears or put my fist through a wall. Some­times I’m close to happy and it doesn’t even hurt. Much. I’ll never be the way I was before, but maybe that’s okay. Life goes on, I’m going on, even with­out her. Not every day hurts. Not every breath hurts.

Maybe that’s all we can really ask for.’

7) The Knife of Never Let­ting Go by Patrick Ness

I’m aware I talk about this series and Ness far too much on my blog. I would apol­o­gise, but these books are just that good. I now own two copies of the entire series, since the orig­i­nal paper­backs are still mak­ing their way around the coun­try passed from friend to friend. Every­one I lend them to loves them and can’t put them down. And really, who wasn’t won over by Todd, Viola and Manchee?! No one. That’s who. All three really belong on this list, but I fig­ured I should give some other amaz­ing authors their due to!

Read it, read it, read it, read it, read it.

‘The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got noth­ing much to say. About anything.

‘Need a poo, Todd.’

‘Shut up, Manchee.’

‘Poo. Poo, Todd.’

~ page 1

8 ) Before I Fall by Lau­ren Oliver

My first Lau­ren Oliver book, and the best, in my opin­ion. It’s rare an author can intro­duce you to a shal­low, unlik­able char­ac­ter and make you fall in love and ache for them all within 340 pages. Before I Fall has one of the most poignant, beau­ti­ful end­ings I’ve ever read. I think I sobbed through a lot of it. And also, Kent = yummy.

‘Be hon­est: are you sur­prised that I didn’t real­ize sooner? Are you sur­prised that it took me so long to even think the word — death? Dying? Dead?

Do you think I was being stu­pid? Naive?

Try not to judge. Remem­ber that we’re the same, you and me.

I thought I would live for­ever, too.’

~ page 96

9) Blood Red Road by Moira Young

This was a sur­prise. I bought Blood Red Road on a whim with­out know­ing any­thing about it. All I knew when I saw it in the store was that it looked good and the writ­ing style reminded me of Patrick Ness. So I had to have it. Within a few weeks 4 and 5 star reviews were pop­ping up for it every­where. Moira Young def­i­nitely knows how to write a fast paced, fresh, down to earth dystopian, with some fab­u­lous bick­er­ing and sex­ual ten­sion on the side.

‘Jest then, like he feels me watchin him, he stops what he’s doin. He lifts his head. Our eyes meet. He tosses the twig away, saun­ters up to the fence an hooks his hands into the chainlink.

He don’t say a word. He jest runs his eyes slowly over my body, right down to my feet, then up agin. Th’other men whis­tle an jeer. I feel heat rushin through me. Feel it stain my chest, my neck, my cheeks. I know I must be bright red. Then he smiles. A lop­sided, crook of a smile.

My fist clench. Cocky bas­tard. Who does he think he is?

So I do the same to him. I cross my arms over my chest an look him up and down. Brown hair to his shoul­ders. Sil­ver grey eyes in a tanned face. High cheek­bones, a shadow of a beard. Crooked nose, like it’s bin broke. Lean but strong lookin. Like he knows how to take care of hisself. 

Our eyes meet agin.

Like what you see, Angel? he says.

I step to the fence. Hook my hands into the links, next to his. I lean in close. He’s got tiny white lines around his eyes from squintin. Or maybe smilin. He smells of warm dust an sage.

You ain’t my type, I says.’

~ page 190

10) Plain Kate by Erin Bow

In a word: Taggle.

Could I love any cat char­ac­ter more? I don’t think so. This is a lovely, bit­ter­sweet and sur­pris­ing dark, children’s book. I’d urge every­one to read Plain Kate, young and old alike.

‘Tag­gle was absorbed in the meat pie. ‘It’s cov­ered in bread,’ he huffed. ‘What fool has cov­ered meat with bread?’ He bat­ted at the crust, then sprang back as it broke and began lick­ing gravy off his paw. “Ooooo,’ he purred. ‘Ooooo, good.’

‘Tag­gle,’ gulped Kate, again.

The cat looked up from his lick­ing. ‘Oh. Well. I could share.’ He arched his whiskers for­ward and, like a lord, demon­strated his benef­i­cence by giv­ing away what he didn’t want. ‘There’s bread you might like.’

‘You’re -’ Kate closed her jaw with delib­er­a­tion. ‘You can talk.’

‘It was… hrrm­mmm… your wish.’ His yel­low eyes seemed to look inside him­self. ‘So that you would not have to go alone.’

‘Oh.’ I will grant you the secret wish of your heart Lin­ley had said.

Tag­gle cocked his head at her. ‘There’s meat too. Besides the bread. You may have some of that as well.’

~ page 49

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Hon­or­able Mentions

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Click on the cov­ers for reviews

         

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Best Illus­trated Book Read in 2011

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A Mon­ster Calls by Patrick Ness

This book absolutely belongs on the Top Ten List, but I put it in it’s own spe­cial cat­e­gory because the illus­tra­tions are an impor­tant part of what make this such a pow­er­ful read, along­side the stun­ning writ­ing. Beau­ti­ful and mov­ing. This is an incred­i­bly spe­cial and unique book.