The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

What were your favorite books of the Summer 2013 Challenge?

Yay for awesome books! Lots of great ones this season.

Five-Star
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
No One's Perfect
The Madness Vase
The Program
Namesake, Volume 1
Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender
Girl Parts
Nine Tomorrows
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

5 stars:
Darkhouse
The Language of Bees

5 Stars


The Plum Tree
Catfish Alley
The Notebook
Those Who Save Us
The King's Deception

5 star:




4 star:

My three favorites this season were:

All Things Bright and Beautiful
This is Paradise!: My North Korean Childhood
The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games

honorable mention:
Andersonville Diary

I just remembered that The Yellow on the Broomwas awesome too.

My 5 star reads:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (However, I am glad I have finished the series.)
Sail (Listened to audiobook and still rated 5 stars!)
A Night Without Armor (Wonderful poetry)

My favorites for this season:

- beautifully told story about sisters
- a completely unexpected find. I only read it because it had a musical instrument on the cover. Glad I did! ;-)

My favorite this season: -It was a great birthday present.

Other great books I read
-Ugly cover almost didn't read it.

My two favorites were Les Misérables (it took me almost the whole challenge to finish this, but I'm glad I took my time) and The Remains of the Day.

Also loved a couple of bios:
My Life So Far and Open

Too many 4-stars to list - it was a successful reading season!

The best book I read this challenge, and all year, actually, was The Gift of Rain. Wonderfully developed characters, beautiful location, fascinating cultures, and interesting history. I'm sure I'll reread it at some point in the not too distant future.

A few memorable faves:
You Are One of Them
Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World
Eleven
&
Life on Mars - A great book that I would recommend if someone rolls a poetry task in the future (like Dee - & I - did!). It's very rock & roll, and concrete, about subjects like science & technology & space & David Bowie. Not your standard boring flowery poetry at all.

Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Jennifer W wrote: "The best book I read this challenge, and all year, actually, was The Gift of Rain. Wonderfully developed characters, beautiful location, fascinating cultures, and interesting history. I'm sure I'll..."

Jennifer, I read this a couple of challenges ago and loved it, too! I picked it up only because I needed a book with "rain" in the title. He has another one out that I'm hoping to get to this time around.

I really focused on books that I wanted to read this challenge and there were a lot of good ones.

5 stars
The Book Thief
The Bookseller of Kabul

4 stars
Live by Night (and I think maybe this should be 5 stars)
Life After Life
Half Broke Horses

The surprise find:
The Copper Tale
I think I got this as a Kindle freebie. Unique story wonderfully told.

I didn't like the Bookseller of Kabul.

Chris wrote: "Jennifer W wrote: "The best book I read this challenge, and all year, actually, was The Gift of Rain. Wonderfully developed characters, beautiful location, fascinating cultures, and interesting his..."

I haven't read his other one, either. Do let me know how it is.

Glad you enjoyed The Book Thief, it's one of my all time favs!

Favorite books Summer 2013

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
In Darkness
The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls
A River Runs Through It

Favourite books read this summer:

- great thriller, it was hard to predict the ending which doesn't often happen for me

- loved it!

- cute story

- really liked this one

- loved this series

- great book

- great YA steampunk

- loved this one, the sequel not so much

- I love Downton Abbey so this was right up my alley

- surprisingly good and a fast read

- unusual but quite good

, - pretty good for self published books

by Karen Joy Fowler surprised me with how good it was, as did by Stephen Graham Jones.

I always enjoy a chance to read by Nikki Giovanni and poems of Emily Dickenson such as in

My favorite of the summer challenge:
The Son

Others:
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
The Woman in White
The Cuckoo's Calling
The Last Policeman

I had several 5 Star Books:

Sense and Sensibility
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Chosen
In This House of Brede
Sarah's Key
Undone
The Haj
Folly Beach

5 Star Summer books:

Requiem by Fire: A Novel
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of NazarethThe Elixir of Immortality
The Fallen Angel
Salvage the Bones
The Liars' Gospel
The Legacy of Moses and Akhenaten: A Jewish Perspective
And the Mountains Echoed
Guide to the Perplexed by Dara Horn

5 stars:
Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor by Hali Felt is a great biography about the woman who first discovered through mapping the mid-Atlantic ridge.

The Serpent's Daughter by Suzanne Aruda. The third one in the series, and I really enjoyed all three of them so far.

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin. Great read!

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. I just discovered that one this summer. Loved it!

I had lots of 4 star books too.