So it goes

HAPPY NEW YEARS


Well, we're less than 12 hours away from the New Year, and a lot has occurred in the past 365 days. I'm not going to recite my whole year but it contained some of the best moments but plenty of bad ones, but that's life and I love it. This time next year everything's going to be different, and I'm excited.


While I won't talk about my entire year, I'll list all the books I read this year and talk about some highlight scenes/characters/etc (because, after all, this is a leisurely book blog)


(in order in which they were read)

1. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J Maas
2. Box 21 by Anders Roslund
3. Thr3e by Ted Dekker
4. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
5. Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo
6. Charlie Bone and the Time Twister by Jenny Nimmo
7. Anthem by Ayn Rand
8. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
9. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
10. Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
11. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
12. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
13. The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J Maas
14. Heir of Fire by Sarah J Maas
15. Queen of Shadows by Sarah J Maas
16. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
17. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
18. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
19. The Stranger by Albert Camus
20. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
21. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
22. Watchmen by Alan Moore
23. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
24. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
25. Maus: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Instead of making another list, my top five, in no particular order, are bolded. This was a really hard top five to compose because most of the books I read this year were wonderful. However there were a few exceptions, namely three: Red Queen, Crown of Midnight, and Queen of Shadows. (Sorry for calling these out but really if I could've avoided these and switched them out for something better I would've)


Statistics:
The author I read most of was Sarah J. Maas (though out of the five I read I enjoyed only three, and that's being generous since I'm still mixed about Heir of Fire)
Compared to previous years, I read a lot more realistic stuff than usual, but all were a great read
I exceeded my Goodreads goal of 21 books. woo!
Three books on this list were required readings for AP Lit. This said, I didn't hate any of them, though Siddhartha was only eh. Catcher in the Rye is by far the best
I read more graphic novels than usual (just see my previous post)


Favorite Characters from five books (not necessarily top five)
Catcher in the Rye- Holden Caulfield
Eleanor and Park- Park
Six of Crows- Inej
The 5th Wave- Cassie
Tell the Wolves I'm Home-June Elbus


I was about to do favorite couples but not a lot of the books I read had romance or good couples. But I will make a shoutout to Rainbow Rowell for some of the best couples ever: Eleanor/Park and Simon/Baz. Her romance is the best, but so is her humor and story. If I had to pick a favorite author of the year it's her.


So there's a summary of my year in literature! What's yours?

2015, a year of graphic novels

And by a year of graphic novels, I mean I read two, which is more than usual (unless we're including manga though I don't read much of that anymore)

So in this fine year of 2015, I read Watchmen by Alan Moore and Maus: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman. Two very different graphic novels but both were deep and invoked a variation of emotions in me.

Quis custodiet
ipsos custodes
Who watches the watchmen?

Watchmen, which I read the majority of while in Colorado to visit my brother, wasn't what I expected. I thought it'd be an easy, enjoyable read about superheroes doing superhero things: fighting an archetype villain, falling in love with a Mary Sue, blah, blah. I've never read a graphic novel about superheroes before, just saw the movies, so my predispositions were trampled almost on the first page.

This isn't a story about superheroes. It's the story of the ghosts, the remains, of what once were superheroes. In Watchmen, heroes are labeled as vigilantes and are forbidden from causing their heroic discourse. And while good can't fight evil in its usual tropes, we do have looming doom throughout the story. The Cold War is running its course, and America isn't reacting well to Russia's indirect threats. Tensions plague the citizens, whether they have a history with hero-dom or not.

All of the characters are real in the fact that all of them are flawed. Dr. Manhattan is calloused and apathetic. Rorschach is a blatant sociopath. No one is perfect in Watchmen, not even if you're a superhero.

What I think lead me to my realization of the raw power of this graphic novel is Chapter IV. Here is Dr. Manhattan's narrative, from his days when he was still human to when he suffered the accident that forever changed his life to his isolation on Mars. Dr. Manhattan pushes the idea that time is nonexistent in the same manner Kurt Vonnegut does in Slaughterhouse-Five. We jump from 1966 to 1959 to 1985. And while both distorted and odd, the formatting of this chapter laid down the basis of Dr. Manhattan's approach to life. We get closer to understanding why Dr. Manhattan is so unaffected by humanity and its emotions. It is probably one of the most beautiful chapters I've ever read.

Through amazing characters and a powerful story, Watchmen instantly raised the bar for all graphic novels. A bar Maus was close to meeting.

I found Maus on my friend's bookshelf and she immediately encouraged me to read it, and I did. All in one day. Which isn't much because it isn't as nearly as long as Watchmen and I only read the first volume. Maus, plain and simple, is a story about the Holocaust and its lasting effects on those who did or did not first handedly suffer its tragedies. Its drawings portray Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, but the fun nature of this graphic novel ends there. This book is serious and dark but it makes sense because the Holocaust was. It's well-written, the dialogue is extremely realistic and so are the relationships between the characters (which makes sense since I believe this is somewhat a biography within an autobiography). I'm eager to read the second volume, but while this graphic novel was impressive, Watchmen triumphs as the better of the two graphic novels I read this year.

Watchmen 5/5
Maus 4/5