Finished!! Last week I completed the Best of the Best reading challenge.
I’m so glad I did this challenge! I conducted a wrap up interview about this challenge and wrote a post about it over at The Hub, but here are a few more thoughts. (But really, go read my Hub post-it’s fun!)
Not only do I love a challenge, but this also got me back into YA in a great way. Also, I definitely read things I wouldn’t have otherwise, specifically the non-fiction. I really liked all the graphic novels. I pretty much never read graphic novels except for ones I get off the Great Graphic Novels list-I find it too difficult to choose them on my own (seriously), so I rely on the list. My favorite books were: The Scorpio Races, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, and Ghostopolis. But I also really liked Tripping and Brain Jack and Enclave a lot. My least favorites were My Friend Dahmer and Daybreak. Most surprising like was Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson. I read one adult book of his and hated it, so I really wasn’t pleasantly surprised by this one. (It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise-how else could it have made it to the Top Ten list if it wasn’t pretty good?) I read more about zombies in the past three months than I normally ever would (I also happened to read another zombie book for a book club during this time) and that manifested itself into a horrible dream I had. Not a zombie fan!!!
This also really pushed my numbers up in my overall Goodreads goal for the year. I had set a goal of 70 books, but I’ve already read 50 and it’s only halfway through the year! I’m happy to get back to the things that I’ve had waiting to read, but I did really like doing this and will absolutely do it again next year. And in case I didn’t say it enough-The Scorpio Races was amazing and you should go out and read it right now!
Here is the complete list of the 25 books I read for the challenge:
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin
Thor the Mighty Avenger by Roger Langridge
Leverage by Joshua Cohen
Wandering Son by Shimura Takako
The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone
Pavement Chalk Artist by Julian Beever
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous by Georgia Bragg
Jane by April Lindner
I Love Him to Pieces by Evonne Tsang
Sidescrollers by Matthew Loux
Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol
Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein by Susan G. Rubin
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson
Are These My Basoombas I See Before Me? (audio) by Louise Rennison
Tripping by Heather Waldorf
Brain Jack by Brian Falkner
Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom by Sue Macy
Enclave by Ann Aguirre
Daybreak by Brian Ralph