2016 in Books: What Anna Read This Year

My Thoughts

Favorite Reread:

My favorite reread this year was the Harry Potter series, without question. I love revisiting old favorites, but it had been far too long since I’d come back to HP and my whole being was craving it. I’m right at the end of The Deathly Hallows right now and will finish before the year is out. I am so sad to be nearing the end, but excited to start rereading a new series next year: The Chronicles of Narnia. I’ll also be picking up Harry Potter and the Cursed Child finally, along with The Tales of Beedle the Bard and the screenplay Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The journey isn’t ever completely over! To be completely honest, I feel like I could pick up The Sorcerer’s Stone and begin the series anew right after I close The Deathly Hallows without any regrets about it. But there are too many other books waiting to be discovered and reread! One I’m really looking forward to reading this time next year (what, you don’t also know what you’re reading next December!?) is The Lord of the Rings. I’m hoping to start The Fellowship of the Ring in November or December and go from there. PLUS I want to start Outlander and who even knows if I’ll have time to get to that between all these other series I have planned to read. Dear me!

Favorite New Read:

No doubt in my mind whatsoever… Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom were far and away my favorite new reads of 2016. I picked them up having heard very little about the subject matter (which I prefer), but a whole lot about how wonderful they were. They just had that vibe. I knew I was going to love them and once Crooked Kingdom came out, I made my move. I knew I was behind the times in getting to Six of Crows, but just as I thought, I was hooked immediately. Leigh Bardugo does such an amazing job of writing characters that you want to read. No, more than that. Characters you wish you actually knew! And she really makes you feel as though you do. It’s like chatting with your friends over a steaming stack of fluffy waffles, which is a reference you will understand if you’ve read them! If you haven’t given these a try yet, I urge you to pick them up. Even if it doesn’t necessarily sound like your usual cup of tea, even if you normally turn up your nose at YA lit, just see what you think. I enjoyed them immensely and most people I know that have read them border on obsession about them.

Surprising:

Now, I’m not really a contemporary fiction gal. Not that I don’t enjoy it when I read it, it’s just not usually what I reach for unless I’ve been badgered about reading it by friends and family forever. Sometimes not even then! I know what I like and there’s MORE than enough of it to keep me busy. Romance and love stories, on the other hand, are not only books I don’t reach for, but readily avoid. Again, nothing wrong with them, just not my preference. All this is to let you know just how surprised I was with The Rosie Project. I never would have picked this book up if I’d seen it sitting on a shelf somewhere. Even if it was on my own nightstand! It just doesn’t have the look of something that’d appeal to me. Well my book club chose to read The Rosie Project together last spring and I absolutely loved it! LOVED it. Couldn’t put it down! It was laugh-out-loud funny and engaging as all heck. I think I burned through it in two days. Let this be yet another lesson to me about judging books by their covers. It was not at all what I expected and if you’re hesitant about reading general fiction or romance, don’t be fooled! This book is hilarious and well worth the day or two it’ll take you to read. And once you’re through, there’s a sequel that I can’t comment on since I haven’t gotten to it yet. Please, let me know if you have read either of these. For real.

Disappointing:

Unfortunately, I was unpleasantly surprised by one book on my list. I’d heard really good things about The Untethered Soul and I couldn’t wait to dig into it when it finally became available at the library. It was really good for a few pages and then it just sort of fell flat. It did have some nice-sounding ideas and I won’t go on and on about it as I don’t want to bash it, but I found it to be repetitive in unhelpful ways and vague about the stuff you did want to hear more of. I do love a good book about mindfulness, but this just wasn’t the one for me. It was a let down after being recommended so highly.