#books of the year | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kbkirtley · 4 months

Text

Renegades Series - Marissa Meyer

This was my favorite series I read this year. All my life I’ve looked for superhero novels, but there weren’t really any in the mainstream. And while I’ve learned to enjoy Graphic Novels this past year, I still don’t fall into those the same way I do with books. Finding Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series was such a fun experience for me because of that.

Nova being a villain at the start shifts the perspective of the book and raises a lot of questions as to whether the heroes are actually the good guys. Moving from Renegades to Arch-Enemies to Supernova, Meyer creates a really interesting world of superpowered people and the struggles that go with keeping people safe in such a world, especially when the government is being run by people with powers.

The characters are really where the series shines. Nova/Nightmare/Insomnia and Adrian/Sketch/Sentinel are the two main characters whose perspectives we see. Both of them have secrets that they’re keeping from each other and the Renegades as a whole, leading to much of the tension in the book. They are one of the best pairs I’ve read in YA in a long time and both of their desire to see the Renegades be better than they are is the driving catalyst for the series.

The supporting characters are maybe even more enjoyable. Max/The Bandit is my favorite character in the story. The rest of the team Oscar/Smokescreen, Ruby/Red Assassin, and Danna/Monarch are a delight. The council as a whole is fantastic, but Adrian’s dads Hugh/Captain Chromium and Simon/The Dread Warden, do a ton of the heavy lifting in helping to understand what the Renegades are and what they stand for. The other Anarchists, especially Leroy/Cyanide, help to humanize the other side of the Renegade’s battle and allow for Nova’s story to carry the weight that it does.

The Renegades series is one that I would absolutely recommend and it’s one that gives me hope there is an audience for books like mine!

#bookblr #renegades #supernova #marissa meyer #renegades fandom #arch enemies #books of 2023 #books of the year #book recommendations #book review #superhero fiction #superheroes #nova artino #adrian everhart #the dread warden #Captain chromium #anarchists

19 notes · View notes

goodiecornbread · 1 year

Text

Best Books I Read in 2022

In no particular order

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. Okay, I know I said "no particular order" but I think this was my #1 for the year. Starting with a misunderstood, nerdy bookworm, who ends up being the only one who can save the word, how can it get better? Maybe the fantasy, the interdimensional travel, the demigods... I'll absolutely reread this one again.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. Magical realism, historical fiction, and a hint of the devil. What's not to love?

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun. Hey, the first in the list that isn't a drama. In fact, this rom-com has it all: neurodiversity, secret relationships, 'let's fuck away our problems', and lots of queer representation!

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Oops, back to the serious books. I'm a sucker for dystopian novels, and knew I'd love this. If you can, listen to the audiobook read by Noah Reid; his narration is chef's kiss.

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske. More historical fantasy with magical realism! Plus throw in some turn-of-the-century queer folks, and you're all set! At least I am, because apparently magical queer books are my jam.

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas. Okay, this fantasy doesn't have a bunch of queer representation, but it's got lots of smut! The latest in the Court of Thorns and Roses series, this one follows a different MC who is kind of a super bitch, and I kind of love it.

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White. Oh good, back to the weird gay books. This post-apocalyptic horror stars a trans teen who revolts against the radical evangelical terrorists who unleashed a plague upon the world. This is a book that sinks it's teeth into you. And claws.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. More historical fantasy with interdimensional travel and magic! Not as gay, but just as interesting, and the second book has a strong female main character.

All That's Left in the World by Erik J. Brown. Another book about post-apocalyptic queer youths! This one is much less horror than the previously mentioned, but more heartwarming. Two teen boys trying to find their way in a post-pandemic work (not COVID, but a similar illness with a more drastic outcome).

Book Lovers by Emily Henry. Sorry to end this list with a heterosexual rom-com, but we do what we have to. A book about two people who love books, working on a book? With a bookstore?! Yes please!

Honorable Mention: Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman. This year I re-read the graphic novels, as well as some of the novels and novellas of the Osemanverse, and the Hearstopper Yearbook. Loved the show? You'll love the books even better. I don't know how Alice does it, but she created some of the best characters to ever live on the page.

65 notes · View notes

ecoamerica · 23 days

Text

youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

6K notes · View notes

norius-here-to-sips-tea · 2 months

Text

I just read "Café con Lychee" a few hours ago and I just can't get over it yet. It's simply a beautiful book that deserves a lot of love. AND @emeryleewho TOO! they are so talented, I haven't felt in the shoes of the characters reading a book in a REALLY REALLY long time so for me it was double the emotion (I cried a lot, laughed a lot)

Thank you very much for sharing Theo and Gabi's story with us, I thank my past self for choosing this book among so many others, it is a 100/10 without a shadow of a doubt.

I'll soon be after "meet cute diary" and I hope they're books get the love and recognition they deserve.

here's a sketchy fanart ^^

"Theo's hair is shorter"

I only saw it after finishing because it was completely based on this image:

but hope you guys liked it!! and, again, if you've never heard of it or if you want to read it but don't know if it's any good, just jump. It's spectacular.

#café con lychee #café com lichia #emery lee #books #tumblr book club #books of tumblr #books of the year #book recommendations #book review #kinda #theo mori #gabriel moreno #they’re in love your honor

5 notes · View notes

pawswithprose · 5 months

Note

Hello! What are your top 3 books you read this year? 🌼

Thank you so much for the question.

I’ve read 182 books so far this year so it won’t be easy to pick a top three.

The first book that came to mind is Little Women. I finished it this past weekend and I loved it so so much. The bond between the sisters is so well written as is their relationship with their mother.

I’ve read a lot of translated fiction this year and one of the best is What You Are Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama. It’s about a library and the woman who works there helping visitors who are struggling to make big decisions or change their lives. It was really heartwarming and made me happy to read it.

Our Wives Under the Sea is a story which has really stuck with me. It’s hard to describe it but it focuses on two women and how their relationship changes after one returns from a submarine trip very changed. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it but it’s so engaging and intriguing but also emotional.

Shout out to Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, Big Swiss, After Dark and Hell Bent which were all five star reads.

#books #book #bibliophile #bookish #bookworm #reading #books of the year #books and reading #pawswithprose #asks #ask me #ask me anything

5 notes · View notes

nathanpenlington · 1 year

Text

Books of the year 2022

I'm not sure where the year went, but here we are again at my books of the year list.

Like my previous books of the year posts, date of publication is not relevant for this list. This year I had to reread about 70 Choose Your Own Adventure books for a project - they are still as smart, funny, and engaging as ever, but as my love for those is so well documented I haven't included any here.

So, these are the best books to find me - for the first time - in 2022.

#1 - My favourite thing is monsters - Volume 1 - Emil Ferris (2017)

This book is truly incredible, but not an easy read.

Drawn mostly with Bic ballpoint pen, it breaks the conventions of graphic novels in many ways. On the surface Monsters is a coming of age story set in 60's Chicago, but it is a multi-layered narrative that catalogues monsters in all forms - those in pulp comics, those responsible for the horrors of the holocaust, and monsters that enable brutal sexual exploitation and abuse.

It's embedded with sadness, weighed with the heaviness of human struggle, but shot through with light and love. A genuinely important work.

Volume 2 is forthcoming, I hope in 2023. If so, I can't see it not making next year's list.

#2 - Acting Class - Nick Drnaso (2022)

I loved Nick's previous books - Beverly, and Sabrina - but Acting Class, for me, surpasses both. In Acting Class, as you'd expect, a disparate group of strangers join an amateur acting class. But what the title doesn't give away is the David Lynch like sense of uncanny, an under the surface oddness, which makes the ongoing narrative full of tension. It's compelling in every way.

#3 - The Labyrinth - Simon Stålenhag (2021)

All of Simon's other books have made my previous books of the year lists, The Labyrinth deserves its place on this year's list too.

In short The Labyrinth is a brutal sci-fi graphic novel, in which guilt and redemption collide. The art and words work together to build a darker world, where everyday horror seeps into an alternate past future.

#4 - The Confidence Men - Margalit Fox (2021)

During the 1st World War, two British officers conspired to escape a remote Turkish prisoner of war camp. What follows is a true story of an elaborately planned, long running con, involving seances, spirits, and sleight of hand trickery. It's an outstandingly researched and written book. Film rights have been optioned by Fox, which doesn't surprise me, but the detail in the writing is a joy.

#5 - Magritte in 400 images - Julie Waseige (2021)

Rene Magritte has been one of my favourite artists since discovering his work as a teenager, tucked away in the tiny Abergele library in a book on surrealist painters.

This book covers a huge amount of his output, in chronological order. It's interesting to track his obsessions and motifs as they recur and develop. Magritte's use of the ordinary made strange creates a quiet unease, at odds with the more fleshy surrealism of someone like Dali. Magritte's work often playfully explores aspects of illusion and unreality, an area I'm constantly drawn to. And the best children's book we've read this last year? My oldest daughter is now 6, she's learnt to read using the Biff, Chip and Kipper series (created by Roderick Hunt and illustrated by Alex Brychta in 1986). The illustrations are full of incidental details that are brilliant asides to a world bigger than the story. Creating compelling stories using a limited vocabulary is a constraint greater in challenge than anything used by George Perec.

My daughter's favourite books have been the Pizazz series by Sophy Henn.

Imagine a girl who is a reluctant super-hero, embarrassed by her super-power (glitter jazz hands anyone?), always wearing her too long cape (chosen by her mum), having to save the world before school, and still forced to do homework. We read them all in a month, thanks to the well stocked Hackney library. Pizazz is funny, smart, and identifiable.

#books #books of the year #2022 #reading #top 5 #my favourite thing is monsters #emil ferris #acting class #nick drnaso #The Labyrinth #simon stalenhag #the confidence men #margalit fox #rene magritte #julie waseige #pizazz #sophy henn

6 notes · View notes

utilitycaster · 3 months

Text

I should note, I hate the soulmates "we would fall in love in every universe" trope for the aforementioned "where's the tension and interest and really anything worthwhile" reasons. However, "we would find each other in every universe" fucking rips. We would interact meaningfully in every universe but sometimes we are lovers and sometimes we are friends and sometimes we are bitter enemies and sometimes we'd simply both be in the same HOA.

#for more on this see: the years of rice and salt #yet another of the books that did not survive the crossing (is possibly in my parents' basement)

27K notes · View notes

wasyago · 2 months

Note

Can you draw that snail? You know the one who got out of Grian's power and started to eat Gem's lighthouse?

little guy <3

alternatively: big guy.

#hermitcraft #grian #geminitay #my art #sketch #drawing a snail with teeth wasn't on my bingo card for this year but here we are #ALSO god can you imagine a dungeon meshi au with grian as a dm and snail as his animal? all he wished for was a mending book.......#the brainrot is strong im being tormented by the demons ( my own ideas )#ALSO 2.0. does anyone remember that snail from adventure time? i mean. cmon. i mean..? hello?

16K notes · View notes

raggedyoldwitch · 2 months

Text

finished my second book of the year today! and within six days!

caraval by stephanie garber part one of a trilogy

donatella was pissing me the hell off!!!!

#caraval #stephanie garber #books of the year #book recs

0 notes

maxgicalgirl · 2 months

Text

Being a “Fun Fact !” kind of autistic is all fun and games until you get halfway through sharing an interesting tidbit and realize that it probably wasn’t appropriate to share in polite company and now you have to deal with the consequences :(

#autism #neurodivergent #adhd #fun facts #GOD I’m such an idiot #anyways now a 10 year old is out there looking up swear words online and it’s all my fault :(#I got so excited by the fact that I knew a fun fact #that I didn’t stop to think that maybe not everyone knows that fun fact for a reason :(#it’s like explaining how to successfully bury a body at a book club #or explaining the dangers of Scientology to your sister’s boyfriend the first time you meet him #or debating gay sex positions with your best friend in front of your mom #no matter how much I wish to be a beacon of knowledge in this world #sometimes there are things others just don’t want to know #and consciously that’s valid but the autism ? I does not care

8K notes · View notes

eddisonpearson · 2 years

Text

Megan Rix and Valerie Bloom feature in Booktrust’s Great Books Guide 2021, both in the 6-7 years category.

#megan rix #fiction #puffin #valerie bloom #poetry #otter-barry books #books of the year #book award #clare pearson literary agent

0 notes

kbkirtley · 4 months

Text

Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros

My number 4 2023 Release is Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

This book was not without flaws. I found myself frequently rolling my eyes at certain thing or feeling the suspension of disbelief being pulled at through some internal logic. But I couldn’t stop reading this book and couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks after finishing it. I loved the concept of the book - “war college for dragon riders” was the easiest sell of all-time for me - and thought there was a really interesting plot. With a couple exceptions, I thought the characters were a bit flimsy in this book but that is largely addressed in Iron Flame. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to commit to four more books after Iron Flame, but as a “book one,” Fourth Wing did all it needed to do. Despite its flaws, Fourth Wing is one I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.

That being said, I will never forgive Yarros for what she did to [redacted] at the end of the book.

#bookblr #fourth wing #rebecca yarros #book recommendations #book review #books of 2023 #books of the year #fantasy books #violet sorrengail #xaden riorson #Tairn #year in review

10 notes · View notes

ecoamerica · 23 days

Text

youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

6K notes · View notes

nedlittle · 1 year

Text

it drives me bonkers the way people don't know how to read classic books in context anymore. i just read a review of the picture of dorian gray that said "it pains me that the homosexual subtext is just that, a subtext, rather than a fully explored part of the narrative." and now i fully want to put my head through a table. first of all, we are so lucky in the 21st century to have an entire category of books that are able to loudly and lovingly declare their queerness that we've become blind to the idea that queerness can exist in a different language than our contemporary mode of communication. second it IS a fully explored part of the narrative! dorian gray IS a textually queer story, even removed from the context of its writing. it's the story of toxic queer relationships and attraction and dangerous scandals and the intertwining of late 19th century "uranianism" and misogyny. second of all, i'm sorry that oscar wilde didn't include 15k words of graphic gay sex with ao3-style tags in his 1890 novel that was literally used to convict him of indecent behaviour. get well soon, i guess...

#the picture of dorian gray #lit #this is a pointless text post #guess what i read for the first time in the year of our lord 2023 #and yes this is a real review on storygraph that i took a screenshot of. you people are so stupid god bless #girl he literally censored it himself did your edition have 0 introduction or background at all #greatest (s)hits #book discourse

68K notes · View notes

jillepathy · 4 months

Text

I’ve only read 11 books this year, but they were a good mix of fiction and nonfiction. My favorite book of 2023 was The Book of the Moon by Maggie Aderin-Pocock, space scientist and real life Barbie. My top genres were LGBTQIA+, Feminism, and Memoirs. My goal for this year is to diversify my reading material even more! Thanks to these authors for getting me through another horrific year.

#books #litblr #books of the year #2023 wrapped #storygraph

1 note · View note

motherbookerblog · 4 months

Text

2023 Year Review: the motherbooking stats

Wow, 2023 has been a pretty interesting year. So many random and awful things have happened around the world. All while I’ve been sat here reading as many books as possible. It hasn’t been my best year ever but I definitely did better in December than I expected. Having that 2-week break was a great idea. I doubt I’ll be able to do the same thing next year but I’ll try. Whatever the reason, I got…

View On WordPress

#Audiobooks of the year #books #books of the year #films #Films of the year #top 10 books of the year #top 10 films of the year #worst books of the year #worst films of the year #wrap-up #yearly rundown

0 notes

james-master · 4 months

Text

2023 Reading Recap

This year, I was able to read 20 books. I had set a goal of reading 36, but there was a period in the middle of the year where I just fell out of the habit of reading. Having said that, for the most part, those 18 books didn’t disappoint me in quality, so I don’t see my not reaching 36 as a failure. Here are the categories I’ll be awarding. – Top Five Reads – Best Story – Best Moment – Best…

View On WordPress

#2023 Reading Recap #Authors #Books #Books of the year #Writing

0 notes

ellevandersneed · 3 months

Text

finished reading thru The Hundred Years' War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance by Rashid Khalidi and I cannot recommend it enough. A lot of people and, very likely, the average person not completely blinded by Islamophobia and/or USamerican/European/British exceptionalism are probably at least moderately sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but I don't know how many of us actually understand the degrees by which Israel is based in settler colonial ideology, how it has continually attempted to subjugate and ultimately eradicate the Palestinian people, and the degree by which the US and Britain (but mostly the US ever since the Six Day War in 1967) have been complicit in this continual genocide.

This book is an amazing comprehensive guide on understanding the conflict and I genuinely think you should give it a read (or listen) if you want to learn more. It is one thing to feel sympathy and to declare support for a cause, but I think it is important to take a step further and educate yourself more on it. A ploy I have seen frequently by zionists is to tell people to "educate themselves" before commenting on this genocide, hoping to instill doubt and encourage silence. Well, here is your chance to educate yourself! I'm obviously biased in favor of this one as it is the first major text on the Palestinian genocide that I have read, but I fully believe in its quality.

You can find this book online in PDF format or, if you prefer, you can purchase a physical copy from many of the large retail bookstores; Barnes & Noble in the US sells it, and so does Waterstones in the UK. There is also an official audiobook that you can either purchase through many of the major audiobook distributors (though I recommend avoiding Amazon if it can be helped), but you can also obtain it via other means if necessary. It's actually currently up on YouTube in its entirety, though I won't link it here in case it gets taken down. (It's really easy to search for, just type in the books title + 'audiobook' into your preferred search engine or on YouTube itself and you'll find it. It's about 10 hours long which is a reasonable length for an audiobook). I'll include a link in this post to an overview/lecture/dialogue with the author Rashid Khalidi on the contents of the book conducted at Brown University in 2020.

I do ask you read this book. I think a lot of people already are. I checked a couple of online libraries that have a limited number of audiobook copies that had all been checked out and that to me implies that people do want to educate themselves. There's a sizeable stack of these books at the local bookstore I ocassionally shop at, front and center on the table in the history and world affairs section. It's not hard to find. I hope you all have a good day or evening and I know that if we all take the time to educate ourselves further and approach this genocide with a deeper understanding, we may be able to do something about it. Emotional pleas are not enough, they must be informed ones as well.

#palestine #rashid khalidi #end occupation #end israeli occupation #israel #books #the hundred years' war on palestine

14K notes · View notes