BarntoBeantown

After completing the #26Booksin2015 reading challenge (http://burns-familyblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/26-books-in-2015.html), I have now amassed 26 book recommendations for 2016!

(There’s also a new #26Booksin2016 challenge up on the Burns Family Blog if anyone is interested: http://burns-familyblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/26-books-in-2016.html)

1 A book that you own, but haven’t read: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I bought this book during a sale at the University Bookstore in undergrad after my grandmother recommended it to me. It sat on various bookshelves as I moved from undergrad to grad school and then to Boston, so was the obvious choice for this challenge item. It’s definitely addictive, and not only helped me get out of the reading rut I had been in since college, but was the perfect start to the challenge since it only took me 2 days to get through.

To avoid giving anything important away, I’ll give the ‘back of book’ summary for each recommendation: “Wealthy Swedish recluse Henrik Vanger needs closure. Forty years ago, his beloved niece disappeared, never to be seen again–and circumstances have led him to believe that a member of his own repugnant family must be responsible. Vanger hires stoic and recently disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist and scrappy, chain-smoking hacker Lisbeth Salander to come to his island, dig deep into chilling family secrets and unmask the killer once and for all.

So if you decide to read this, you should know two things: Number 1: It’s really really good. Good writing, good mystery, good characters…it’s just excellent. Number 2: You’ll be very surprised if you read this that a grandmother recommended this to me. Why? It. is. explicit. Like, I wouldn’t recommend anyone read this until they are in college it’s so explicit. But it’s still really good.

2 A book that was made into a movie: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

My husband actually recommended this one to me and I was not disappointed.

Summary: “Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world government has taken to breeding military geniuses-and then training them in the arts of war. The early training takes the form of ‘games’ and Ender Wiggins, a genius among geniuses wins them all. He is smart enough to know that time is running out, but is he smart enough to save the planet?” -The New York Times

This book MADE me want to watch the movie, but almost everyone I talked to says the movie doesn’t even come close. This book is awesome. And twisty. Read it.

3 A book you pick solely because of the cover: The Bones of Paris by Laurie R. King

My eye is continually drawn towards anything with the Eiffel Tower on it, and this gem was sitting right at the front of the MIT bookstore, so I had to pick it up.

Summary: “Paris, September 1929. For Harris Stuyvesant, the assignment is an American private investigator’s dream–he’s getting paid to prowl the cafes and bars of Montparnasse, looking for a missing young woman. Her name is Philippa Crosby, and she’s a twenty-two-year-old from Boston who has been living in Paris, modeling and acting. As Stuyvesant follows Philippa’s trail through the expatriate community of artists and writers, he crosses paths with many of its famous-and infamous–inhabitants, from Ernest Hemingway to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray. But when evidence leads Stuyvesant to the Theatre du Grand-Guignol in Montmartre, his investigation takes a disturbing turn. At the Grand-Guignol, murder, insanity, and sexual perversio are all staged to shocking effect. Soon it becomes clear that Stuyvesant must descend into dark depths to find a killer whose artistic coup de grace is to be rendered in blood.”

So this is a part of a series called the Stuyvesant and Grey novels, but you don’t need to have read the other books to understand everything that is going on in this one -everything from the past you need to know is explained flawlessly and in a way that doesn’t interrupt the flow of the story. However, like Dragon Tattoo, I would only recommend this one for more mature readers.

This is a witty and excellently written mystery that had me guessing until the very end. I love a detective story that keeps the reader captivated, even in the slower-paced sections. I’ll definitely be reading more Stuyvesant and Grey novels in the future.

4 A book your friend loves: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I have two good friends that LOVE John Green books and had been recommending them for a while, so I finally subjected myself to what I knew going in would be an emotional rollercoaster. I was not wrong.

Summary: “Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten. The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.”

The summary does not lie. This is a masterpiece. “You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.” Get you tissues ready if you decide to read this one.

5 A book published this year: Find Me by Laura Van Den Berg

This one is not so much a recommendation as … advice. Some people may really enjoy this book, but as a rule I don’t enjoy feeling depressed and unfulfilled after reading.

Summary: “Joy has no one. She spends her days working the graveyard shift at a grocery store on the outskirts of Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past. When a sickness that begins with memory loss and ends with death sweeps the county, Joy, for the first time in her life, has an advantage: she is immune. After her immunity gains her admittance to a research hospital in rural Kansas, she submits to peculiar treatments and forms cautious bonds with other patients, including her roommate, whom she turns to in the night for comfort, and twin boys who are digging a secret tunnel. As winter descends, the hospital’s fragile order breaks down and Joy breaks free, embarking on a journey from Kansas to Florida, where she believes she can find her birth mother, the woman who abandoned her as a baby. On the road in a ravaged America, she encounters curious companions, cities turned strange, and one very eerie house. As Joy closes in on Florida, she must confront her own damaged memory and the secrets she has been keeping from herself.”

There’s not one word that describes this book. Depressing is a definite, but erratic, strange, infuriating and empty also fit. It is a very interesting twist on epidemic/apocalyptic/dystopian stories. I ended up choosing this book because the main character is from Boston, but not much of the book was spent in Boston besides brief glances through the eyes of cough syrup overdoses. Stop N Shops are now extremely depressing to me. Also not crazy about the ending at all. There aren’t many books I wish I hadn’t read, but this is definitely one of them.

6 A book by an author you’ve never read before: One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak

Why yes, this is the BJ Novak that’s on The Office (and writes for the show too). This is a perfect travel book (short stories are always fun to read while traveling) and the stories do not disappoint.

Summary: ” A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes-only to discover how claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins-turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We also meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook. Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just…down. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, sharp eye, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader.”

This is one of the best collections of short stories I have ever come across. Witty, winding, and oh so smart. It is a great travel book, but it’s a great book for anytime you have a desire to read something that makes you laugh out loud and want to share the funnies with everyone around you.

7 A book by an author you love: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

I had been meaning to read this one (and the other two she wrote under pseudonyms) for a while now. I think I may have been avoiding it because I was afraid they wouldn’t be as good as this other tiny series she wrote that definitely aren’t a complete set of masterpiece perfection that have been turned into one of the most successful franchises of all time…or anything………..they’re my favorites and I was nervous OK?

Summary: “When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with the poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking, and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is the work of a storyteller like no other.”

Anyone who still thinks JK Rowling can’t write (there are some) or can only write children’s books (also an actual opinion) after reading this needs to get out. If you don’t think she proved herself with Potter, you’ll definitely be able to see her uncanny ability to juggle multiple characters expertly while still telling an amazing story in this book. It does not disappoint and the twists are fantastic. Everyone’s hair is full of secrets and now I really hope she writes more (besides Harry Potter plays that I’m mad I will never get to see).

Note: There is a BBC miniseries they made based on this, but the ending is very very different.

8 A book at the bottom of your “to read” pile: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Don’t you worry. I already know I’m a terrible person for waiting as long as I have to read this.

Summary: “Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.”

I’m very glad I finally read it. There’s a reason this is a classic. There’s also a reason I’ll be reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy this year.

9 A book with a color in the title: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

I’ll be honest. I didn’t really know how to feel after I read this. It’s creepy.

Summary: “A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess’s nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends’ social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to ‘redeem’ him, the novel asks, ‘At what cost?’

So it is very creepy and I didn’t know quite how to feel about it when I was done (I still don’t really know how I feel about it), but the use of completely created-from-scratch slang that fits not only Russian, but teenage language is astounding. This may also make it potentially difficult for people who don’t enjoy books written in dialect. If you read it, get the version with the previously unpublished chapter at the end along with Burgess’s introduction. The introduction especially helps to put everything in perspective when you’re done.

10 A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit: Transatlantic by Colum McCann

The place is Ireland and this book is fantastic and interwoven to the max.

Summary: This soaring novel spans continents, leaps centuries and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined. Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators-Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown-set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War. Dublin, 1845 and ’46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause-despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave. New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs to Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion. These three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, the novel follows her daughter and granddaughter, Emily and Lottie and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on. From the loughs of Ireland to the flatlands of Missouri and the windswept coast of Newfoundland, their journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. They each learn that even the most unassuming moments of grace have a way of rippling through time, space and memory.”

I always love a good story woven together through different character perspectives. This one (and #18 coincidentally) throw in a span of time as well. This is actually a great book to keep picking up and putting down – it’s almost like a new story everytime you pick it up, but you get the big picture at the end.

11 A book you started, but never finished: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I’m not going to say too much about this one because there seem to only be two sides of the opinion fence when it comes to Pride and Prejudice (and Jane Austen in general). I will say that before this year, this was the only book I had started and never finished.

“Set in England in the early 19th century, Pride and Prejudice tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr. Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr. Darcy, have moved into their neighborhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with the second-eldest Bennet daughter, Elizabeth.”

I am extremely interested….and simultaneously confused….as to how they are making this into a zombie movie. Maybe Lydia will become a zombie…or just disappear. Or maybe Lydia will be a zombie and eat the mother. Just suggestions.

12 A book with a lion. A witch. Or a wardrobe.: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

What can possibly be said that hasn’t been before about this classic. Flawless and always worth a revisit. My goal for this year is to read more C.S. Lewis besides The Chronicles of Narnia series.

“When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are sent to stay with a kind professor who lives in the country, they can hardly imagine the extraordinary adventure that awaits them. It all begins one rainy summer day when the children explore the Professor’s rambling old house. When they come across a room with an old wardrobe in the corner, Lucy immediately opens the door and gets inside. To her amazement, she suddenly finds herself standing in the clearing of a wood on a winter afternoon, with snowflakes falling through the air. Lucy has found Narnia, a magical land of Fauns and Centaurs, Nymphs and Talking Animals–and the beautiful but evil White Witch, who has held the country in eternal winter for a hundred years”

13 A book with a female heroine: The Mockingbird Next Door by Marja Mills

Perfect timing to read this since her new novel recently came out. There aren’t that many opportunities to, but I love reading books about books that I love.

“To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the best loved novels of the twentieth century. But for the last fifty years, the novel’s celebrated author, Harper Lee, has said almost nothing on the record. Journalists have trekked to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee, known to her friends as Nelle, has lived with her sister, Alice, for decades, trying and failing to get an interview with the author. But in 2001, the Lee sisters opened their door to Chicago Tribune journalist Marja Mills. It was the beginning of a long conversation–and a great friendship.

This book that follows not only Nelle Harper, but also Alice Lee, along with many of their friends, is full of heroines. It’s also always nice to see an outsider’s positive take on the South, which unfortunately doesn’t happen much.

“Now 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books…I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.”

14 A book set in the summer: The Au Pairs by Melissa De La Cruz

Gonna be very honest. This is a good story, but it doesn’t involve using a lot of brain power. Which makes it perfect for a beach read.

“Summer in the city? Way overrated. Everybody who’s anybody in New York City summers in the Hamptons. Mara, Eliza, and Jacqui all want a piece of the action, all for different reasons. So the girls answered a classified ad to become au pairs. How bad can it be, watching a couple of kids on the beach all day? They’ve got the swank address, the sweet ride, and an all-access pass.”

15 A book of poems: Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Another classic that’s always worth a revisit.

“Come in…for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Siverstein’s world begins. You’ll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist. Shel Silverstein’s masterful collection of poems and drawings is at once outrageously funny and profound.

I had never read the special edition version with 12 extra poems. Just so you know, the special edition is so worth finding. Even if you don’t like the poems (*cough* you’re incorrect *cough*), you could spend forever just looking at Shel’s hilarious sketches. I don’t think any other drawings could compliment the poems so perfectly and one of my life goals is to have one of his drawings on our wall someday.

16 A book you learned about because of this challenge: The Girl Who Played With Fire Stieg Larsson

After starting the challenge with the ever-addicting Dragon Tattoo, I found it hard to stop at just one Larsson story.

“Crusading publisher Mikael Blomkvist has decided to run an explosive expose of a wide-ranging sex trafficking operation. Just before the piece is published, two people are murdered. The fingerprints on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled hacker genius Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Lisbeth herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, and is forced to face her dark past.”

Because it’s a Larsson book, you can expect plenty more twists, and once again, this one is for mature eyes only. This is also not a series that you can just jump into: I’d recommend starting from book one because even though previous happenings are somewhat explained, you really need the full background.

17 A book that will make you smarter: Setting the Agenda-The Mass Media and Public Opinion by Maxwell McCombs

Everyone should read this. Especially with a presidential election coming up.

“Setting the Agenda describes the mass media’s significant and sometimes controversial role in determining which topics are at the centre of public attention and action. Although Walter Lippman captured the essence of the media’s powerful influence early in the last century with his phrase ‘the world outside and the pictures in our heads,’ a detailed, empirical elaboration of this agenda-setting role of the mass media did not begin until the final quarter of the twentieth century. In this comprehensive book, Maxwell McCombs, one of the founding fathers of the agenda-setting tradition of research, synthesizes the hundreds of scientific studies carried out on this central role of the mass media in the shaping of public opinion. Across the world, the mass media strongly influences what the pictures of public affairs ‘in our heads’ are about. The mass media also influences the very details of those pictures. In addition to describing this media influence on what we think about and how we think about it, Setting the Agenda discusses the sources of these media agendas, and the subsequent consequences for attitudes, opinions and behavior.”

One of my favorite classes in graduate school was a seminar on Propaganda and Public Opinion-it was basically a class on scientifically proven communication conspiracy theories and it was awesome. Most people don’t particularly think about where their news might be coming from – especially when the mass media now includes social media like Facebook. It’s super interesting to see exactly how the news affects the public (spoilers: it does) and it’s worth it to look deeper into the news, wherever it might be coming from.

18 A book with a blue cover: The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

“France, 1916. Artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his young wife, Sophie, to fight at the front. When their small town falls to the Germans, Edouard’s portrait of Sophie draws the eye of the new Kommandant. As the officer’s dangerous obsession deepens, Sophie will risk everything–her family, her reputation, and her life–to see her husband again. Nearly a century later, Sophie’s portrait is given to Liv Halston by her young husband shortly before his sudden death. A chance encounter reveals the painting’s true worth, and a battle begins for who the legitimate owner is–putting Liv’s belief in what is right to the ultimate test.”

After reading #10 I felt a great need to read more books with time jumps. Add France and World War I history into the mix and I was hooked immediately. It’s a really compelling read about how important the story behind a piece of art can be – and how it should never be underestimated.

19 A book you were supposed to read in school, but didn’t: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Because I’m a book addict, there wasn’t a book we were assigned in school that I didn’t read. So I looked back and found my favorite book that we read, and read it again.

“The story takes place in 1922, during the Roaring Twenties, a time of prosperity in the United States after World War I, that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island. The main focus is the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan.”

The  narcissistic and vain selfishness of East Egg and the massive self-indulgence of West Egg . Fitzgerald is a master of description and created a world where you can be simultaneously disgusted and captivated by the larger than life character, who just wanted to re-create himself.

20 A book “everyone” but you has read: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

This lady is a genius.

“Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck-impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fight with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?” Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!

Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door-not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.”

At first glance this may look like an autobiography, and while it does cover different periods in Mindy’s life, it’s more about small short stories about funny/embarrassing/life-y things that have happened to her. Which makes it a nice, quick (that’s the way she wants it – she actually judges you in the book if you take more than like three days to finish it) read.

21 A book with a great first line: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

“An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War.” Not really expected, but a great line all the same. Especially once you get to the end.

“Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Lisbeth Salander is fighting back. As she lies in critical condition in a Swedish hospital, Lisbeth is fighting for her life in more ways than one. If and when she recovers, she’ll stand trial for three murders. With the help of Mikael Blomkvist, she’ll need to identify those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she’ll seek revenge–against the man who tried to kill her and against the corrupt government institutions that nearly destroyed her life.”

I have real respect for the people who write back-of-book and inside-cover summaries because of summaries like these. Yes, yes, I even like reading book summaries.

These books are never what you expect. And I may or may not have read this in one day. I can’t wait to read the latest in this series. I bet Spider’s Web will have an excellent first line (and back-of-book summary) too.

22 A book with pictures: A Comic Book History of Boston by The Boston Comics Roundtable

Comic books are books too! And being a new resident, this was a great way to catch up on some Boston history.

“Since 2006, the Boston Comics Roundtable has been bringing comic artists and writers together to collaborate on Inbound, a twice-yearly anthology of “Comics from Boston.” Now we’ve asked this diverse pool of comics talent to choose their favorite characters and incidents from local history. The result is “A Comic Book History of Boston,” an entertaining tour through three centuries of important social and political events, bigger-than-life personalities, and colorful New England lore. From Shay’s Rebellion and the great Molasses Flood, to Charles Ponzi’s original “scheme” and Mark Twain’s disastrous encounter with Boston literary society, to the 1970 busing crisis, the Gardner Museum heist and many more, the “Comic Book History of Boston” is an opportunity for readers of all ages to take a fresh look at our historical heritage and be introduced to the area’s thriving independent comics scene.”

Yes, a Molasses flood actually happened in Boston. And so many other non-Revolutionary things that I’m so glad I’ve brushed up on thanks to this comic book. Every story is in a different comic style because every story was written and drawn by a different artist. The diverse stories and art weave together a picture of Boston history that you won’t get by just visiting the Freedom Trail.

23 A book from the library: The Intern’s Handbook by Shane Kuhn

These rules might actually help an intern.

“John Lago is a hitman. He has some rules for you. And he’s about to break every single one.

John Lago is a very bad guy. But he’s the very best at what he does. And what he does is infiltrate top-level companies and assassinate crooked executives while disguised as an intern. Interns are invisible. That’s the secret behind HR, Inc., the elite “placement agency” that doubles as a network of assassins for hire who take down high-profile targets that wouldn’t be able to remember an intern’s name if their lives depended on it. At the ripe old age of almost 25, John Lago is already New York City’s most successful hit man. He’s also an intern at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, clocking eighty hours a week getting coffee, answering phones, and doing all the grunt work actual employees are too lazy to do. He was hired to assassinate one of the firm’s heavily guarded partners. His internship provides the perfect cover, enabling him to gather intel and gain access to pull off a clean, untraceable hit.”

Thank goodness for the person that first invented the idea of making the “bad guy” a relatable character, because they make some of the best stories. Excellently written and it really doesn’t end in the way you think it’s heading when you start. #twists

24 A book you loved…read it again!: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

This should surprise no one who knows me.

“We now present the seventh and final installment in the epic tale of Harry Potter”

When it’s the seventh book in one of the best series’ ever written, you hardly need to say anything more in an inside-cover summary.

Simply magical. Reading out of context with the rest of the series is not an option and unforgivable. If you haven’t had the distinct pleasure of reading these book, please do yourself a favor and have a nice binge read. Your life will be made infinitely better if you do so.

25 A book that is more than 10 years old: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Such poignant words about…words. Their power, their mystery, their gracefullness.

“By her brother’s graveside, Liesel Meminger finds her life changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Grave Digger’s Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jewish man in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up and closed down. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time”

I ironically can’t begin to explain with words how amazing a wordsmith Markus Zusak is in a book that he wrote about the power of words. Which also made it the perfect book to close out my year of reading (I sadly did not do the challenge in order, so this was actually the last book I read this past year). There are new colors painted on every single page.

To give an alternate summary from the narrator himself: “It’s just a small story really, about, among other things: A girl. Some words. An accordionist. Some fanatical Germans. A Jewish fistfighter. And quite a lot of thievery.” Warning: You will cry.

“I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right”

26 A book based on a true story: The King’s Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

As a former public speaking teacher and communication major, this story makes my heart happy.

“One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century-an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed ‘The Quack who saved a King.’ Logue wasn’t a British aristocrat or even an Englishman-he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into the man who was capable of becoming King.”

In every public speaking class I taught the biggest issue I found that people deal with in giving a speech is anxiety. Which is why I always shared the story of King George VI with my students. Many people had no idea that Queen Elizabeth’s father, the king that led England through the second World War, had a serious speech impediment. A speech impediment and public speaking anxiety that he had to face when he unexpectedly became king after his older brother’s abdication. Thanks to a Shakespeare-loving speech therapist from Australia who had helped shell shocked veterans returning from World War I, King George was able to face the dreaded new technology of radio head on. Not only does this true story show that anyone can get over public speaking fears, but also shows the value and importance of speech therapy. After you read this, you need to watch the movie if you haven’t seen it already. The book made me love the movie even more.

Happy Reading in 2016! 🙂