Sandy's Favorites 2014

It's been a pretty ridiculous year for me.  I had a baby, and they aren't kidding when they say that it changes everything.  My free time has diminished a bit, and I've found myself wanting to occupy this free time with new activities.

What all of this boils down to is the fact that I haven't read nearly as many books this year as I have in the past.  According to Goodreads, I've read 43 books, most of which are novels for children or teens.  Not included in this total are several works of adult nonfiction all about pregnancy, parenting, and making baby food that I didn't feel the need to review.

Forty books doesn't seem like much when you consider that in 2009  (a year post-grad school where I only worked part time) I read 175 books.  Even in 2013 I read 75 books, nearly double this year's total.  Still, 40 books is perfectly respectable.  Besides, I like to think that I've made up for the lack of quantity with the quality of the books that I have read since many of these books have completely blown me away.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Chapter Books

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
Molly and Kip are Irish siblings who don't seem to have parents to care for them.  Molly takes a job as a housekeeper to a formerly wealthy family that is down on its luck.  But it's not just the money that seems to be troubling this family.  The entire family seems sickly, and everyone seems to be getting treasures from a mysterious source.  There is also the Night Gardener who appears during the night, and though know one know exactly what his intentions are, they certainly do not seem to be good.  This bit of Gothic horror features fantastic storytelling, and I love how the horror elements mirror some of the other issue that the characters are dealing with.  Given the masterful writing, I think that this book has a shot at a Newbery Honor.

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm
One evening, Ellie's mother comes home with a teenage boy in tow.  Strangely enough, her scientist grandfather seems to have uncovered a sort of fountain of youth and have given himself a young body.  Through a series of episodes, Ellie and her grandfather explore the wonders of science and discover what it really means to grow up and to grow older.  This book is an unusual blend of sci-fi and contemporary fiction that will appeal to fans of both Wendy Mass and Madeleine L'Engle.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Wilson
So much has already been said about Wilson's memoir told is verse, which recently won the National Book Award.  It's a bit of a patchwork dealing with Wilson's family, the era in which she lives, race, and other small details from her childhood.    This memoir seems to be this year's "it" book and is widely favored to win this year's Newbery Medal.  It's worthy of the hype.

Teen Reads

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
The Sinclair family is everything they are supposed to be:  Beautiful, athletic, and incredibly wealthy.  Every summer they vacation on a private island near Martha's Vineyard.  Cadance, the oldest grandchild, looks forward to spending these summers with her cousins and Gat, the nephew of her aunt's boyfriend.  But then one year Cadance has some sort of accident.  She can't remember what happened and no one seems terribly interested in telling her.  During her 17th summer on the island, Cadance tries to piece together bits of memory to figure out what happened.  What makes this story stand out is Cadance's narrative voice.  The way that this story unfolds and the fact that she is so unreliable make this book stand out in the crowd.

Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo
Leigh's father decides to uproot the family and operate a cemetery, and he does not seem particularly willing to look further than the kitchen table for ready employees.  Leigh finds herself working in the cemetery's office selling graves after school.  Meanwhile she has her own grief to deal with after being uprooted from her beloved home by the sea, the death of her best friend, and her sister's cancer treatments.  This book sounds very dark and while it certainly does have its morbid moments, Leigh's sarcasm and ready wit help to keep it from being depressing.  Leigh is a character that I grew to love as she developed over the course of this novel.  This is my favorite book of the year.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
Victoria dreams of being an artist.  Unfortunately, as a woman in Edwardian England her options are fairly limited.  Getting into a proper art school will be next to impossible without some assistance, and her father absolutely refuses to pay her tuition.  The plot thickens with a sweet police constable / artistic muse, some periphery involvement in the suffragist movement, and a wealthy finance who might not be the easy solution Vicky was hoping for.  This book was a tad predictable in terms of plot, but this author definitely did her research about this era.  Readers will enjoy being pulled into this fascinating time period.