Lisa's 48-53
48. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
This is one of the prettiest books I read this year. The presentation alone is very nice-cover is gorgeous, and the whole book is printed in this subtly blue ink which made it all that more delicious, somehow. Really at first I thought that one more wolf-boy book... yawn, but Maggie Stiefvater's been getting so much buzz around the blogosphere-and not incomprehensible netspeak OMG buzz, just really good reviews whenever you found her name, and this book really was wholly satisfying. Okay, so I kept wanting to call Sam Jacob... but that was really my own fault. (He's not remotely like Jacob Black, but he is a lot like the Jacob from the Stolarz books I've been reading-see below).
Other than one completely unnecessary (but tastefully PG-13) sex-scene, every bit of this book was just perfectly on-key. Sam is a bit too poetic sometimes, but that's kind of just his personality, and it's understandable when you read all his background, etc. There's a nice balance between pretty lyrical prose and some really great suspense stuff. I wrote a longer review for it here, if you want to hear more.
49. Red is for Remembrance by Laurie Faria Stolarz
My only complaint about this book is that it's the last in the series (well sort of, there's also a Graphic Novel) and we spend half of it with a perspective that's not Stacey's, and while that's imperative to the story... I missed her. I just really enjoy her as a character. This was a nice full-circle-y type book.
50. Song of the Lioness: The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce
Ugh. I'm starting to think that Tamora Pierce has gotten worse the more she's written. This bored me to tears.
51. Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception by Maggie Stiefvater
Oh my goodness. Probably my favorite book of the year. Maybe of the past few years. Shiver may be what's put her on the map, but Lament is just... perfect. I've read a few "faerie" books this year (like the awful, awful Tithe by Holly Black, for example) and I kept thinking there had to be one that was told in some way that I'd actually you know, enjoy. But instead they all kind of just feel dark to be dark, not dark because the story really is dark, you know? "Let's see how dark we can get!" which... just doesn't interest me. Lament is awesome, though. Stiefvater seems to realize that faeries don't need any extra help in being scary as heck-they already had that down, thanks, while fooling everybody that they were nice, pretty things. The main character is a "cloverhand" or one who can see faeries-the Faerie Queen sees her as a threat and sends her gallowglass to kill her, but he ends up being fascinated with her instead, and really it's just a gorgeous, fantastic romance-adventure, and the "normal" Deidre turns out being pretty awesome by the end. I loved every minute of it.
I would complain that her best friend James is also in love with her, because really, does that need to happen in every book? But I can't even do that, because the sequel (below) is also flipping awesome and partially depends on that, so.
52. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H Johnson
So, one of the first classes I took in college was Emily Dickinson's poems-my professor wrote her dissertation on Dickinson's fascicles and knows more about Emily Dickinson than I'm sure 99.95% of the planet, and instilled a lot of love and respect for her in me, personally. Dickinson is just so smart about her poems, and about the meanings of words, and she has such interesting ideas on heaven and God and mortality, and nature... I just honestly could never get bored with her poems. It was nice to read through them again.
53. Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie by Maggie Stiefvater
This is the sequel to Lament. It's odd, because as a whole, I like the first book better, but this is one of those cases where the sum of its parts is greater than the whole. This book focuses on Deidre's best friend James, who has this tortuous unrequited love for her (which is some of the most enjoyable angst I've read in a long, long time) but James by himself is really just a fantastic character. He manages to be a lovable, funny, neurotic megalomaniac. He's the best piper (yes, piper) in the state, and as such has been targeted by a leanan sidhe, basically a muse who feeds on life, stealing years from her favorites in exchange for fantastic inspiration. Meanwhile he's trying to figure out where he stands with Deidre, and this new, faerie-sploded world, complete with nightly songs from the King of the Dead.
Ballad is creepier than Lament, and full of a lot more cool stuff-better characters in general (well, more characters, I guess) and it reads so true-to-life for anyone who's had a friendship messed up by longing for more. And I really wanted to pull James straight from the book, because he's just such a fantastic character. You get hints of that from the first book, but he totally deserved his own novel. At the same time, though, I didn't want to reread it immediately, which I did for Lament. I can't explain that, considering it's probably a better book. Perfect last line, too. I'm hoping there's one more in this series, but right now it doesn't look like there is.
In other news-I hit 50! I even hit 52 books in 52 weeks, which was what I was really aiming for. This is the first time I can say that to either, so yippee!