Quick Post Before End of Year Wrap-Up

Merry Christmas!

I know I haven't been around. But exams are over, and my first semester of law school is done (I think it went pretty well). I had an incredible semester, and I am the luckiest of all lucky people. I feel truly blessed to be able to experience the things I did. Also, the East Coast is growing on me a lot. There have been a lot of terrible events in the news lately, and I'm hoping that all of you had a safe and fulfilling second half of 2012.

I'm going to do a wrap-up of all the books I've read this year before New Years and my favorites. It won't be totally accurate since I only started keeping track in May.

I also never finished putting up the final installment to Books of the Summer list, plus some extras into the school year. So here they are (SO belatedly):

1. Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma
2. Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard
3. Small Damages by Beth Kephart
4. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
5. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
6. Sapphique by Catherine Fisher
7. Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn
8. The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan

Plus, I finally finished the Catherine the Great (Robert K. Massie) bio that I started like half a year ago.

Linky links for the books I reviewed.

Thoughts on the books:

To be totally honest, the ones on the list I liked the least were the ones that got hyped up the most. I wasn't a huge fan of Imaginary Girls or The Night Circus, which got raving reviews from everybody else. I'm weird, I guess.

Sapphique was as much a page-turner as Incarceron, and even though I didn't really like the ending, it was worth concluding a great first book. I would say, though, that it suffers from The Hunger Games-itis, where the plot is too massive to be resolved in a short, clean conclusion. When you're talking about overthrowing a whole government and wreaking chaos on societal order, it's kind of hard to make it convincing in a couple of chapters.

The Mark of Athena was great. I don't know if I liked it as much as Son of Neptune, actually, but I had many feels afterward, so I was content. It suffers from all the problems that the second PJO series suffers from in general, but it was riotously fun. Don't take away Percy and I am a happy camper. Also, we've reached the point in our relationship where RR has me on a leash and can pretty much do/write/say/plot whatever he wants, and I'm down with it.

In conclusion, I read some really awesome books this year! Will review all books of 2012 soon. MOST IMPORTANTLY, there are AMAZING books coming out in 2013, and I can't wait for them! Making my short list of most anticipated in the coming year:

1. House of Hades by Rick Riordan (obvi)
2. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins (BLASJDKFJKDSK)
3. The Madness Underneath (Shades of London Book 2) by Maureen Johnson (yes.)
4. Dracomachia (I think the name of the sequel to Seraphina?) by Rachel Hartman
5. Just One Day by Gayle Forman (author of If I Stay & Where She Went)
6. This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith (author of The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight -- you gotta love this woman's titles, and she writes literally the cheesiest of all cheesy novels, but they're so good and beautiful and fun)
7. The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler (author of Twenty Boy Summer -- this book's description looks like every stereotype of a chick lit novel I would hate, but it's SARAH OCKLER, so I have to, guys, I can't, she's so good)

I know I'm missing things. These are the ones I can think of. Either way, 2013 is going to be a good year for books.

And now I am going to go read. For fun. It's going to be glorious.