I stopped doing book reviews for several reasons, but the biggest reason was time: I lacked the time both for the reviews themselves, and the time to actually read the number of books necessary to maintain any form of consistency.
So instead, for 2018, I kept an ongoing document of every book I read throughout the year and rated them in order from my most favourite to my least favourite. For the most part I rated them as I finished them, but I also went back and reordered them after reflecting on them further. I didn't really have any sort of system for rating these books--they're based mostly on how much I enjoyed them, because I find that my subjective enjoyment is the only real way to compare a poetry collection to a historical fiction to a microfiction collection to a YA rom-com to a--well, you get the idea.
For added fun, I also decided to colour code them! Purple is for pure leisure reading, green is for mandatory uni reading, and blue is for books that weren't assigned for uni, but that I read to fulfill some sort of class assignment.
We're starting from the bottom-up, with #23 being my least favourite and #1 being my absolute favourite. A poor ranking does not necessarily mean it was bad, but that other books were better.
(I mean, some of them were bad, but I'm not here to spill tea.)
23. Fox by Margaret Sweatman (1991)
22. All That She Can See by Carrie Hope Fletcher (2017)
21. Rosie Dunne (also published under the name Love, Rosie) by Cecilia Ahern (2005)
20. Girls Like Us by Gail Giles (2014)
19. How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon (2014)
18. Seen Reading by Julie Wilson (2012)
17. He Said, She Said by Kwame Alexander (2013)
16. Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart (2006)
15. Waking in Time by Angie Stanton (2017)
14. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)
13. That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston (2017)
12. The Wars by Timothy Findley (1977)
11. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)
10. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee (1997)
9. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (1979)
8. A Million Worlds with You by Claudia Gray (2016)
7. Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston (2016)
6. Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes (2015)
5. Hamilton: The Revoltion by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (2016)
4. Fan Art by Sarah Tregay (2014)
3. Ash by Malinda Lo (2009)
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1908)
1. The Princess Saves Herselve in This One by Amanda Lovelace (2016)
Book reviews were fun for a while, but going forward I hope to focus on improving my Friday and Monday content. (Y'know, when school isn't beating me over the head with a flaming stick.)
Until later,
- Justyne
(I'm sorry I meant to post this a whole lot earlier.)
