Books I Read in 2011 that I Recommend You Read

I'm awful at picking favorites, so I don't have a top 5 books list of 2011, or even a top 10 list. But below are some of my favorite books I've read in the past year that I highly recommend. They weren't all published this year, and they're of all sorts of genres, and I recommend them for all sorts of reasons.

• Looking For Alaska – John Green
• Everything about John Green's writing just makes my heart happy. It's smart and funny and compelling and rings true.
•  Room – Emma Donoghue
• This one's a bit disturbing, but it needed to be. And the five year-old narrator is extremely well done.
• An Abundance of Katherines – John Green
•  Paper Towns – John Green (Can you tell this is the year I discovered John Green?)
• Fall For Anything – Courtney Summers
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – John Boyne
• This one might break your heart a little. A quick, lasting read.
• Where She Went – Gayle Forman 
• I highly recommend the first book, If I Stay, too. I wasn't sure how I felt about this second one switching point of views before I read it, but I think I may have even loved it more than the first. 
• Divergent – Veronica Roth
• Don't start this if you've got a lot to do. I was sucked into this world and the voice of Tris and couldn't put it down.
• Imaginary Girls – Nova Ren Suma
• Immediately after finishing this book, I couldn't decide how I felt about it. But I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since, and that says a lot.
•  Before I Die – Jenny Downham
• The prose is just beautiful and heartbreaking.
• Invincible Summer – Hannah Moskowitz
• I couldn't get enough of the families in this story. The book takes place over four summers, but it's about so much more than summer and teenage summer love.
• Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson
• If you loved Speak, you have to read this. It's just incredible.
• The Help – Kathryn Stockett
• I didn't think this was my sort of book, so every time someone told me it was great I just smiled and nodded. But it really is as wonderful as everyone said, and it certainly made me stop and think about the world we live in and how people are treated.
• How to Save a Life – Sara Zarr
• Will Grayson, Will Grayson – John Green and David Levithan
• Beyond Belief – Josh Hamilton
• This is a memoir of one of my favorite baseball players who very easily could've died from a crack addiction. His story is so complex and inspiring, I can't recommend it enough.

Here's to another great year of reading in 2012!


Have you read any of these? What were your favorite books you read this year?

Stories, finals, and writing - Oh My!

I have a story for you, but before I tell it I must first tell you the story behind the title of this blog. Ever since I could speak, I've loved to tell stories. There's only one problem - I'm pretty bad at it. I can write them just fine (or at least I hope!), but I can't tell them. Any time I begin one, I hear my friends heave a collective sigh. Back in high school, a lot of the time I wasn't allowed to finish them because, well, I gave details no one cared about and often the story didn't even have a point.

My sister suffers the same problem, so I'd like to think it's a genetic thing and not either one of our faults. When she would begin to tell a story, her friends would say, "Oh boy, it's story time with Kristen." That's why I decided to name the blog Story Time, especially because my stories are focused on my writing.

All of that was just me prefacing my following story by saying I realize you probably don't care, and might not see the point. But I think it's cool.

When I first calculated the words per day I would have to write to finish my WiP by the end of the summer, I said on here it was 750, but I was actually rounding up (I know, I lied!).The real word count was 714. So a few days ago when I was recalculating to see where I was, I got 714 per day. Then I paused. Hmmm that sounds familiar... and I went to where I originally wrote down the number and realized, against all odds, it was exactly the same! Creepy. I know.

Unfortunately, that word count is no longer true because I just fell victim to this thing in college called Finals Week. I typically like a clean desk with no papers, but this is what mine looked like for the past five days:

So. Many. Papers. And here's how many pens it takes for me to study properly:

And finally, when I study Econ, I have some "fun" and use a whiteboard with colorful markers!

So, that was my week. The good news?

I'M DONE! I don't really care how the finals went at this point, I'm just glad it's summer. And even better, today is my last day ever in a dorm - tomorrow I move into an apartment and my life shall improve exponentially. Most importantly, I'll have plenty of time to knock out those 714 words each day and hopefully have my first draft of my first novel finished before I know it. See, now that I've said it's going to happen, there's no turning back. Here I go!