BEDD 26: favorite books of 2011

I used to be an avid reader when I was a child. My mom was always buying me books to read and we would spend a small portion every night reading together.  I continued to read quite often all throughout grade school and middle school, but high school changed that.  I'm sure it was the busy schedule of homework and rehearsals and all the other things I've done that made me put reading on the back burner to everything else. When I had my hip replaced in the months following during recovery I slowly picked up the habit of reading a little every night.  Back in May when I joined GoodReads.com I made a goal to read twenty books before the end of the year; I've already completed that goal and I hadn't really even begun to think about my favorite books I've read until someone asked me on Tumblr.

"Because memories fall apart, too. And then you're left with noting, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow." - Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska by John Green wasn't what I expected it to be; I think the hype around it made me think about it differently than what I should have been thinking to begin with.  To be honest, now months later, I can't remember what I had initially thought when I first started reading this novel.  I enjoyed this book because in a way it talked me through a friendship gone wrong, one that happened two years ago that I'm still having trouble getting my brain around.  I give mad props to John for his writing style, one that I'm actually a bit jealous of.

"There is a relationship between the mind and the body that can both create a physical condition and enable us to recover from it." - Nothing is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life by Christopher Reeve

I'm happy that I read this book when I did, because it was a time during recovery that I was feeling really down and didn't know what to do with myself.  I had this feeling that I might never fully recover, or that I wouldn't be able to go on and do the things that I had been dreaming about all year, like travel the nation and go to Europe.  Reading this book gave me something that my parents and my friends weren't able to give me; Christopher Reeve shared the reality he went through with such a massive change in his life, and though mine was no where near as great as his, the writing spoke to me and told me that things would be okay in the end, that if he could go on with life and do things he never would have thought he could do, then I can surely go on too.  There just isn't enough praise for this book; I admit, I cried through a large part of reading it, but it was worth it.

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer." - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I honestly don't even know why I enjoy this book so much.  I've read it twice this year, once for my junior English class and then again sometime after surgery.  There's a way in the writing that makes this book a good read for me.  I can also say that I enjoy the content of the book, though I haven't been able to actually closely examine it like I would like to.  But that's alright, because I get to read it again for class this semester for my junior English credit that I missed last year due to surgery.  I'm hoping that I can get something even more out of this book; I'm sure though that I'm still going to enjoy reading it once again.

Link of the day: 365 more days to go.

days until Senior Year Part 2 begins: 9

days until I become an adult: 12

days until graduation: 144