My favorite reads of 2011, Part 2

I posted already about my favorite new releases from 2011. Since I read all sorts other things that weren't new releases, I thought I might give them their own post, too. 

Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund

This is the second book in Peterfreund's fantastic Killer Unicorns series. A good friend alerted me to this series because we're both hardcore unicorn enthusiasts (and really, who isn't?) My first exposure to this universe was the short story from the Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology. I read Rampant and Ascendant and I fell in love. Both books kept me reading late into the night. But Ascendant is the one that I rank higher, simply because it had me bawling at the end. I tend to favor middle books of trilogies, and this series is intended to be a trilogy. Astrid totally makes my shelf of beloved "Kick-Ass Heroines."

[My Review of Ascendant] [My Review of Rampant]

The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye

I'm really not sure how I made it this far in life without ever reading this charming little novel. Princess Amethyst -- or Amy, as she prefers -- is an ordinary princess. Aren't princesses supposed to be beautiful? Amy was "gifted" by a fairy to be ordinary -- but her ordinariness is in her looks only. She's a very remarkable and charming heroine, who runs away from home when her parents want to marry her off. I passed this along on PaperBack Swap so someone else could have a chance to go on Amy's adventure, but I kind of wish I'd held on to it!

[My Review]

The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan

This novel is the source material to the film Lost and Delirious. I enjoyed that movie, but the novel totally tore me to shreds. The movie is VERY LOOSELY based on this book and the two are entirely different entities. I've never read anything like this. The year is 1963 and thirteen-year-old "Mouse" Bradford attends to an all-girl boarding school (with her least favorite gender) and gets into a lot of philosophical debates with none other than her own lump on her back. 

[My Review]

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." I had a very personal response to this assigned reading for my World Lit class. I found myself relating to Gregor Samsa in a way that I'm not sure Kafka intended. I loved this very bizarre story -- but mostly because it is told in a very un-bizarre way. 

[My Review]

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I first read this short story in high school, and while I liked it, it didn't do much for me. I came across it again when I was older and read it in an entirely new way. I chose this story to be my research topic for my World Lit final paper, and I got to get cozy with it again in my American Lit class. I am extremely familiar with this story and have read it more times than I remember. For a 6,000 word story, though, I do manage to come away with something new every time I read it. I personally find this psychological thriller/gothic tale very frightening because, as someone with a chronic disorder, I fear if I'd been born in Gilman's time, I could have ended up exactly like this narrator.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats

Oh, Keats. I'd never read Keats before, but I have developed a fascination with this poet whose life ended too soon. Though if he hadn't been doomed, would he have written such gorgeous poetry? I could link the poem here, but it's easy enough to find on the internet. If you haven't read it yet, you'll read it when you come across it, when you're ready for it. I think about this poem a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. Whenever I see an image encased in something like a pane of glass, it is so extraordinarily Keats.

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

Every single line of this poem blew my heart and mind apart. I think I had to change my pants afterwards. I'm told this isn't exactly the most popular response to this narrative of the wimpy, aging, regretful Prufrock. But each of the words and lines in this poem folded in on each other, the descriptions collapsed over one another, and it all somehow created something that made me swoon. It must be all that sexual frustration, isn't it? (Don't answer that.)

"Let us go then, you and I/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/
Like a patient etherized upon a table."