2011 - Your Best Five Reads of Q2 (April - June)

Another quarter gone, and half the year is over already!

What were the 5 best books, fiction or non-fiction, you read in the last 3 months? Please share with any comments you care to add!

I only had 4 really good books. They were Cutting For Stone, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Book Thief, & The Help. All excellent but especially The Help and The Guernsey books.

I loved The Book Thief and The Help too! The Book Thief will be on my list for this quarter too.

A lot of good reads this quarter, and I don't think I can narrow it down to five!

Fiction
Soul and Other Stories and The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
The History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Once upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Favourite Sherlock Holmes Stories: Selected by the Author by Arthur Conan Doyle

Nonfiction
Gulag by Anne Applebaum

Jane Eyre and Mansfield Park. It is not likely that Empires of the Indus will be really special, and it is not likely that I will finish another book after that before the end of the quarter. All of the books I have read this quarter are easily discernible in this list.

Robert

Mansfield Park, Bleak House, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Brideshead Revisited, All Quiet on the Western Front.

I had a very good quarter of reading and the following 4 books were the best of the best:

Dances With Wolves by Michael Blake
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

For sheer adventure and excellent storytelling I am adding:

The White Rhino Hotel by Bartle Bull

Lots of good ones this quarter for me, too. My top 5:

To Serve Them All My Days by R.L. Delderfield
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

A special YA mention for a standout:

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Fiction:

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
The Women by T. C. Boyle
Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert by Ward Just
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Nonfiction:

Small Memories by Jose Saramago
Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell by Charles Simic

Not a great reading quarter for me, but my top 3 are
Anthem by Ayn Rand
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
You Against Me by Jenny Downham

Some great book in Q2! Here are my favorites:

I am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (all three books in the trilogy, so this includes Catching Fire and Mockingjay)
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Also thoroughly enjoyed reading three Sherlock Holmes novels, A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles

#9 - mollygrace - I recently added State of Wonder to my to-read list...it looks really good!

I also read and enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy. I read them back at the beginning of the quarter so forgot to add them. Thanks for reminding me KindleKapers.
I guess it wasn't such a bad quarter after all!

Nonfiction:
The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman
The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown
Radioactive by Lauren Redniss
Just Kids by Patti Smith

Fiction:
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

Children's:
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson

I had an extraordinary quarter. Those I listed are just my 5 stars. I had plenty of 4.5 stars too.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter
The Social Animal by David Brooks
Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances by Scott Brown
The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History by Patrick Allitt

and

The Troy trilogy by David Gemmell

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

I embarked on a re-read of the Harry Potter series in early May, and have not read anything else, hence why I only have three listed above. But rest assured, all the Harry Potter books would belong on this list as well!

The 3 best books I read this quarter were:
The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson (non-fiction)
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Honorable Mentions:
Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson by Allan Wright Green
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

My top five books for the quarter were:

Into That Darkness by Steven Price
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The House of All Sorts by Emily Carr

#17 - I loved The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint...it's been a while so I may want to re-read that one. I still have The Book Thief on my to-read list.

I read 20 books this last quarter, but only the following got 4.5:

Incendiary
Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Los Children of Nepal
Kensuke's Kingdom

I find it interesting that there is one fiction, one non-fiction (memoir), and one children's/JYA

14 Just Kids made my list too. I felt emotionally raw for a few days after reading that book.

My top:
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
Among Thieves by Doug Hulick

I certainly read more than these, but the others were enjoyable but not worthy of a "best" list. Actually, I shouldn't phrase it that way. Some of the ones I haven't listed are worthy of a best list, but not my personal favorites list. Some were very good but I didn't get excited about them, or after I read the last page, I was done with them.

First time sharing! I have read SUMMERHILL by A. S. Neil, if you want "to learn to learn" this is your man, you'll love him. I have also read The way of zen By Alan Watts, If you need to understand what about you, this is your man for it, you'll love him too. NPL By Joseph O'connor and John Seymour on the top 10 too, more about how to learn, very good.

The books I'm reading (essential):

Biomimicry; innovation inspired by nature (Next monday it will come to my hands finaly);
Al-muqaddimah by Abū Zayd ‘Abdu r-Raḥman bin Muḥammad bin Khaldūn Al-Hadrami (Ibn Jaldun);
The Journey by Hajji Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta.

I strongly recomend: La Plus belle histoire des plantes ("the most beautiful history of plants" you'll have to find the name gived in english, it was my own translation right now) by Jean Marie Pelt, Marcel Mazoyer, Théodore Monod et Jacques Giradon, éd. Le Seuil 1999. I think is very hard to find, at least it was for me. Glad if you find it quick!

Welcome Gaja-anana. Biomimicry sounds interesting. You'll have to tell us more later.

I've just finished The Memory Keeper's Daughter and that tops my list for the month. I was mesmerized by this story within a couple of pages and put aside everything else I had been reading. Wonderful, evocative story!

Others in my top 5 for this quarter are:

The Alchemist
Wings, A Novel of WWII Flygirls
The Bone Collector
Island in the Sky

Lots of other honorable mentions, but these were the creme de la creme!

My five favorites from the second quarter, in the order in which I read them, are:

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (best book of the quarter)
I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

In no particular order mine would be:

Midworld
Sentenced to Prism
Dark Matter

I only have three this quarter.

My top 5 for the quarter, in order that I read them:

1) The Hunger Games trilogy (cheating, I know)
2) Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
3) Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant
4) The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
5) Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

Tougher than usual since I've been doing a lot of rereading this quarter, but here are my five best new books of the past three months in order read:

The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross (nonfiction)
The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson (YA)
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder (nonfiction)
Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis (children's/YA)
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

>27 jfetting: Isn't The Sunne in Splendour wonderful!

My Q2 favorite is The Help, which I listened to as an audiobook. All three of the readers were amazing, and the story impressed me so much I'm still thinking about it months later. It is far and away the best of the bunch and rated 5+ stars. My other 5-star favorites for Q2 are:
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Fifth Witness
Still Life with Crows
and, for sheer fun, a tie between Leviathan and Kitty and the Midnight Hour.

Hmm, I just noticed that all but The Help were mysteries and/or thrillers.

I also only have three this quarter... been too busy to read much!

Fiction:
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel - simply amazing. I liked this one much better than Wolf Hall.

Non-Fiction:
Scorpions by Noah Feldman - A surprising look at the history of the Supreme Court.
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan - Turned what I knew about the Dust Bowl on its head.

I can't wait to start on my third quarter reading, I've added several things to Mt. TBR just from this thread.

I must read A Place of Greater Safety soon...

Yes, Darryl, you must!

I love the literary tastes of this group! I just finished A LITTLE LIFE, by Hana Yanagihira, well, I didn't finish it, actually, I returned it to the library unfinished. Not for me.

There are so many other books I want to read.

WONDERSTRUCK
A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY
STARRY RIVER OF THE SKY
ALL DAYS ARE NIGHT
JACKBABY

I don't see these on LT, so I'll have to bring them in!

A Great and Terrible Beauty is definitely on LT, unless you mean a different one from Libba Brays' YA novel. Not sure about the others.

I became so immersed in Paris Architect Charles Belfoure that I thought it would take me forever to find another great read. But I had Town Like Alice Nevil Shute a LB recommendation that I figured I'd give it a try. What a great book, so now I'm in WW!! Malaya. I have Circling the Sun Paula McClain next up.

I want to add my kudos for Book Thief Markus Zusak which I've read more than once. For an enhanced experience, I recommend listing to it on audio. The reader Alan Corduner does a an amazing job. By the way, I was stunned to learn that this was a young adult book

I've been wanting to read the Guernsey books! I really can't recommend any books right now. I've been bogged down with reading indie authors who are requesting reviews. Not that I think anything is wrong with indie books. After all, I published one. But more often than not, they haven't been well-crafted or edited.