Winter '11 Bookclub Swap

Each season I will list ten books. You will pick one, read it, review it and snail mail the review to your partner. I’ll pick genres/themes for each season, and try to include a variety. This time the theme is BEST BOOKS OF 2010, so there should be something for everyone. The reason for the large choice list is this: if you get a few chapters in and think “Errrr”, then you can pick another book and have another go. You do need to read the whole book for this swap, but like I said, you have plenty of choices. Remember that the point of this is to read books/genres/authors that you otherwise wouldn’t, even if you have to grit your teeth and bear it. You may pick a book you’ve read before, but that kind of defeats the object, right? But, yes, you can do this.

So, Best Books of 2010… I could have given you my favorites of 2010, but I know not everyone loves fantasies and YA novels, so I have taken these titles from the “Best Books of 2010” Listopia list off of Goodreads (as of 12/15). I started at the top of the list and went down until I found 10 books that were not part of a series. So here’s your book list :

Shadow Hills by Anatasia Hopcus

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Room by Emma Donoghue

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Anarcho Grow by T. A. Sedlack

The Murderer’s Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers

Saving Ceecee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Bloodlines by Lindsay Anne Kendal

Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Your review should be about one side of printer paper. You should include the following points :

• Which book you picked and why.

• What the book is about – you can copy out the synopsis if you want.

• What you initially thought of the book when just starting it.

• What you thought of the book halfway through.

• What you thought of the book when you’d finished it.

• Would you recommend this book? Would you read it again? Would you read more from that author? Or from the same genre? Is it the type of thing you like, or is it totally new for you? Why or why not would you read more like it?

• Why or why didn’t you like it?

• How long did it take you to read it? Why was this? (i.e – because you couldn’t put it down and sat up all night, because you usually read at that pace, because you couldn’t read at your usual pace due to life things, or because you had to make yourself read it…).