January
- Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me?, Mindy Kaling
One of the best books I read all year...loved it so much I wrote about it here!
February
- Bossypants, Tina Fey
Another one of the funnier books I read this year! I started with the actual book form, but ended up listening to the audio book on a rather long drive. Am so glad I did! Listening to Tina Fey actually tell her own stories was really awesome. A really good overview of how she got into the business, the treatment of women versus men, and the walls that needed to be torn down in order for her & her female castmates to become so successful. - Swamplandia, Karen Russell
This was a strange book...recommended because I enjoyed Geek Love. It was a fairly engaging look at a family of crocodile wrestlers forced to give up their way of life because bigger attractions have come into the area. It got a little too weird for me towards the end, and very unsatisfying. - The Paris Wife, Paula McClain
A fictional look at Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley -- their meeting, courtship, marriage, and life together. It was a terrific novel, and a fun look at the Lost Generation and the bohemian lifestyle many of them led. Given then many stories we hear about Papa, I enjoyed seeing where he started.
March
- The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins
So, yeah, had to reread these ones before the movie came out. Again...a couple days, gone.
April
- A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
I was very interested in Hemingway after reading The Paris Wife, and this in book in particular, as it was Paula McClain's inspiration to write from Hadley's point of view. A Moveable Feast was Hemingway's autobiography about his early years in Paris. It was very typically Lost Generation -- a little slow, very introspective -- but I enjoyed the contrast it provided to The Paris Wife.
May
- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Continuing with the Hemingway interest, this is one book I have been trying to read since about college. But god, is it slow. I came to the conclusion after reading this book that the Lost Generation would have LOVED twitter...and it may have helped them from being so verbose about how they ate breakfast. After reading both The Paris Wife and A Moveable Feast, I can see exactly what was going on in Hemingway's life at the point he wrote this, which was pretty awesome.
June
- Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver
This came through on my Amazon recommendations, I assume because I liked the Hunger Games Trilogy. A teen lit book about a car accident and the actions that led up to it. It made me terribly sad.
July
- The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
I was looking for a good summer book that I could bring to the beach -- boy did I find it! A look at how one wrong pitch, can send a life tumbling the wrong direction, and how hard it can be to recover from that. A book about baseball and the paths it can open up, and how quickly it can all be taken away. I loved it. - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The last of my Lost Generation books of the year, I wanted to re-read this before the movie came out (which it still hasn't). I hadn't read it since high school, so it was a good refresher, and necessary given it's pop culture relevance. It's also a tough one to get through, because the people are so privileged and so selfish and sometimes you want to smack the self-indulgence right out of them.
