Top Ten Books I Read in 2013

I haven't done Top Ten Tuesday in a while, mainly because I have been slacking at reading books. But as the year comes to an end, their last topic is Top Ten Books I read in 2013. So I decided to write down mine. Here they are:

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak:

This books is just amazing. I had no idea what the book was about but it ended up becoming one of my all time favourites. Its narrated by death, set in Nazi Germany and it includes books as the title suggests. This book made me truly appreciate good writing and my love for words grew. Its just so beautiful that one had to read it oneself.

2. I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak:

When I read an awesome book, I tend to read all the books by the same author. So I picked this one with not much hope. I don't even know what to say. Its equally beautiful. The story is worlds apart. The concept of the book is so simple and that is where its beauty lies. The love one feels after doing simple tasks for someone else and becoming selfless for a single second.

3. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult:

I had to include a Jodi Picoult in the top ten. Its one of JP's best works that I have read. I read it just after finishing high school. So the impact was far more intense on me. Because the story is based on bullying and I had seen it firsthand in my school. I love how JP makes a victim into a hero and a hero into a victim. At the end, there is no one hero or one victim. Everyone is half half in their life. And I cannot express enough love for the way she writes and her similes.

4. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green:

Yes. I am sure that this book is on everyone's top ten list. I loved it to bits. It was just one of those heart breaking books that you don't forget as time passes by. The story was so well written. The characters were perfect. I started crying from the part where Augustus tells Hazel about his cancer. And I didn't stop till the end.

5. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn:

This was one of the most different books I have ever read. But because I love thrillers and suspense, I loved it. It was creepy, horrifying, completely different from what you would expect from a story revolving around a married couple. I loved how intricate the story was with all the tiny details tied together with threads. It reminded me of how J.K.Rowling has linked everything together in HP.

6. Arabian Nights:

It was one of the very few classics I read this year. And it was really good. The book jumps from one story to another than goes into another like Inception. Its pretty cool. I literally had to go back a couple of time to make sure that I am not losing track of the story. I have read a lot about that Arab era and I myself live in an Arab country.

7. The Running Man by Stephen King:

Its no secret that I am not a horror fan meaning a Stephen King fan. But I read this book on the insisting of a friend. And its brilliant. Its a dystopian novel. King wrote in 1982 when the term "dystopian" didn't even exist. It just shows how brilliant of a mind he has. The story is simple with not a lot of complicating characters. Its raw and you realize that today, society is not much different than the one told in the book.

8. The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay: 

This was again a recommendation by a friend. I loved all of the characters in it. I was so happy to read about their different hobbies because I grew up with a lot of hobbies. But sadly, the idea is dead these days where people mention watching movies as their hobby. She has written a brilliant book on teenage struggles and the life that we lead.

9. The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger:

Whenever I mention this book, I am reminded of the story associated with it. Lets just say that a friend of mine was caught reading it in class. The book was taken away from her. And we stole it back from the Vice Principal's office. It was a hysterical drama which lasted a week or so. But it came my favourite the minute I read it. Its the perfect love story I have ever read. I am amazed at Niffenegger, at how she took such a difficult concept and executed it perfectly.

10. Against Medical Advice:

I had read so many heart breaking books the past summer that I opened this book with the intention of a light murder read. Because that is what James Patterson does. Instead I found myself reading about the struggles of a young boy who has no control over his mind and thus his body. I found myself feeling helpless and crying for him. And the fact that its a true story made me see the strength that we as youngsters have in ourselves. I loved how he made sure to emerge as a winner.

So this is my top ten books I read in 2013 list. I hope that you had an amazing year. And that your list is great.

Adieu !

S

......

Top Ten Books I Wish Were Taught in Schools

This is actually very ironic. I remember reading What Katy Did, Oliver Twist, Robinson Crusoe, etc in middle school but when I moved to Qatar in 6th grade, class reading changed drastically. There was no concept of reading novels as part of a syllabus. Our books had excerpts from different classics which was very boring. So obviously, for me I would have loved to be taught books in school. Because I know how much fun it is, reading and having book discussions over a book. These are some of the books that I would have loved to read in class with the amazing English teacher I had.

Top Ten Books I Wish Were Taught In Schools:

1. The Count of Monte Cristo :



This is a perfect high school book. It is a classic. So all the teachers who are more into literature and classics will not oppose this. It is a story of revenge, betrayal, trust, integrity, patience, everything that one would want in a book. It took me about a week to read it and it is 1600 pages long. But it is worth the read. And this is my most favourite book.





2. Hunger Games:

Or any good dystopian novel. High school is like playing Hunger Games. Instead of districts, there are different groups from the most popular to geeks, drama queens etc. Its all about surviving in those four most important years of your life where you have to enjoy your teenage life while making a future for yourself. Reading such a book gives you the satisfaction that you are not alone in this fight of yours with the world. And it is not boring.

3. 19 Minutes:

This is such a perfect book. I read it after I finished High School this year and I truly understood what bullying does to a person. It breaks you. It destroys a person. This should be taught so students would know how it feels to be bullied. I know that not everyone is attentive in school, but even if you get the message across one person, that is all that matters.



4. Paper Towns:

When I finished reading this book, I so badly wanted to discuss it with
my English teacher. There were so many things I had a problem with and I thought to myself, damn, I wish I was taught this in school. It has a lot philosophy in it which needs class discussions and a teacher to make you go into the depth of things. I understood the story but I know I would have gotten much more out of it.





5. I Am the Messenger:

Aaaaahhhh. Markus Zusak. What should I say ? The message of this book is beautiful. At first you might not be into the book but it leaves a life lasting impact on you. After reading this book, Zusak shot up on my Best Author list. This is for all the lazy asses out there who instead of doing something in life, just lie around waiting for things to work out by magic.





6. Little Women:

I read this book when I was very young and I loved it. It is my mothers favourite book and I think this was the first classic she bought me. Its such a great story of love, family, friendships and so much more. Jo and Larry are my favourite characters and I was devastated when Jo says no to him. That was the first time I wanted to have a sister, looking at the fun that Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth have. I have read this book countless times, so obviously I know their names by heart.



7. The Book Thief:

Teachers want their students to learn something new everyday. What is a better way of learning what Nazi Germany was like than reading about it from a very different perspective ? I have read a lot about the era of Hitler and Nazism but this was such a different read on a very common topic. And its a book about a girls love for books and words. Nothing can be better for me.

...SAP...

An Excerpt: The Word Shaker

There was once a strange, small man. He decided three important details about his life:

1. 1.       He would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else.
2. 2.       He would make himself a small, strange moustache.
3. 3.       He would one day rule the worlds.

The young man wandered around for quite some time, thinking, planning, and figuring out exactly how to make the world his. Then one day, out of nowhere, it struck him-the perfect plan. He had seen a mother walking with her child. At one point, she admonished the small boy, until finally, he began to cry. Within a few minutes, she spoke very softly to him, after which he was soothed and even smiled.

 The young man rushed to the mother and embraced her. “Words!” He grinned.

“What?”

But there was no reply. He was already gone.

Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words. “ I will never fire a gun,” he devised, “I will not have to.” Still, he was not rash. Let’s allow him at least that much. He was not a stupid man at all. His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possible.

    He planted then day and night, and cultivated them.

    He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany...It was a nation of farmed thoughts.

While the words were growing, our young Fuhrer also planted seed to create symbols, and these, too, were well on their way to full bloom. Now the time had come. The Fuhrer was ready.

     He invited his people toward his own glorious heart, beckoning them with his finest, ugliest words, handpicked from his forests. And the people came.

     

They were all placed on a conveyer belt and run through a rampant machine that gave them a lifetime in ten minutes. Words were fed into them. Time disappeared and now they knew everything they needed to know. They were hypnotized.

Next, they were fitted with their symbols, and everyone was happy.

Soon, the demand for the demand for the lovely, ugly words and symbols increased to such a point that as the forests grew, many people were needed to maintain them. Some were employed to climb the trees and throw the words down to those below. They were then fed directly into the remainder of the Fuhrer’s people, not to mention those who came back for more.

The people who climbed those trees were called words shakers.

The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be without words.

That’s why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.

One day, however, she met a man who was despised by her homeland, even though he was born in it. They became good friends, and when the man was sick, the word shaker allowed a single tear to fall on his face. The tear was a made of friendship-a single word-and it dried and became a seed, and when next the girl was 

in the forest, she planted that seed among the other trees. She watered it every day.

At first, there was nothing, but one afternoon, when she checked it after a day of word-shaking, a small sprout had shot up. She stared at it for a long time.

The tree grew every day, faster than everything else, till it was the tallest tree in the forest. Everyone came to 

look at it. They all whispered about it, and the waited...for the Fuhrer.

Incensed, he immediately ordered the tree to be cut down. That was when the word-shaker made her way through the crowd. She fell to her hands and knees. “ Please,” she cried, “You can’t cut it down.”

    The Fuhrer, however, was unmoved. He could not afford to make exceptions. As the word shaker was dragged away, he turned to his right-hand man and made a request. “Axe, please.”

At that moment, the word shaker twisted free. She ran. She boarded the tree, and even as the Fuhrer hammered at the trunk with his axe, she climbed until she reached the highest of the branches. The voices and axe beats continued faintly on. Clouds walked by like monsters with grey hearts. Afraid but stubborn, the word shaker remained. She waited for the tree to fall.

But the tree would not move.

   Many hours passed, and still, the Fuhrers axe could not take a single bite out of the trunk. In a strange nearing collapse, he ordered another man to continue.

Days passed.

    Weeks took over.

    A hundred and ninety-six soldiers could not make any impact on the word shaker’s tree.

   “But how does she eat?” the people asked. “How does she sleep?”

 What they didn’t know was that other word shakers threw supplies across, and the girl climbed down to the lower branches to collect them.

It snowed. It rained. Seasons came and went. The word shaker remained.

    When the last axman gave up, he called up to her. “Word shaker! You can come down now! There is no one who can defeat this tree!”

     The word shaker, who could only just make out the man’s sentences, replied with a whisper. She handed it down through the branches. “No thank you,” she said, for she knew that it was only herself who was holding the tree upright.

No one knew how long it had taken, but one afternoon, a new axman walked into town. His bag looked too heavy for him. His eyes dragged. His feet drooped with exhaustion. “The tree,” he asked the people. “Where is the tree?”

An audience followed him, and when he arrived, clouds had covered the highest regions of the branches. The word shaker could hear the people calling out that a new axman had come to put an end to her vigil.

“She will not come down,” the people said, “for anyone.”

They did not know who the axman was, and they did not know that he was undeterred.

He opened his bag and pulled out something much smaller than an axe.

The people laughed. They said, “You cannot chop down a tree with an old hummer!”

The young man did not listen to them. He only looked through his bag for some nails. He placed three of them in his mouth and attempted to hammer a fourth into the tree. The first branches were now extremely high and he estimated that he needed four nails to use as footholds to reach them.

“Look at this idiot,” roared one of the watching men. “No one else could chop it down with an axe, and this fool thinks he can do it with-”

The man fell silent.

The first nail entered the tree and was held steadily after five blows. Then the second went in, and the young man started to climb.

By the fourth nail, he was up in the arms and continued on his way. He was tempted to call out as he did so, but he decided against it.

The climb seemed to last for miles. It took many hours for him to reach the final branches, and when he did, he found the word shaker asleep in her blankets and the clouds.

He watched her for many minutes.

The warmth of the sun heated the cloudy rooftop.

He reached down, touching her arm, and the word shaker woke up.

She rubbed her eyes, and after a long study of his face, she spoke.

“Is it really you?”

Is it from your cheek, she thought, that I took the seed?

The man nodded.

His heart wobbled and he held to the branches. “It is.”

Together, they stayed in the summit of the tree. They waited for the clouds to disappear, and when they did, they could see the rest of the forest.

“It wouldn’t stop growing,” she explained.

“ But neither would this.” The young man looked at the branch that held his hand. He had a point.

When they had looked and talked enough, they made their way back down. They left the blanket and the remaining food behind.

The people could not believe what they were seeing, and the moment the word shaker and the young man set foot in the world, the tree finally began to show the ax marks. Bruises appeared. Slits were made in the 

trunk and the earth began to shiver.

“It’s began to fall!” a young woman screamed. “ The tree is going to fall!” She was right. The word shaker’s tree, in all its miles and miles of height, slowly begin to tip. It moaned as it was sucked to the ground. The world shook, and when everything finally settled, the tree was laid out among the rest of the forest. It could never destroy all of it, but is nothing else, a different-coloured path was carved through it.

  The word shaker and the young man climbed up to the horizontal trunk. The navigated the branches and began to walk. When they looked back, they noticed that the majority of onlookers had started to return to their own places. In there. Out there. In the forest.

  But as they walked on, they stopped several times, to listen. They thought they could hear voices and words behind them, on the words shaker’s tree.

                      

                    -The Word Shaker by Max Vamdenburg in the book, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

P.S. Through this book I got to learn more about the power that words hold. Words are the best weapon and if you have it, you have everything. You can buy every kind of weapon but you cannot buy words. Treasure it, if you have it.

...SAP...