The Best Reads of 2011

What a great year for books! Unfortunately, it wasn't a great year for time to read all the books I wanted. The year started off with my going to the Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Weekend in Jefferson, TX. There I was introduced to many new (to me) authors which added to my already leaning pile of books-I-want-to-read-before-I-die.

Writing, editing, and marketing took a big chunk of my reading time in the middle part of the year, but I've finished strong and read some darned good books the last few month. Before I get to that, I have to tell you about a new and interesting twist to my author life - I was asked to read a number of books for endorsement - that pithy little blurb that appears sometimes on the cover or in the flyleaf at the front of a book. What an honor . . . and a responsibility. You can either gush and sound really silly or try out some sixty-four dollar words and sound stuffy or you can give a brief but lively blurb that pulls out the strengths of the book. Luckily, for me, this was easy as all the books I was asked to read only added to my literary enjoyment this year.

So to start things off, these are the authors and their books that I've endorsed this year:

When All My Dreams Come True by Janelle Mowery
Reinventing Leona by Lynne Gentry
Reclaiming Lily by Patti Lacy
Savanna's Gift by Camille Eide
Wish You Were Here by Beth K. Vogt (2012 release)
A Sweethaven Summer by Courtney Walsh (2012 release)
The Mother Road by Jennifer AlLee (2012 release)

Such a privilege to read these heart-warming stories. The one thing they all had in common was the unique voice that each author brought to the book.

Now, on to the Best of List. I sometimes do a top five in two or three categories, but this year my reading took me far and wide so I'm going to do like they do on the televised awards shows and invent categories to suit my needs.

Best Memoir:

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White

Best Novel Set in England:

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Best Novel Set in the South:

Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress - Absurd and Hilarious!

Best Literary Novel:

The Violets of March by Sarah Jio

Best Novel from CBA (Christian Booksellers Association):

The Sweetest Thing by Elizabeth Musser

Two-Way Tie for Second Place:
Blue Skies Tomorrow by Sarah Sundin
A Sound Among the Trees by Susan Meissner

Best Christan Debut:

Wings of a Dream by Anne Mateer

OVERALL BEST BOOK: Remember what I said about that huge pile of books. The best book I read this year is one that's been gathering dust for a couple of years, the one I'd heard great things about but never seemed to pull out and read. Although it has a 2007 pub date, 2011 was the year I discovered it, and everything I've ever heard about this book was true. Gritty. Mesmerizing. Heart-wrenching. The writing is unlike anything you've ever read. The characters and the story will wind around your heart and squeeze until you think you can't breathe. The impression will not go easily away. A teaser: I will never see or hear an accordion again without thinking of my choice for Best Book of 2011 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

It will most likely be read again in 2012.

How about you? Are you familiar with these authors or these books? See anything interesting? It was an eclectic year for me, and that's just the way I like it!

Happy New Year! I'll be back next week to tell you about the books I'm looking forward to in 2012.

THE SWEETEST THING by Elizabeth Musser

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing The Sweetest Thing • Bethany House (June 1, 2011) by Elizabeth Musser

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elizabeth Musser, an Atlanta native, studied English and French literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While at Vanderbilt, I had the opportunity to spend a semester in Aix-en-Provence,

France. During her Senior year at Vanderbilt, she attended a five-day missions conference for students and discovered an amazing thing: God had missionaries in France, and she felt God calling her there. After graduation, she spent eight months training for the mission field in Chicago, Illinois and then two years serving in a tiny Protestant church in Eastern France where she met her future husband.

Elizabeth lives in southern France with her husband and their two sons. She find her work as a mother, wife, author and missionary filled with challenges and chances to see God’s hand at work daily in her life. Inspiration for her novels come both from her experiences growing up in Atlanta as well as through the people she meets in her work in France. Many conversations within her novels are inspired from real-life conversations with skeptics and seekers alike.

Her acclaimed novel, The Swan House, was a Book Sense bestseller list in the Southeast and was selected as one of the top Christian books for 2001 by Amazon's editors. Searching for Eternity is her sixth novel.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Compelling Southern Novel Explores Atlanta Society in the 1930s.

The Singleton family’s fortunes seem unaffected by the Great Depression, and Perri—along with the other girls at Atlanta’s elite Washington Seminary—lives a life of tea dances with college boys and matinees at the cinema. When tragedy strikes, Perri is confronted with a world far different from the one she has always known.

At the insistence of her parents, Mary ‘Dobbs’ Dillard, the daughter of an itinerant preacher, is sent from inner-city Chicago to live with her aunt and attend Washington Seminary. Dobbs, passionate, fiercely individualistic and deeply religious, enters Washington Seminary as a bull in a china shop and shocks the girls with her frank talk about poverty and her stories of revival on the road. Her arrival intersects at the point of Perri’s ultimate crisis, and the tragedy forges an unlikely friendship.

The Sweetest Thing tells the story of two remarkable young women—opposites in every way—fighting for the same goal: surviving tumultuous change. Just as the Great Depression collides disastrously with Perri's well-ordered life, friendship blossoms--a friendship that will be tested by jealousy, betrayal, and family secrets...

If you would like to read the first chapter of The Sweetest Thing, go HERE.

MY REVIEW: 
This was my first book by this author, and what a sweet read it was. It's a book about friendship, the kind that you need to read slowly so you can savor each word. It starts off with a bang, but then unfolds gently and kept me enthralled with these characters from Depression Era Atlanta. I loved the ebb and flow of friendship developing and moving through the crises of Dobbs and Perri until the final surprising, but satisfying conclusion. Well done, Elizabeth!