My Most Favourite Thing (Part Two)

Now for the final five of my favourite books! I'm just going to go ahead and dive right in!

6. Crewel, by Gennifer Albin

"Take the happiness you can, even if it's only a little."

-Crewel

 This book takes so many interesting concepts and blends them beautifully into one story. It is a series, but I am currently reading the second one (Altered, as can be seen on the Current Favourites page) and am reserving judgement for the remainder of the series until I finish it. Crewel, though, had me captivated. It loosely uses string theory (wow!) as the basis for the story,  implying that the entire fabric of the world can be controlled by a select few.

The story follows a girl, Adelice, who has the power to control the fabric in a way that no one else can. She is taken away from her family and taken to a compound where she is trained to hone her power so that the government can use her. The government uses the people who can control the fabric of the world, called Spinsters, to control the entire community. They can tear people's life-threads out of the fabric, killing them. They weave in the food and resources and the weather. But, naturally, the government is corrupted, and with Adelice's power she is more powerful than the government anticipated, and she wants to change the way the weaving works.
I love the string theory element. It is a very loose basis, but wow, it is so cleverly done. The amount of thinking you have to do to properly understand Adelice's world is insane, and it makes you want to actually study science. I hate science. So this was a miracle.

7. The Chemical Garden Trilogy, by Lauren DeStefano

"I'll tell you something about true love. There's no science to it. It's as natural as the sky."

-Wither, Chemical Garden #1

 This series consists of three books: Wither, Fever, and Sever. I am currently reading the second one, and the concept is beyond intriguing. The entire world has been struck down with a plague, and the only country still surviving is North America. The plague is strange in the way that no one knew that it was there until it happened. In the process of trying to genetically engineer "perfect children," a single generation manages to destroy all of their children's lives. Everyone born after this attempt to mess with genetics will now die at 25 if they are male, and 20 if they are female. This leads to girls being kidnapped off the streets to be sold to the highest bidder to "produce offspring." The amount of orphans is also ridiculously high, because their parents all die by the time they're 6-7, depending on how early their parents conceived.

Our main character, a girl named Rhine, is kidnapped in her hometown and sold to a man who owns an enormous estate in Florida. At age 16, she has two sister wives: one is 19, nearing her 20th birthday, and subsequently her death, and the other is only 13. The three bond together, and Rhine concocts a plan in secret to escape the mansion along with a servant boy she befriended. She wants to get back home, to New York, and find the twin brother she was stolen away from.

These books are not for the faint-hearted. A lot of the material is extremely heavy for a book geared towards teen girls. Several times I had to put it down to deal with the emotional trauma that was being dealt my way. For those of you who have read--and finished--the Divergent trilogy, prepare yourself for similar heartbreak. The second book is extremely dense with tragedy, but not in the way of death. If you ask me, death is the easiest element to deal with in literature; Fever takes every horror of being a girl in a world that objectifies you and throws it in your face and holds it there, forcing you to look. I haven't continued Fever in a while because I needed something a little lighter to even things out, but these books are, without a doubt, beautifully written. Being able to deal out that kind of emotion and drama without it seeming forced and fake is a rare talent, and definitely one that I appreciate in a good book.

8. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, by Libba Bray

"'I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.'"

-A Great and Terrible Beauty

Ah, the Victorian era. This is my favourite period to read about, mostly because almost all romance outside of marriage is completely illicit and scandalous, so any love story that transpires between the pages of a Victorian-centric novel is sure to be good (see also: The Luxe series by Anna Godberson). These books also mix in magic, an element that I love in every book, no matter how it's introduced. Fantasy and historical fiction all mushed together? Yes please!

 Gemma Doyle's mother has passed on, murdered before Gemma's eyes by a shadow in India. No one believes what she saw, and she can't get her mother's final words out of her head: words that referred to some person named Circe. Gemma's grandmother becomes her primary custodian, as her father is too drunk and high on opiates to look after her properly. She is sent to a finishing school, far away from her family.
She makes friends, very good friends, and together they start to realize that something is quite right about the history of the school. They dig deeper and eventually find their way to a magical garden in another reality, where magic is real and they can do absolutely anything. There is no one telling them to sit up straight, to only speak when spoken to, or to control their movements and plan their lives for them. They are truly free in a world where no one lets women do anything.

But something begins to corrupt the magic of their secret world, and slowly starts to push them out. All of them, except for Gemma, the one who was originally chosen and blessed with the ability to return. As the magic gets darker, and the once beautiful garden begins to rot and die, Gemma desperately tries to find a way to save her secret world. She discovers that the person her mother was so afraid of, Circe, is behind it. And she's not only in the magical world: she's back home in England too. And she's bringing all of her demons with her.
These books are extraordinary. From my lovely Victorian England, to secret societies, to magic, unusual and broken friendships, girls with secrets they've been hiding for fear of being hurt, and to a love that no one else could possibly understand.
Just writing about these books makes me really need to read them again. Guess I know what I'm doing after school today.

9. The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl

"'Yes, we rather condemn people for eternity without the courtesy of informing them.'"

-The Dante Club

I actually read this book for my mid-term final during my senior year of high school. It was on a list prescribed by my excellent English teacher (who has impeccable taste in books), and I was very reluctant to read it. I am an enormous fan already of The Divine Comedy, and I wasn't eager to read about someone writing about something so wonderful only for them to ruin it.
I was very sorely mistaken.
Matthew Pearl takes, without a doubt, the most interesting people and pieces of literature and writes fantastic stories about them. After finishing the book, I immediately tweeted my praise to him and was delighted to receive a response.

 Set in another favourite era of mine, the American Civil war, The Dante Club is about a group of men set together to properly translate The Divine Comedy. The group includes very famous historical figures: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Thomas Fields, and James Russell Lowell. As they translate the work from Italian to English, they start noticing parallels between what they translate and a recent string of murders.
The four of them turn from poets and writers to detectives, watching carefully to the details of each murder, and then predicting what the murderer will do next based on The Inferno.
Danger lurks around every corner, and with the companionship of these four men, they unveil the killer, a person no one suspects, and who is just a big a fan of Dante as they are.

10. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” 

-Pride and Prejudice

Without a doubt, this is one of the most famous book openings in the history of ever. This book may be last on my list, but it certainly isn't last in my heart. If these books were in order of favourites, Pride and Prejudice would be at the top. I am so smitten with this book that just the name makes me giggle with happiness. Elizabeth Bennet is one of the most astounding characters in the history of literature. She plays by her own tune, is remarkably stubborn, and respects herself and is beyond confident within a society that looks down on her.

I doubt I have to tell anyone what this story is about, but if you aren't an avid reader, I would highly recommend watching the BBC 1995 production. It is long, I know. It's almost 6 whole hours of deliciously perfect script that follows the book word-for-word. None of that stupid Keira Knightley crap (I really hate that version. Please don't talk to me about it. They get Darcy and Elizabeth all wrong and I will never forgive that. SO STUPID UGHHHHHH).
You can have a book out and follow the dialogue and scene changes, the acting is impeccable, the music is perfection, there is not a single thing wrong with that production. The fact that I am recommending that you can watch the movie instead of actually read the book speaks to it's impeccability.

That's it! The final words I leave you with are: read much, read often, read until you can't possibly keep your eyes open anymore. Reading is such a gift, and writers work very hard on all of the work they create, and the best way you can honour and respect that hard work is to read it. You don't have to enjoy it. I often read books purely for the sake of reading, not because something about the book stuck out to me. I often find some of my favourites that way.
Read read read! You will be so happy you did. I love Skyrim, don't get me wrong, but reading will, alongside my cats, always be my most favourite thing.

"For the  Lord  your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With His love, He will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

-Zephaniah 3:17