TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2019

hi friends it's Kayla it's the end of the year I have behind me all of the books that I read in 2019 tomorrow we're gonna dive into all of my stats and that kind of stuff but right now I'm gonna pull ten from these shelves that were my favorites of the entire year and tell you about them I think a lot of these you might expect maybe if you feel really invested in my content put your guesses down below um I don't know if you wanna do a top 10 and guess all ten that could be a fun game pause and see how many you can guess because I feel like this isn't a very surprising list I think I've well at least my top five my top five was so easy and then the other five weren't challenging to choose but they were challenging to order I do them in order so I'm gonna start with my tenth favorite book of the year before I begin I just want to say something that a lot of these books have in common so if you're here specifically for recommendations I want to let you know something that I love in books and then exists in a lot of books but isn't the most popular opinion and that is open endings I've recently discovered my distaste for epilogues and 20 years in the future here's where the characters are here's everything wrapped up in a nice box the feeling of conclusiveness that's not something I'm really looking for so just know that in this stack I don't want to give you specific books that this happens in because I feel like that's kind of a spoiler but if you're here for recommendations maybe this list isn't for you if you like that feeling of satisfaction when you're finishing a book apparently that's not what I want so let's begin in the number 10 position is when the moon was ours by Anna Marie Macklemore I have read their books one book every year for the last three years and they've ended up in my top 10 of the year every year of all my favorites I feel like this one might be surprising just because I don't feel like I've talked about it enough maybe my enthusiasm wasn't as clear in the videos in which I've already spoken about this book but this is like all of emery's books so special and the imagery is so wonderful this is magical realism its flowery writing it's a serial and it took me I think the first half of this book like a lot of their books do for me to really understand what was happening and feel completely immersed but once I did like I was crying I was upset and angry and happy and as follows a boy and a girl and the girl like appeared one day out of a water tower the boy paints moons and the trees like it's weird basically I like weird things that is a common theme among this stack as well there is also this group of witches in this book and they're trying to steal the main characters flowers which she grows out of her wrists and they believe it'll do magical things she basically gets threatened by them revealing her secrets and this boys secrets these trans that's a huge part of the story and it's her protecting him and herself it's a story of like acceptance and magic and secrets and unconditional love I couldn't not mention this because of all the books and all the characters I read this year these are some of the most memorable people and scenes that I read I still think about this book it's very culturally vibrant and vulnerable which I love in my number 9 position is watch s riots by Rena Watson and Ellen Hagen with all of these books they are my favorites of the year this one specifically I wanted to include because as a teen book like specifically for I a I do think this transcends age and can be read by adults and enjoyed but like specifically for teens this is like my favorite teen title for teens of the year this follows two best friends and they go to this like progressive NYC High School where it seems like they have the ability to talk about anything discuss anything they have so many opportunities and then suddenly they feel silenced by their faculty because they've started up this vlog where they discuss feminism and racial microaggression sexism and a lot of things happening at their school and just around them that are in Justices their blog goes kind of viral and gets some unexpected attention and their school wants to shut it down and that prompts them to make their voice even bigger so I loved all the topics that happened in here but I also just really enjoyed the blog posts in the poetry which isn't something I traditionally like in books but those little excerpts were really enjoyable and I thought they talked about amazing things I think this would be a good introductory book kind of about feminism at the same time it's not like going out of its way to try to teach you something I don't think it's like an exploration of friendship and these characters are flawed and imperfect I feel like that's really a purposeful choice by these authors that their friendship allows them to challenge each other and they consistently get things wrong and don't always say the right thing but they learn a lot of lessons throughout here overall I think this was really thoughtful and especially for current teens this is like my number one recommendation in my number eight position is lock every door by Riley Sankar this again elicited such an emotional response from me like it made me feel anxious it made me angry I was surprised and shocked and it follows a girl who gets a job as an apartment siddur it seems like this dream job they're gonna pay her money to live in this fancy apartment she is starting a new life for herself the twist is there are a lot of rules living in this apartment complex and taking on this job you're not supposed to talk to the tenants you're not allowed to spend a night away from the apartment you're not allowed to have guests and the main character makes friends which she's not just to do with another apartment center and then suddenly that girl goes missing in trying to figure out what happened to this girl she is thrust into the dark underbelly of this apartment building the apartment building and it's tenants do not want her finding out what's happening I would say there's not a ton of action in here it's more of a slow suspenseful gothic tale if I had to sum it up in a sentence the timeline isn't linear which is one of my favorite things which again happens in a lot of the books that are in my favorites there's this sense of like impending doom throughout reading it in kind of a countdown and this dread I felt dread next up in the number seven position I have given to a moon of the crusted snow by Webb you should rice this is a slow haunting post-apocalyptic story following an honest nabe community when the power suddenly goes out they have no communication with anybody and it's just this sense of unknown the writing of this is one of clearly one of my favorite things of the year it is just so powerful and the way the characters are written and the scene is set it was really immersive for me and I loved like the moments of joy these characters had together in this horrible circumstance the moments of perseverance the moments of fear like I was in it I felt all the things at one point the community is being infiltrated by some other people and there's obviously a grander conversation here in regards to First Nations communities and historical events my favorite thing was just the setting of this it's rural and isolated there's only a certain amount of characters and there are people who are in a leadership position and they have to find a way to keep spirits up when the food supply is dwindling and everything is slowly turning catastrophic keeping people alive and keeping people calm it was ominous and well-crafted and I want to read everything he ever writes number six on my list I struggled with where to place this one because it is one of my favorite guest kings of all time now that's take that I think in this explosion makes most sense everything else from here is pretty like Bakula t'v wait this whole stack is speculative I think there's only two books here that don't go into weird territory this one is weird but it's more of a hard-hitting contemporary with just a s Kings like classic off-kilter tone is how I'll describe it this follows five cousins they all have their own independent stories in here because they aren't really involved with each other their family their grandparents had like a potato farm really successful really wealthy and chose not to pass down their riches to their family there's a lot of reasons for that that are discussed in here some great discussions in here about wealth and privilege there's a focus on white supremacy and racism and this family all grappling with the choices other members of the family have made so it's this dysfunctional family it's so hard to talk about the actual plot because it's so weirdly written but it's like five different teams without proper first names all having coming-of-age story lines the writing is chaotic but it's so intentional she's just such a great writer and I don't know how to describe it yeah the back doesn't help me anyway it says everything I've already said her signature surrealism the teenage experience that's the worst book review I've ever given in my life I'm very sorry next on my list we've cracked the top five and this is equally difficult to describe so I'm sorry that's bunny by Moana Awad I saw cat described this as a mix of the crafts and Frankenstein and I've never seen a more accurate way to describe this also like if you've seen the movie the Heather's that's gotta be mentioned when talking about this - this is definitely the weirdest thing I read this year and I don't know if it would be surprising this in my top 10 because my review on Goodreads was just hahaha what the this follows a girl named Samantha and she goes to school with a bunch of pretentious MFA students there is this one group of girls that she's noticed who she doesn't like and don't like her they call each other bunny and it turns out they're kind of a cult and they are involved in conjuring creatures Samantha doesn't feel like she fits in with this crowd and then somehow gets immersed into this strange world and becomes a bunny and the writing of this just incredible and weird there are certain ways that it's written where the tense changes in a really interesting way or like the perspective changes there are some chapters written in like first-person plural it felt wrong I felt uncomfortable I don't know how to talk about it and I think I'm according to some other people have spoiled this book by diving too much into the plot and where it goes and how weird their cults activities focus next up in them or four-spot is the turn of the key by Ruth where this is my favorite thriller of the year it follows a girl I feel like I've pitched this so many times and talked about this in so many different videos but it follows a girl it's written in my favorite way it's like an epistolary vibe because she's writing letters to a lawyer she wants to represent her because at the beginning of the book we know that she has been charged with murdering a child who was in her care but the way that it's told like you forget you're within a letter I really just think this is like a master class in suspense fiction I know not everyone agrees I know a lot of people did not like this but I was so impressed with how this was written how the reveals were done I was shocked by so many things and I love a thriller that has a mix of like weirdness where you don't know if these paranormal vibes are actually paranormal like are there ghosts are there other entities is the house controlling itself she's in this smart home where buttons do everything and everything is like really fancy and expensive and she's caring for these children but wasn't really taught how everything in the house works so things are confusing to her she found this job totally randomly looking for something else so she's not really the most qualified but also we don't know her past going in and it's slowly revealed in such a good way basically the house is creepy the children creepy the situation is creepy and I loved it it's said in the Scottish Highlands which was just such a great vividly described setting and it's just really well done now into my top three we're starting with why are there girls by Rory power this follows a group of girls who were in like this private school a boarding school on this island and then a talks broke out it's doing weird things to their bodies the genre here is horror body horror I don't know if body horrors of genre but that's how I would describe it they're like growing second eyelids or like how things growing out of them the mysterious element to this is one of my favorite things one of the girls goes missing who we have a couple main characters a couple perspectives in here but I feel like this is our main girl and one of her friends goes missing and she's trying to figure out what is happening to the girls who suddenly can't be found anymore on the island they're being provided food by the mainland and it's like this power position they've created their own society kind of and there's different jobs that you have and there are certain girls who get to let go meet the boat and get access to the food but there's mysteries surrounding all of the things happening on this island obviously this is just one of my perfect things and I know a lot of things in here didn't work for some people so that's fine I will still just talk about this book and Leslie because it's everything that I wanted it's got just like real life dynamics it's got survival it's got the weird stuff it's got some queer relationships but that didn't take like the focus of the plot the focus of the plot isn't romance but there's just enough friendship and relationship stuff I loved every choice that was made in here in my number two spot yes aluminium made my number two spot I know when I talked about this I was so surprised by how amazing it was and I couldn't stop talking about it but I don't know if I fully Express to you that like this is in my number two spot of books this entire year I know that I'm so very late on getting on board with illuminae this was one of the most talked about books like 2014 2015 booktube and i regret not getting on the hype train earlier because I just thought hard sci-fi wasn't for me maybe AI which everyone was talking about that aspect of the book wasn't for me spaceship stuff I thought maybe wasn't for me listen I'm wrong this is my everything I adore illuminae I adore Katie and Ezra so much and their story if you somehow don't know what this is the book kicks off with this couple of teens who would have broken up and suddenly their planet is being attacked and a war has broken out and they escape on a couple different ships but now their spaceship is being chased by other ships there's a lot of like political war intrigue in here and their only way to communicate is via like hacking into the computer systems and talking this essentially is a found-footage text it's mixed media and every page is like transcripts or video footage or voice clips or IMS and it's the story of like what happened why these people attack this planet what's happening on the ships there's like a sickness running rampant through these ships and people going back and forth between the ships trying to outrun up chips I just cannot believe how a non-traditional text like this made me so invested in these characters and so vividly described the setting without like traditional exposition I'm just so impressed with not only what this book is in regards to like how it was laid out but how this story unfolded and these relationships that I was like crying over lastly my number one favorite book of the year there's no way that you don't know what this is because I won't shut up about it I'm the number one middle game supporter and I will be talking about this every day of my life in this book we are following Roger and Dodger who are who have been created there's this man named Reed who works in the alchemical arts and him along with a group of people are trying to ascend to godhood and the way to do that is to create these sets of twins and test them another thing I guess that I should mention with like all of these books is if you're okay being confused for the majority of a book that's a lot of the focus of my favorite things - I love just being thrown into this world and experience in characters lives where I know nothing I don't understand anything that's happening and I won't understand for hundreds of pages it's confusing in a really incredible way these twins have been separated to have the opportunity to fully develop their own powers but they keep coming together they can speak to each other in some ways or they're just being pulled together their twinness and their artificial life is constantly drawing them together and they are audronado two of my absolute parent characters I've ever read they just embody such like innocence and love and power I just love a book that takes place in the real world but has all of this nutty outside stuff so we've got modern day we've got real just like living their life storylines but also like transmutation and alternate reality this again is a nonlinear storytelling style the very beginning of the book starts with five minutes too late thirty seconds from the end of the world like the beginning of the book starts at the end of the book and then you have we jump around and find out like what's happening did Reed do his villainous act was he successful what happens to these twins we're led to believe certain things are gonna go wrong and so like you're anticipating all of these things and you just never know what's happening so that's everything that I needed and wanted out of a book and that's it I feel like I started out with good descriptions and then it all just went downhill because the more I love a book the harder it is for me to think of the positive merits and put them into like nice boxes and good descriptions I just want to like scream about them instead so that was challenging these are my 10 favorite floods of 2018 I wonder if you also had any of these books in your top reads of the year list or if you're thinking about reading any of them now or if you're one of the hundreds of people who comment on my videos like we don't read anything similar ever but I still watch your videos first of all I love you for that second of all will you give any of these a try maybe that's the challenge I give to you if you're here and we don't read anything similar and you were just curious about my favorites give one of them a try maybe you'll hate it that would be sad honestly with a lot of these books that's the case people read them and they're like what is wrong with you why do you like this but good luck to you if you do plan to read any of these or if they are already your favorites like let's see best friends forever and I'll see you later tomorrow with the stats oh the stats that's gonna be fun okay bye [Music] you

Channel: BooksandLala

Views: 58,721

Rating: 4.9544272 out of 5

Keywords: books, booktube, bookish, booksandlala, obbsandlala

Id: O5tTp1wEQpM

Length: 24min 53sec (1493 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019