The Magic of Ink: Ink Mage's Top 2008 Books

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Ink Mage's Top 2008 Books

Having read somewhere above (probably well above) 200 books since January, it was a tough choice to come up with my favorite books read (and published) in 2008. The idea was inspired--alright, sort of stolen--from The Story Siren's Top Picks in 2008 list...

Contemporary:

At first the cover really annoyed me and I was against it. Then I decided I'd just try it, and I ended up loving it!

Anything by E. Lockhart is good, and I loved watching each girl grow in her own way.

Retold Fairytales:

Very original fairytale retelling! (Full review)

Beautifully written and unique! (Full review)

Sequels:

It's Flora, what can I say?! Fun and completely uniquely original. (Full review)

The third Book of Pellinor. Darker than the previous two novels, but really good as always!

Exciting New Worlds:

Amazing. Enough said.

(I'm running out of ways to say a book was "awesome.") I really like dragons, and this was a pretty original work set in fantasy world a lot like China. I wish the cover was better, though.

Gorgeously Written:

Beth Kephart rocks.

Short and sweet with amazing characterizations.

Books I Wasn't Sure How to Categorize:

I liked how the author went into detail about the wolves' lives, although the plot was sort of cliché. I hope the sequel is more original. (Full review)

Received this as a gift for the holidays because I liked it so much! Loved Katsa's character growth. (Full review)

Great adventure story. (I think I liked it better than Wildwood Dancing but I can't remember.) The romance was a little too predictable, though.

2 comments:

EmJanuary 4, 2009 at 6:34 PM
What a great list you have here! I've read most of these and a lot of them are my favorites, too. :)
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AnonymousJanuary 22, 2009 at 1:08 PM
These are great book. I read all of them, and now I gave them it my friends so hey could read them. I don’t have e a favorite book, since I love every book I read (most of the time). I still didn’t found the perfect book, the one that I can read repeatedly, without getting bored. I’m on a break from reading for past 5 weeks, since I’m very busy at work. I hope that I’ll have time soon. I still have 3 more books to read, and I’m waiting for that impatiently. If you have more recommendation for books, please, share them with us. Thank you, and have a nice weekend.
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Hey, thanks for stopping by! We'd love to hear from you, whatever your opinion, so please write any comments below.

Thoughts on Novels, Books, and Reading

“So many people I know say they hate reading. What they seem not to get is that a book is an alternate universe, where you can go anywhere, or choose to just set the book down and leave that universe alone.” –Zeke Willey

“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.” –A.C. Grayling, in a review of A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel

“Read in order to live.” –Gustave Flaubert

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” –Logan Pearsall Smith

“Books have a sense of honor. If they are lent out, they will not come back.”

“Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat, or fly into the future.” –Jim Bishop

“Read the best books first or you may not have a chance to read them all.” –Henry David Thoreau

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” –Carl Sagan

“Book-love...never flags or fails, but, like Beauty itself, is a joy forever.” –Holbrook Jackson

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Poetry, plays, novels, music, they are the cry of the human spirit trying to understand itself and make sense of our world.” –Annie Sinclair in Annie, Between the States, by L.M. Elliott

“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.” –Emily Dickenson

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” –Jane Austen

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” –Henry Ward Beecher

“I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.” –Virginia Woolf

“When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.” –Marie de Sevigne

“A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.” –Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” –G.K. Chesterton

“Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.” –Kathleen Norris, Hands Full of Living

“A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.” –Albert Camus

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” –Jorge Luis Borges

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” –Francis Bacon

“When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.” –W. Somerset Maugham

“When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life.” –Christopher Morley

“When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.” –Vincent Starrett

“I cannot live without books.” –Thomas Jefferson

“Books allow you to travel wherever you like. And no ticket is required. No toothbrush, even. Just pick your century, your continent, your character—and go.” –T.A. Barron, in an interview with WORD for Teens

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” –Henry Tilney, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

“...a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings fromher mind to her reader’s. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”
—Ian McEwan (Atonement)

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.” —Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

“Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” —Holbrook Jackson

“You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.”
—Paul Sweeney

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone messages, and insists on his friends writing down the title of the find. Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, “I want you to love her, too!”” —Christopher Morley

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Ink Mage's Top 2008 Books

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