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| "Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly bookish shareable, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! |
Ah, 2012. This time last decade, the harried summers of my high school years had faded out into the languid anticipation of what was sure to be "the best years of my life in college" (Spoiler alert: they weren't, but that's fine).
I was prepping for Sorority Recruitment at UW, while trying to make the most of the (relative) freedom of summer, while taking care of my three younger siblings, while splitting what remained of my scant attention between miraculously losing five pounds before the next family vacation and figuring out how to reply to peoples' texts on my brand new iPhone fast enough they wouldn't think I was ignoring them (Which is something I still have problems doing. I think of texts like interacting with a lazy breed of carrier pigeons: I see you hanging around on my windowsill, and I'll get to you when I get to you, but it's not going to be until after I figure out what I was already working on when you got here).
But most importantly, I was reading just a ton of books... far more books than I can manage to read as an adult! Nowadays, my innate urge for constant distraction and escapism is fueled by mindless scrolling and maladaptive daydreaming; back then, I was reliant on the euphoria of YA novels and Fantasy settings that bore no resemblance to my reality whatsoever. And man, did I mow through a lot of them.
Today's "Top Ten Tuesday" topic is TECHINCALLY "Books Over Ten Years Old," but I wanted to get a little more specific. Let's face it: I was an English major, and I'm a sucker for a beat up thrift store Romance novel, so I've read quite a lot of books that fit that billing. I wanted to get a little more... specific.
Did I remember any of these titles off of the top of my head? Of course not. Thank God I was keeping a blog a decade ago. (I celebrated my twelfth anniversary back last month!) How else would I remember all of my crazy ramblings of books, some of which I haven't thought about in years?
Here's ten of the most important things I was reading back in 2012:
1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Was this my first interaction with Austen? No. Not even this book specifically. But we were reading it for my AP English class in my senior year, and I still think back fondly on the experience. Mainly because it's one thing to read P&P on your own, and another to do it with good friends...and because for one shining day in class, Mr. Chandler asked me to read aloud for Elizabeth's part, and wouldn't you know it? It was the First Proposal scene. I've never been a theater kid, but in that moment, I felt like I was performing for millions. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever been happier speaking in public.
Hands down the harshest critique I've ever written, for a novel that I still, to this day, believe is unquestionably some of the worst YA I've ever read. That all being said... I've read three other books in the series after this one. Not that I'd ever recommend them to anybody else, of course.
3. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
Funny enough, this book has made its way onto this blog not once, but twice: I read it for the first time as an incoming freshman in college, and reread it for the second time as a graduating senior, and took away completely different messages both times. It's a testament to how well-written this postmodernist novel (-slash-short-story-collection) is, that you can come back to it again and again with new eyes. Together with all of the other books in her canon I've read, it's no surprise that she's one of my literary favorites.
This book still gets me at my core: every time I visit Uwajimaya in the International District of Seattle, or walk through the animal barns at the Puyallup fairgrounds, I'm struck with memories of reading this novel, and the Japanese internment in Washington State during WWII. Rereading this review reveals a lot of the naivete I had as a kid... in a lot of ways, I didn't know a ton about the world until I started living on my own, in college. I had a lot of growing up to do.
5. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Fun fact: I read this book for the first time when I was eight. That means that by the time I read it in 2012, I was actually celebrating a decade spent with this book, too! Now, I'm 28, and it feels crazy to say that I've read this book once a year for more than 2/3s of my time spent alive and breathing. And you'll never guess what's one of the books on my TBR before the end of Summer, too.
6. The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
To be fair, I didn't so much as review this book in my original iteration, as spend a whole lot of paragraphs dunking on the Twilight fan phenomena. (The year was 2012, and I was a bit of a self-important snob, after all. How dare all of these other girls enjoy reading books, which was a thing that only I was allowed to do??) Though I do credit Erin Morgenstern with reinvigorating a dying genre in this review, which I feel like is high praise, for something that barely merited three paragraphs of discussion... and I barely remember.
7. A whole bunch of books about Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Our high school abided by a research-paper-per-year policy in our English classes, which made for a whole lot of opportunities to do a whole lot of reading on pretty much whatever topic I desired. Senior year it was Alice in Wonderland... more specifically, how Charles Dodgson's real life, work, and personal relationships informed his writing as Lewis Carroll. So, not just the children's book for me, but also several biographies and detailed reflections on his photography habit. What can I say? I'm thorough.
This longstanding family favorite for viewing, quickly became a personal favorite for reading, when I finished it for the first time in the same week that one of my best friends asked me to Prom. It was also in the heyday of my Daffodil Princess obligations, so you can understand that I had quite a lot to say about Princesses while reading.
9. A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin
According to the review I wrote at the time, I liked this installment, but its brutality offended my delicate sensibilities. Still not wrong! However, eighteen-year-old Savannah was a huge prude, too, and had a little bit more of a problem with the sexual content than the violence... which made her a huge hypocrite, because while you can hide your FanFiction.Net tabs from the outside world, you can't hide it from yourself! Little did she know that ten years later, she'd have quite a lot of smutty Romance reads under her belt. And that she liked the Game of Thrones TV show, for all of its nudity, too!
10. Anna Godberson's Bright Young Things series
Good Lord, remember the absolute chokehold the 1920s had on 2012? Lauren Conrad was a major fan of the throwback style, teen magazines insisted on its use as a "classy" costume for any dress-up soiree, and the Baz Luhrmann Great Gatsby movie would arrive the following May. It feels like a ton of my early collegiate life was all wrapped up in Tiffany box blue and F. Scott Fitzgerald references. It's no surprise they had a grip on the YA market, too.
What's in YOUR Top Ten? And what were YOU doing in 2012?
Let me know, in the comments below!
