spotlight on: my favorite fall reads

Welcome to Spotlight On: a monthly feature hosted her at Stardust and Words. You can find the rest of the spotlight posts here! I did a post that is similar to this one last year, where I talked about the books that capture the spirit of Halloween for me, and I talked about this again in my TTT post last week! Now I want to talk about some books that I love to reread in the fall. Some of these are perennial favorites, and some of them are new-to-me favorites, but they all have the coziness and feeling of coming home that I associate with fall, and they are all perfect for curling up with a mug of something hot and watching the leaves swirl outside the window :)

1.The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – Swashbuckling, revenge, misty islands, and mistaken identity make this a perfect book for a fall afternoon. It's super long, so you can either power through with the help of a lot of coffee or read an abridged version. I just love how atmospheric it is.

2. Ella Enchanted – Gail Carson Levine – The perfect quick read for when you need a pick me up. I love to make a super elaborate hot chocolate and then snuggle up with this book or its (HIGHLY inferior but still a ton of fun) movie. Gail Carson Levine is one of the best writers I've ever read, and she manages to capture so much emotion and heart in all of her books. Ella Enchanted is my personal favorite, but you can't go wrong with any of her novels.

3. Inkheart – Cornelia Funke – One of my favorite books from when I was in middle school, this entire trilogy reminds me of driving through New England in October. Lovable characters, a great father daughter relationship, and traveling into all of your favorite books means that Inkheart is basically every bibliophile's dream.

4. The Princess Bride – William Goldman – Okay, who doesn't adore The Princess Bride? It is one of those classic fairy tale stories that you absolutely can't go wrong with on a fall day. It's hilarious, heartbreaking and completely engaging.

5. Entwined – Heather Dixon – A darker retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Dixon conjures up the darker side of fall with her fairy tale. I think of abandoned castles, sleeping beauty on her one-hundredth year of slumber, and dark fall nights lit only with candles.

6. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien – Do I even need to explain myself here? I don't know about you guys, but curling up in a Hobbit hole with Bilbo is the perfect way to spend October.

7. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak – save this book for the moment that you can almost feel autumn turning into winter. That is the feeling that I associate with The Book Thief. The nights are freezing but the days are still warm enough that you aren't cold, and you can see the frost on the grass early. This book is the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing that I have ever read, and I love every second of it every single time I read it.

8. Jellicoe Road – Melina Marchetta – Looking for a home, looking for your place of belonging, looking for fun, looking for a love. Long, winding paths, mysteries, pranks, making up. Jellicoe Road is haunting, captivating and so perfect for fall days.

9. Love Letters to the Dead – Ava Dellaria – The leaves are dying and falling, but they are so beautiful as they do so. That's kind of like Love Letters to the Dead. Death is something that, sometimes, like the leaves, stares us right in the face. But we have to find the beauty despite of it.

10. We Were Liars – E. Lockhart – Family secrets, first loves, mysteries, blink and you'll miss them clues, an enormous plot twist.

11. Attachments – Rainbow Rowell – Caloo, Calay! There is one scene in this book that talks about October in the best way, and that is why I always associate this book with October and fall in general. It has a homey feel to it too, like a cup of tea and your favorite movie.

12. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling – I'm not sure why it is just this particular book of the series that I always think of when I think of fall, but I always get the urge to read PoA when the weather starts changing. Maybe it is because I think the movie is beautiful in the way that it deals with the changing of seasons, or maybe it's because this was my favorite one when I was little, but something about it screams autumn to me.

13. A Little Something Different – Sandy Hall – One of those adorable warm and fuzzy contemporaries that I think is perfect for the crispest and clearest fall day. I love the alternating POVs and the fact that it takes place on a college campus just makes me think of walking to class and stomping on the falling leaves.

14. Carry On – Rainbow Rowell– Maybe this also has something to do with the on-campus/Hogwarts/school-time feeling, but I think this book is perfect for reading in the fall. It combined the sparkly brightness of a crisp fall day with the spooky darkness of the chilly fall night. Lovable characters and a little bit of magic rounds off this amazing book :)

15. First & Then – Emma Mills – football/school/first love. The ultimate fall trifecta!

16. Walk the Earth a Stranger – Rae Carson – The aesthetic of the cover combined with the gold rush era historical fiction of the plot makes this one a perfect fall read for me. It is engaging while still being subtle, and isn't in your face with its fun.

17. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Saenz – Adorable LGBT romance, finding out who you are and what you're really made of, "boys like me were made for the rain," adorable puppies. These are all of the things that you need to know about this book please read it, it is my favorite thing in the entire world.




18. Some Kind of Happiness – Claire Legrand – a haunting, moving description of depression in and for younger kids, I absolutely adore this atmospheric novel. Forests full of dangers and delights, old family secrets, houses full of relatives, friendships formed in the heat of imagination. A long sip of cold water.


19. Uprooted – Naomi Novik – a lush fairy tale retelling of a few different mashed up tales, there is darkness and dark magic as well as lovely sunlight in this one. Dragons or humans? Monsters or girls? Who to trust and who to be wary of? Magical and unconventional girls who have friendship above all. Lovely.

21. Milk and Honey  – poetry for autumn. Poems about breaking, loving, healing, becoming. Poems about the worst times and the best times, extremes that stick with you. Beautiful verse, beautiful illustrations, read it in an hour or linger for several.

What are some of your favorite fall reads?

xx
Caroline

top ten tuesday: authorpalooza

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature over at The Broke and The Bookish where we highlight a different theme every week. This week's theme is "April 21: Top Ten ALL TIME Favorite Authors (yeah, I'm mean like that! You could narrow it down to a genre if you it REALLY kills you...or just make your list a top 20 :P )" And, as many bibliophiles will know, this is a daunting subject. I narrowed my list down to twelve, but there were nearly thirty amazing authors in the mix at one point or another. There are just so many amazing writers out there, it is hard to pick and choose favorites.

1. Rainbow Rowell – When someone asks me who my favorite author is, I often think of Rainbow Rowell first thing. I absolutely adore every single thing that she has written, and I would highly recommend her to a wide variety of readers. Her stories are real and funny, and I honestly just can't get enough.

2. John Green – Another one of my knee-jerk reactions to the question of favorite authors. I have dutifully read every single novel that John Green has ever written or contributed to, and though I have liked some more than others, there is nothing that John Green has written that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed. 

3. Jane Austen– My first Austen novel was Sense and Sensibility, and I read it when I was eleven years old. Ever since then, I have been, maybe predictably, in love with Austen and her entire world. When I visited Bath, in the UK, where Austen spent a lot of time, I nearly lost my mind. Though my favorite novel of hers is Mansfield Park, I truly do adore each one of her novels. 

4. Sarah J Maas– I just read my first novel by Sarah J Maas last fall, and she immediately became one of my favorites. Her Throne of Glass series is one of the most epic, completely compelling and readable series that I have ever read, and I cannot wait to get my hands on A Court of Thorns and Roses soon. Maas is newer to me but definitely up here in the list of my favorites. 

5. Morgan Matson– I must admit, I was interested in Matson for a while, but never got around to reading any of her novels. Then, when I finally read Since You've Been Gone, I fell in love and read her other two novels in quick succession, loving every single second of the experience. It has been a while since I was so completely swept up by a contemporary author, and I can't wait to see what else Matson has to offer. 

6. Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket – One of my primary childhood influences (is this a scary statement? probably) I tore through A Series of Unfortunate Events several times in my formative years. He is so funny and clever, though, I soon expanded my reading experience to those books beyond just the series, and I have yet to be disappointed. 

7. Stephanie Perkins– It has been a good amount of years since I first read Anna and the French Kiss, and after about eight rereads (and several reads and rereads of her subsequent two novels) I can firmly say that I will never get tired of Stephanie Perkins' writing. She has such a talent for characters, and I cannot help but fall in love with her writing, every single time. 

8. Rick Riordan – My love for Rick Riordan's stories goes back to when I first read Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief when I was 11 years old. I had never read anything like it, and I kept up with his new releases every single year until the Heroes of Olympus series finished last fall. I can't wait for his new series to begin this October, though I am sad to be leaving some of my absolute favorite characters behind.

9. J.R.R Tolkien– Tolkien is another one of those authors that captured my imagination when I was in middle school, and the first time I read the Fellowship of the Ring was such a magical experience for me, I cannot imagine a favorite authors list without Tolkien on it. 

10. Shannon Hale– It seems that I have loved so many of these authors since I was a child, because Shannon Hale is another author who shaped my young adolescence. I read The Goose Girl and Princess Academy over and over, and I still have yet to read a book of Hale's that I haven't loved. 

11. J.K Rowling– Guys. Come on guys. J.K. Rowling has to be on your list! Where would we all be without Harry Potter? 

12. Gail Carson Levine – Ella Enchanted was just one of the many amazing novels that Gail Carson Levine wrote that I loved. There are many other fairy tales, short stories, and fantastical worlds to visit, and I love every single one of them. 

There are so many other amazing authors! It was so hard to pick just these. What are some of your choices for this list? 

xx

Sunny