Best of the Spring 2015 Challenge

[Dlmrose, Moderator Emeritus]

What were your favorite books of the Spring 2015 Challenge?

[Donna]

Here are some of my 5 stars reads for this past SPRING:
That's That: A Memoir
Letters of a Woman Homesteader
A Girl Named Zippy
The Nightingale
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Whistling Past the Graveyard
Say You're Sorry


If it weren't for this challenge, I would not have read the majority of these.

[Cait S]

Spring was a rough season. I hit three different slumps wherein every single book I read was just awful. It was super frustrating and just...not good. But I did uncover a few five star gems along that way that almost made up for it.

[Teri-K]

It would almost be easier for me to name the books I didn't love!
New fiction I loved:
To Serve Them All My Days was wonderful and I'm only sorry it sat on my shelf for years before I finally read it. Not depressing, but a fascinating look into another time and place.
Wyrd Sisters (laughed out loud)
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (wonderful audio)
The Hum and the Shiver (Loved it, reading all the series.)

Nonfiction favorites:
Letters of a Woman Homesteader read like a wonderful novel.
Genghis: Birth of an Empire

Favorite reread would have to be To Kill a Mockingbird.

[Melanie]

Some of my top books:
Mr. Mercedes
A Bollywood Affair
Dreaming Spies
Fives and Twenty-Fives

[Camilla]

No five-star reads this season, but some solid four-stars:
Never Saw it Coming
Ender's Shadow
Crazy: Notes On and Off the Couch
Extinction Game
Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor
Slow Apocalypse

[Lauren]

My 5 star reads:

The Anatomist's Wife
Mackenzie's Mountain
Burn for Me
Night's Honor
Where Serpents Sleep

[Jasmiina]

The best books I read were:
Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay
Snuff by Terry Pratchett
Small Island by Andrea Levy

Only three 5 star books in this season. There's no surprise I loved Terry Pratchett's book. Never Look Away is one of the best thrillers I've read in a while and I was surprised how much I loved Small Island.

[Marie-Anne]

Had only 2 5-star reads, but a lot of 4-star reads for this challenge.
The 5-stars were:
~ The Leopard's Prey by Suzanne Arruda. This is #4 in the series, and I have loved every single one. Looking forward to reading #5.
~ The Hidden Queen by Alma Alexander. This was a new author for me, and I loved this one. There is another volume in the series, but I have not found a copy yet.

[Janice]

The two best books I read this season were:

Bears in My Kitchen by Margaret Becker Merrill

The author married a US National Park ranger and had the privilege to actually live in Yosemite, Olympic, and Kings Canyon National Parks in the 1930s and 1940s. This book was totally charming although a bit politically incorrect throughout. The stories she tells are very unique and full of adventure. For example, one day she sees a crowd gathered together looking up to Half Dome. She borrows someone's binoculars and looks through them only to discover her husband hanging precariously off a cliff trying to rescue the same climber he had told the day before not to attempt this feat. (In the 1930s, nobody had yet successfully ascended to the top.)

and

The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story Of Survival During The War In The Far East by Alistair Urquhart

This war hero tells of an amazing story of survival.
He was exposed to every tropical disease imaginable and still managed to fight them all off while living on rice and only rice for six years - and that is just the beginning of his challenges.

[Deborah]

My five stars for the spring challenge:


Station Eleven
First Frost
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales


Favorites of my four stars:

[LouLouReads]

I loved Five Children on the Western Front, The Remains of the Day, and Farewell to the East End: The Last Days of the East End Midwives. I probably wouldn't have read the latter without the challenge prompting me to :) I also reread The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which has always been and remains one of my favourite books.

[Trish]

I don't give fives very often, and I only had the one this challenge: John Scalzi's Redshirts was brilliant. While it wasn't a five, I'm also really glad Chris Everest introduced me to Robert B Parker (The Godwulf Manuscript), which would have been a four and a half.

[Meg]

Just 5 five star books for me this season (I had 11 last season!).

The Girl with All the Gifts
The Snow Child
A Tale for the Time Being
The Bone Clocks
Time and Time Again

[Ashley]

My faves from Spring are;


The Messenger by Markus Zusak

Legend by Marie Lu

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

[Teodora]

The best book I've read this spring was, by far, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

I also liked Doctor Sleep by Stephen King quite a lot.

I also gave five stars to Insomnia and 11/22/63 both by Stephen King.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

My favorites were
Anna and the French Kiss
The Invention of Wings
The Red TentThe Red Tent
Double Fudge Brownie Murder
Still AliceStill Alice
And "Molokai"

[Chris]

Teri-k wrote: "It would almost be easier for me to name the books I didn't love!
New fiction I loved:
To Serve Them All My Days was wonderful and I'm only sorry it sat on my shelf for years before ..."

I totally loved To Serve Them All My Days too!

[Chris]

I was very lazy this challenge but I did read a couple of books I really enjoyed

Me Before You
Big Little Lies
(I've been telling everyone I know to read these two)

Orange Is the New Black (thought provoking)
Istanbul Passage (love Jospeh Kanon)

and listening to an audio version of
Lord of the Flies
read by William Golding gave the story an real emotional punch.

[Ms.soule]

I had a great spring challenge this year!

Graphic novels:
Rat Queens, Vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery - wow, just wow!
Saga, Vol. 3 - how do they keep making these so good?!?

Non-fiction:
Life After Birth: What Even Your Friends Won't Tell You About Motherhood - I wish so much I'd read this before my first child was born
Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir - I love the Bloggess and being able to spend this much time buried in her writing was lovely

Fiction:
Night Watch - while all the Terry Pratchett books I devoured this season made me cry, this one was completely amazing, especially with the news focus on police corruption in the US - 6 stars
The Silver Linings Playbook - different from the movie which I loved, but still excellent
Outback Hearts - surprisingly good and deep for a free ebook, I felt like this story actually happened to real people
The Girl with All the Gifts - loved the audio book, talked about it to everyone who would pretend to listen
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - very different from the movie (which was great), but again still excellent
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax - this book is a great example of why I stick with the SRC; I never would have picked it up except it was the shortest book my library had on hand that met a task requirement - and it was highly entertaining and now I want to read the whole series.

Romances that made me cry/happy/sigh with contentment:
The Perfect Match
The Governess Affair
Tarnished Knight
Still the One

[Teri-K]

Mrs.soule wrote: "I had a great spring challenge this year!

Graphic novels:
Rat Queens, Vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery - wow, just wow!
Saga, Vol. 3 - how do they keep making these so good?!..."

You should definitely keep reading Mrs. Pollifax! I can't tell you how many times I've read that series. I just love her. :)

[Sandy, Moderator Emeritus]

Teri-k wrote: "You should definitely keep reading Mrs. Pollifax! I can't tell you how many times I've read that series. I just love her. :)
."

I have the original paperbacks of all these, and have read them several times over the years - always fun! I gifted my mother the first one for her kindle, and she loved it too. At this point, she only reads on her kindle, because of her eyesight, but fortunately, they're all on kindle now.

[Lulu]

Tons!

Science Fiction:
Blindsight by Peter Watts - One of my new favourite books, this seriously blew me away. I was expected hard sci fi, which was hard to get into at first, but got philosophy, science, psychology and a sprinkle of other things!
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard.
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi - This was like a juicy summer blockbuster, but with more depth. A lot of fun.
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway.

Non-Genre/General Fiction:
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi.
The Children Act by Ian McEwan - I thought I hated McEwan! I was really wrong. This had me in tears in several places, and has interested discussions of ethics and morality.
The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle.
Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates - Yates might be my new favourite author. I want to read everything he's written now!

[Pamela]

I didn't have any five stars this season, but I had several four stars.

Songs of Willow Frost
Remembering Isaac: The Wise and Joyful Potter of Niederbipp
Crossing to Safety
Queste
Mark of the Thief
William Shakespeare's The Jedi Doth Return
The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of
Conflict
Maisie Dobbs
The National Parks: America's Best Idea