top ten tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: My Favourite Books I Read During Each Of the Last Ten Years

This week I’ve decided to take part in ‘Top Ten Tuesday’ again hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week ‘Top Ten Tuesday’ turns 10! Which is unbelievable and also really exciting, and I know I haven’t been doing this for long but it’s nice to partake in something that been’s going on for so long. This week the topic was to re-do a previous ‘Top Ten Tuesday’ post or do one we never got the chance to do. On the 28th May 2019 the week’s topic was ‘my favourite books I read during each of the last ten years’ which I thought was a perfect topic for this anniversary!

As my Goodreads doesn’t go back by ten years and I’m having to go off my memory for a lot of these so I’m not sure how accurate this will be, but I’ve tried my best to make sure it’s as true to real life as possible! I’m going to include my favourites from 2010 to 2019 for this, but I’ve also included my favourite book from 2020 so far as a little bonus.

2010 – The Night World Volume One by L. J. Smith

Before I got my hands on Twilight or any other YA book in existence at the time, I read this masterpiece. I loved this book with my whole heart when I was 11, and I still have my original copy where pages have fallen out because I reread it so often at that age. Looking back I know these stories are a little silly and aren’t up to the current standard of YA literature, but I loved them then and they will always have a special place in my heart, so much so I keep eyeing up the new hardback editions – they are stunning.

2011 – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This was the book that really started my love of the dystopian genre as a teenager, and I’m sure a lot of people can also trace their love of the genre back to this book. My obsession with dystopian carried on for another couple years after finishing this, but obviously nothing ever truly lived up to ‘The Hunger Games’. It’s also one of the only books I read in the early 2010s that I look back on and realise it’s still good, and I’m hoping to reread the trilogy and then read the prequel at some point this year.

2012 – Divergent by Veronica Roth

This was my way of chasing the joy ‘The Hunger Games’ gave me, and I hoped I would find that same love in other dystopian novels. I did love this trilogy when I first read it, and I was slightly obsessed with the book and then the movie. I haven’t reread this since I first read it so I’m not sure whether I’d still like it or not, but it’s still something I’ll look back on fondly because of how much I loved it in my early teens.

2013 – The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I, like everyone else, fell in love with this book. You couldn’t go anywhere in 2012 or 2013 without seeing this book plastered somewhere, it seemed inescapable and almost inevitable that you would end up reading it. Whilst I’m not sure I would love this now as much as I did back then, I am thankful for this book as it introduced me to genres in YA that weren’t just dystopian or supernatural fantasy – and that I will always be grateful for, as I read too many vampire books as a teenager.

2014 – Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

14 year old my thought this was the best book I had ever read, and I adored it. I loved the voice of the narrator and his humour, I loved that it wasn’t a happy ending, I loved that it was harsh and brutal and it didn’t sugarcoat anything. Would I still love it now? I’m not sure. I reread it in 2018 and still really enjoyed it, but I wasn’t in a great place in 2018 so who knows. It’s a bit of a weird book as it seems to be like Marmite, you love it or you hate it, and I’m not sure it’s aged as well as people hope.

2015 – To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This is one of my favourite books I’ve ever read. I had to read this for my GCSE English Literature exam, and I’m so glad I was made to read this because I fell in love with the story. My copy, even though only five years old, is water-stained and battered with crinkled pages and hundreds of annotations, because I have read it that many times. I think this is the book that opened my eyes to classics and how they’re more than ‘old, boring books’.

2016 – Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Is anyone really that surprised to see this one sitting on this list? Whilst I didn’t really talk about this duology, I loved it along with nearly everyone else who read it. However, the reason I haven’t spoken about this book on this blog is because I can’t really remember what happens in it, which is so bad because I know I loved it. It’s one I definitely need to reread, and probably soon because I know it was my favourite read of 2016.

2017 – The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I feel like I was really late to reading this one, and I remember being scared to read it because of the hype surrounding it, but it doesn’t matter how late I was because I read and loved it. This is a phenomenal book and I imagine most of you have read it so I’m not going to list all the reasons why, but if you haven’t read this you must, because it’s such an important story and Angie Thomas is one of the best writers in YA currently.

2018 – Strange The Dreamer by Laini Taylor

In the summer of 2018 my family and I went on a holiday to Florida. Whilst I was there I picked up ‘Strange The Dreamer’ from Barnes & Noble and to say I fell in love with Laini Taylor’s writing would be an understatement. I read this in 24 hours hunched over in a hotel bed, on the beach covered in sand, in a cool air-conditioned car and walking the streets of Maimi – I couldn’t put this down, I lived and breathed this story.

2019 – Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

2019 was a really tough year for me, and it’s not a year I look back on fondly. I barely read anything last year but one of the few books I read was this one. This was my first Brandon Sanderson novel and I had such a great time reading it, whilst I don’t think it’s seen as one of his best it has persuaded me to read more from him, and I’m excited to hopefully start doing that soon.

Bonus!

2020 – Vicious by V. E. Schwab (so far!)

I will sing this book’s praises til my dying days, because it is a masterpiece and Schwab is a queen. This book has everything you could possibly want with morally ambiguous characters, superpowers, brilliant and engaging writing and a dog; I mean what else could you possibly ask for in a book? Whilst I love ‘A Darker Shade of Magic’ like most people, I believe this is Schwab’s best work and even though it’s popular I still think this is criminally underrated .

28 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: My Favourite Books I Read During Each Of the Last Ten Years”

  3. I like that you chose a book from each of the last ten years for this occasion. Since I also loved many of the books on your list, including Mockingbird, Hunger Games, Dreamer, and Divergent, I’m pretty sure I’d like the others.

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  4. Wow, you have a good memory! I’d struggle to nail books down for every single year. They all blend together after a while.

    Thanks for stopping by my post.

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  6. Yaaas, I love this list and so many of your favourites are also mine 😍 Vicious, Strange and THUG are some of my all time favourites and I’m so happy to see you felt the same! Great choice of topic 😊

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