Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books Read in 2013
Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, winds up the year with the highly fitting theme of Top Ten Books Read in 2013. I read a lot of great books this year; it was hard picking just which ones to squeeze into the nine and ten spots! But here they are. They appear in the order I read them, not the order of favorites:
Day of Infamy by Walter Lord
I love a good solid piece of historical nonfiction, and WWII is one of the areas I'm interested in. I'd been curious to read more details about Pearl Harbor after seeing the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), and I really enjoy Walter Lord's readable and information-packed style. I actually checked this one out of the library again and re-read it early this December.
No Life For a Lady by Agnes Morley Cleaveland
An extremely entertaining memoir of growing up on a New Mexico cattle ranch beginning in the 1880s. Agnes Morley and her younger siblings had enough colorful adventures to spark ideas for a dozen novels—and yet there's a lot of interesting detail on the people, the work and domestic life of the Southwest too. A great read for any Western fan and/or history buff.
Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart
Easily my favorite read of the year. Gorgeous writing, a stunningly evoked setting, suspense and intrigue and romance...it doesn't get much better than this. Read my review here.
Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson
Anybody might enjoy it, but writers especially are bound to get a kick out of this charming book, the tale of a mild-mannered English spinster who writes a novel based off the people in her little village, and turns said village upside-down! Read my review here.
Firmament: Radialloy by J. Grace Pennington
Yes, this is probably the most unexpected entry on my list! I didn't think I would ever read science fiction. But the delightful characters and twisting plot drew me in, and I couldn't put it down. Read my review here.
The Hanging Tree by Dorothy M. Johnson
I'd long meant to try out Dorothy Johnson's Westerns, and this collection of short stories plus the title novella more than answered my expectations. Read my review here.
The Bellamy Trial by Frances Noyes Hart
I couldn't put down this unique mystery from 1927. It's told from the perspective of two young reporters, a girl and a man, covering a sensational murder trial—the whole book takes place in and around the courtroom, with all the evidence in the mystery presented via testimony and speeches. Mystery lovers won't want to miss it.
These Wonderful Rumours!: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries by May Smith
Good historical journals and diaries are another one of my favorite types of books, and May Smith is one of the wittiest, most entertaining diarists I've ever read. Her diary gives a wonderful snapshot of life in a typical English town during WWII, and how ordinary life went on under extraordinary circumstances.
The Trusty Knaves by Eugene Manlove Rhodes
Rhodes is another Western author I read for the first time this year, and this is my favorite of his books that I've read so far. He has one of the most unique and entertaining writing styles I've come across—this tale of a bank-robbery conspiracy and a counter-conspiracy set to thwart it is both exciting and hilarious. Read my review here.
City Editor by Stanley Walker
I picked this up for research, but enjoyed it so much that I ended up reading it from cover to cover instead of just the applicable chapters. First published in 1934, it's a fascinating first-hand look into a newspaper industry that practically doesn't exist today, detailing the ins and outs of reporting, writing, managing, publishing and more.
The means by which I got my hands on these favorite reads was a little more varied this year. I got more than half of them through my library, although it took interlibrary-loan requests to find The Hanging Tree and City Editor. These Wonderful Rumours! and Firmament: Radialloy I bought on Kindle; I had to buy a vintage hardcover copy of The Bellamy Trial, and I found The Trusty Knaves in a collection of Rhodes' works at Internet Archive.