I do enjoy a good read. When I was young I loved reading books, but somewhere between High School and University I stopped reading. All that changed though in 2012 when I saw The Hunger Games. I watched it, and loved it, and then the following day I bought the book and started reading it; since then I have enjoyed a large number of books. I mostly read Teen and Young Adult fiction; but I do occasionally read the more adult book, if the content interests me.
Recently though I have struggled with reading. This past year, over the last several months; I have struggled to both pick-up/enjoy a book. I don’t know what it was, but I just couldn’t enjoy whatever I was reading, nor had the interest just to pick something up. Recently I have been reading small, short books again with short chapters, just to try and work my way back into reading before I try something a bit more challenging.
I have kept this list down to my Top 3 as I know what they are very easily. As for places 4 and 5; well, I have not really thought about that. There are some good contenders but nothing really jumps to mind. Those contenders include (but aren’t limited to):
- The Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness
- The Gone series by Michael Grant
- The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
- The Sacrifce Box by Martin Stewart
- Micro by Michael Crichton
Anyway, whilst places 4 and 5 wait to be filled (which ones do you think they should be?), here are my Top 3 favourite books.
3. Prey by Michael Crichton –
An unemployed software programmer notices changes to his wife’s behavior. This ultimately leads him to his wife’s work place where he discovers that the company has created, and ultimately lost control of a swarm of Nano-Bots.
Michael Crichton is my second favourite author. I first got a taste of his work when I read Jurassic Park as part of a module I was doing at University. After I finished that I read Micro, and then a little over a year later I purchased a copy of Prey along with Next, and started reading it almost immediately. I couldn’t, and didn’t want put it down. I was hooked from chapter to chapter, page to page, I could not stop reading it; it was so enjoyable but also incredibly deep. The science was so interesting, and written in that trademark Crichton way which makes it not just incredibly believable, but made it feel horrifyingly real, as if it was happening right now. It felt like less of a story, more of a record of an actual event (but as far as I know, it was entirely fictional).
2. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness –
A young boy’s mother is dying of cancer. Everyone at school knows, and he is repeatedly bullied and beaten up. His father lives in America, and he doesn’t get on with his Auntie. For the boy though, that doesn’t compare with the nightmare that he keeps having; and a tree like monster keeps visiting him.
When I started reading A Monster Calls, it was about a few months after I had started reading the Chaos Walking trilogy. Whilst I struggled at the beginning with that series, this book, I just couldn’t get enough of. It’s a much smaller book in comparison to those, and it contains some amazing illustrations by Jim Kay. and is altogether based on an original idea by Siobhan Dowd. I intended to read the book as a bed time read; in the end though, I had finished reading it by the following Friday. I just wanted to read more and more, it was so engrossing, plus given the time I had at school, I thought like I could really connect with some of the story. Whilst incredibly enjoyable; it was also very sad. It’s a very sad story, and one that ends in the saddest way possible. I was unstoppably crying, my eyes were like Niagara Falls; and it was a good half hour to an hour after I finished reading it, that I was able to stop.
1. Light by Michael Grant –
The final book in the Gone Series; everything that has occurred before now comes to a titanic end as the barrier between the Fayz and the real world finally comes down; but before that, there is one final monster to be slain.
Michael Grant is my favourite author and over about an eight month period, I only read one book series; The Gone series. Easily my favourite book series, with many of the books in it being noteworthy candidates for high places in my favourite singular book lists. Light as a book is just the incredible culmination of everything that has happened before all leading up to this grand moment; where villains become heroes, heroes are turned into villains by outsiders; and great characters struggle to make it out alive. The book, like the others in the series is still pretty large, but in comparison to the others is actually a much quicker read; and in that it doesn’t hold back; it just goes all in, and then added onto that is the start of an intriguing epilogue which in turn creates a very calm but also satisfying ending which I just kept reading over and over.
What are your Top 3 (or more) Favourite books?
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