The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making: A Book Review

This review contains NO SPOILERS. Enjoy! (:

Book review #4 of 2013!

Today's book review is for one of my favorite books of 2012. If you haven't seen my list of favorite reads of 2012, then you can find it here.

Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is a perfect example of why I love to browse bookstores at random. I found this book entirely on accident and was won over by the title (I know a lot of people get drawn in by covers, and I completely understand that, but I tend to get drawn in by titles more so than covers- though having a unique, aesthetically pleasing cover doesn't hurt.) Oh, and having a positive blurb by Neil Gaiman on the cover never hinders your chances either.

Onward to the review...

But as usual, here's the back-cover description:

"September is a girl who longs for adventure. When she is invited to Fairyland by a Green wind and a Leopard, well, of course she accepts. (Mightn't you?) But Fairyland is in turmoil, and it will take one twelve-year-old girl, a book-loving dragon, and a strange and almost human boy named Saturday to vanquish an evil Marquess and restore order."

Favorite Reads of 2012

My ideal morning is waking up when the sky is gently lit by the sun and going for a morning run. And after jumping in the shower and making breakfast, I enjoy getting back in bed and reading a good book. The feeling is even more amazing when there's heavy rain that can accompany my books. So since 2012 is coming to a close, I thought there would be nothing better than to summarize my 2012 by telling you my favorites reads. 

Back in March, I decided that I wanted to read 50 new books by the end of 2012. Since then, I've changed the contingencies a bit. I decided to allow rereading books since discouraging the act of rereading was a bit ridiculous. With that strict rule, what motivation would I have had to reread The Hobbit, the book I read over a decade ago? Or, Fahrenheit 451 which I probably read about 8 years ago and barely remembered. I realized the rule was slightly too limiting so I changed it to this: books can count towards the 50, as long as they have been unread for at least 1 year. (So despite the numerous times I have read The Fault In Our Stars in the past 12 months, I counted it only once.)

I won't be listing all 50 books since 1.) a list isn't incredibly interesting unless I am able to comment on all the books in some way and 2.) that would take far too much time, and 3.) there were some books I read that I really don't care for and therefore don't want to waste time talking about them.

So the main thing I wanted to accomplish in this post was giving you 10 of my favorite NEW books that I read this year. Keep in mind, this was a difficult list to assemble and there were many books that I wrestled with adding/deleting from this list so if you know I read a book this year and didn't include in on this list (ie: The Casual Vacancy, The Handmaid's Tale) don't assume I didn't enjoy it as well.

But without further ado, here are my favorite books of 2012!