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8. Richard Powers’ ninth book The Echo Maker is a metaphysical mystery set on the vast migratory lands sluiced by the might braid of Nebraska’s majestic Platte River, where one night a young man has a truck accident and suffers a lasting brain disorder – “a doubling delusion” (he sees his sister as her own impostor, for starters) that sets in motion a stunning odyssey exploring the meaning of memory and identity. Powers works this paranoiac tale into a prodigious meditation on the very nature of creation.

7. I read this book back in high school several years back but I really loved it so much that I bought myself a copy and reread it. Now that I’m older (and not forced to read it for the sake of education) I’m seeing it in a different light.

I still thoroughly enjoyed it though. :)

6. Possibly the best biography I’ve ever read. About two famous mathematicians who were polar opposites yet completly identical. They never met but their lives almost wove around one another. I absolutely adore Levin’s writing style, she’s amazing.

5. Basically this book was a bunch of facts followed by a blurb of second-rate insults. However there was quite a few useful tips and information in it, and it persuaded me to go vegan.

Not great, but not too shabby either.

4. Although it was pretty hard to enjoy the suspense of the novel as I’d seen the movie perhaps 50x when I was younger, I still found the novel to be fresh and exciting.

3. Short, sweet and gorgeously written we follow newly wed virgins Florence Ponting and Edward Mayhew at a crucial juncture in their shared history.

A gem of a novel, a small and tightly wound masterpiece. Its very brevity makes it tricky to decribe the plot without giving too much away.

2. Mosse’s page-turner takes readers on another quest for the Holy Grail, this time with two closely linked female protagonists born 800 years apart. In 2005, Alice Tanner stumbles into a hidden cave while on an archaeological dig in southwest France. Her discovery—two skeletons and a labyrinth pattern engraved on the wall and on a ring—triggers visions of the past and propels her into a dangerous race against those who want the mystery of the cave for themselves. Alaïs, in the year 1209, is a plucky 17-year-old living in the French city of Carcassone, an outpost of the tolerant Cathar Christian sect that has been declared heretical by the Catholic Church. As Carcassonne comes under siege by the Crusaders, Alaïs’s father, Bertrand Pelletier,entrusts her with a book that is part of a sacred trilogy connected to the Holy Grail. Guardians of the trilogy are operating against evil forces-including Alaïs’s sister, Oriane, a traitorous, sexed-up villainess who wants the books for her own purposes. Sitting securely in the historical religious quest genre, Mosse’s fluently written third novel (after Crucifix Lane) may tantalize (if not satisfy) the legions of Da VinciCode devotees with its promise of revelation about Christianity’s truths.
-From Publishers Weekly

1. Diary of an Anorexic Girl follows Blythe Beaumont on a journey through the wasteland of eating disorders, supposedly fueled by high school drama and cute teenage boys. Blythe’s struggle with her anorexia seems contrived; her relationship with Laurie makes her appear egocentric and childish; and her journal entries focus mainly on her crushes.

Dreary and poorly written, we are left unsatisfied with the disassociated main character and the all too neatly wrapped up ending.