The Glass Castle Archives

Celeste’s Top 20 Books of the Year (2020)

December 28, 2020 Celeste Comments 2 comments

The featured image above was specifically designed by Felix Ortiz for Novel Notions’ Top Books Lists. His work is amazing, and we feel incredibly fortunate to have been favored with it. Thank you so much, Felix!

If you’d like to see a list of everything I’ve read this year, you can click here to see my year in books for 2020!

2020 was an incredible reading year for me. I read over 150 books, and have found a number of new favorites. I haven’t read as much fantasy this year, but I still managed to find some wonderful new stories that I know will stick with me for a long time to come. Thank goodness for books, right? I don’t think I could’ve gotten through the dumpster fire that was 2020 without them. It was incredibly difficult to narrow my list down to twelve books, but I finally managed it. There will be a handful of honorable mentions at the end of this post, for those I just couldn’t bare to not include. I’m taking a page from Petrik and following three rules for my list:

1. Only one book per author.
2. Rereads don’t count.
3. The books were new to me, but didn’t have to be published this year.

Once again, I’m ranking my reads. That being said, every single book on this list was a 5 star read and I highly recommend them all. You can view my full review of each book (including the honorable mentions) by clicking the link in each title. And now, without further ado, here are my favorite books of 2020. …

Celeste’s Top 12 Books of the Year So Far (January 1st, 2020 – June 30th, 2020)

July 3, 2020 Celeste Comments 0 Comment

If you’d like to see a list of everything I’ve read so far this year, you can click here to see my year in books for 2020!

So far, 2020 has been an incredible reading year for me. Between January 1st and June 30th I read right around 75 books, and have found a number of new favorites. I haven’t read as much fantasy this year, but I still managed to find some wonderful new stories that I know will stick with me for a long time to come. Thank goodness for books, right? I don’t think I could’ve gotten through the dumpster fire that was the first half of 2020 without them. It was incredibly difficult to narrow my list down to twelve books, but I finally managed it. There will be a handful of honorable mentions at the end of this post, for those I just couldn’t bare to not include. I’m taking a page from Petrik and following three rules for my list:

1. Only one book per author.
2. Rereads don’t count.
3. The books were new to me, but didn’t have to be published this year.

Book Review: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

January 16, 2020 Celeste Comments 1 comment

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I’ve discovered that I have a thing for memoirs about wild, unbelievably difficult childhoods and the children who grow up to overcome them. Educated was one of my favorite books of 2019, and I quite honestly didn’t expect to find anything else in its genre to rival it, especially not so soon. The Glass Castle, which is kind of the OG of the rough childhood, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps type of memoir, proved to be just as compelling as Educated. I don’t know why I put off reading it for so long, as I’ve owned a copy for years. Whatever led to that wait, I’m so glad that the wait is over. The Glass Castle was brilliant and beautiful and made me incredibly thankful for the type of upbringing I had and the (very stable) parents who raised me.

“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”

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