Best of the Best of the Best 2014!

Aloha! I'm writing this post from my private cabana on Disney's Castaway Cay!

...

No, just kidding. I'm sitting in my bed and I need to shower.

Anyhoo! I know you're all dying to know: What did Jessica love in 2014? What books moved her? What movies thrilled her?

WAIT NO MORE!

I now present to you: THE BEST OF 2014 ACCORDING TO MOI!

Beginning, as ever, with the movie picks:

Movies for Grownups:

Guardians of the Galaxy (So much to love, from the story to the humor to the action to the characters themselves. We ARE Groot!)
The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies (I had to watch it twice to really appreciate it. It really leads in so well to the Lord of the Rings movies.)
Interstellar
Maleficent
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1
Winter's Tale
Live. Die. Repeat. (aka Edge of Tomorrow)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Chef
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
The Monuments Men

Movies for Kids:

The Lego Movie
Big Hero 6
The Secret of Kells (This movie is several years old, but I finally saw it, and it was gorgeous!)
Muppets: Most Wanted
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Planes: Fire and Rescue

And now, the books! BOOKS! BOOOOOOOOKS! So many good books this year! So many! As those of you who follow me on Goodreads know, I actually made my goal of reading 160 books in 2014! I'm so proud of myself! And so pleased, too, that I discovered so many great books!

Also, for the most part, these lists are all ten-way ties. To choose which one I liked better, LANDLINE or ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, is simply ridiculous, because they were both amazing, and so different. It's like asking which I like better: steak or dark chocolate.

Books for Grownups, Fiction:

LANDLINE - Rainbow Rowell
ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Anthony Doerr
THE BONE CLOCKS - Brian David Mitchell
THE ROSIE PROJECT - Graeme Simsion
WINTER'S TALE - Mark Helprin
THE HUSBAND'S SECRET - Liane Moriarty
THE SILKWORM - Robert Galbraith
DANIEL DERONDA - George Eliot
GIDGET - Frederick Kohner
DEATH OF A POLICEMAN - M. C. Beaton

Books for Grownups, Fantasy/Sci fi:

SOME KIND OF FAIRY TALE - Graham Joyce (Graham, who was so kind and hilarious and wonderful, passed away this fall after a long battle with cancer. If you haven't treated yourself to one of his gorgeous books before, start with this one.)
MY REAL CHILDREN - Jo Walton
WORDS OF RADIANCE - Brandon Sanderson
ANATHEM - Neal Stephenson (It took me two tries to get into this book, because the language is so different, but once I did . . . WOW.)
THE SLOW REGARD OF SILENT THINGS - Patrick Rothfuss
THE BONE SEASON - Samantha Shannon
BLOOD OF TYRANTS - Naomi Novik
ODD THOMAS - Dean Koontz
FARTHING - Jo Walton
THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS - M. R. Carey

Books for Grownups, Nonfiction:

THE EGG AND I - Betty MacDonald (I loved the movie as a kid, and just recently discovered that it was originally a book, which was autobiographical, and by the author of my beloved Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books!)
EVERY LIVING THING - James Herriot
AS YOU WISH - Cary Elwes

Young Adult, Fiction:

I'LL GIVE YOU THE SUN - Jandy Nelson (Definitely for older teens and adults, but so beautifully written and heart-breaking, it's my pick for the Printz Award!)
THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE - Leila Sales
WHERE THE STARS STILL SHINE - Trish Doller
NOT IN THE SCRIPT - Amy Finnegan (Amy is a good friend of mine, and this debut YA book of hers is simply to die for! A fabulous rom-com!)
THE EAGLE OF THE NINTH - Rosemary Sutcliff
MY TRUE LOVE GAVE TO ME - edited by Stephanie Perkins
THE SCANDALOUS SISTERHOOD OF PRICKWILLOW PLACE - Julie Berry
SKINK - NO SURRENDER - Carl Hiaasen
THE CHAPEL WARS - Lindsey Leavitt
THE OUTSIDERS - S. E. Hinton (Nope, I've never read it before. Yep, it was great!)

Young Adult, Fantasy/Sci fi:

DREAMS OF GODS AND MONSTERS - Laini Taylor (Gorgeous ending to this trilogy!)
MIDWINTERBLOOD - Marcus Sedgewick (The Printz winner, and so deserving of it!)
A BREATH OF FROST/WHISPER THE DEAD - Alyxandra Harvey (The first two books in the Lovegrove Legacy and I couldn't put them down!)
IN THE SHADOWS - Jim diBartolo and Kirsten White
IN THE AGE OF LOVE AND CHOCOLATE - Gabrielle Zevin (Another great trilogy ender!)
THE SHADE OF THE MOON - Susan Beth Pfeffer
BLACKOUT - Robison Wells
CHASING POWER - Sarah Beth Durst
STEELHEART - Brandon Sanderson
AFTERWORLDS - Scott Westerfeld

Middle Grade, Fiction:

LIAR & SPY - Rebecca Stead
WEST OF THE MOON - Margi Preus
HOMECOMING/ DICEY'S SONG - Cynthia Voigt
CHARLOTTE'S ROSE - A. E. Cannon (This book is hard to find, and has been out several years, but it is just gorgeous, and fans of Little House on the Prairie will love it!)
THE SECRET OF THE FORTUNE WOOKIEE/THE SURPRISE ATTACK OF JABBA THE PUPPETT/PRINCESS LABELMAKER TO THE RESCUE/EMPEROR PICKLETINE RIDES THE BUS - Tom Angleberger (Basically, if you haven't read this series, you really must!)
THE MYSTERIOUS HOWLING - Maryrose Wood
LIFE ON MARS - Jennifer Brown
THE SPY CATCHERS OF MAPLE HILL - Megan Frazer Blakemore

Middle Grade, Fantasy/Sci Fi:

THE HERO'S GUIDE TO STORMING THE CASTLE - Christopher Healy
NIGHTMARES! - Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller
THE NIGHT GARDENER - Jonathan Auxier
THE MAGIC HALF - Annie Barrows
IRON-HEARTED VIOLET - Kelly Barnhill
THE SEARCH FOR WONDLA - Tony DiTerlizzi
THE WIDE AWAKE PRINCESS - E. D. Baker
THE PRINCESS IN BLACK - Dean and Shannon Hale
THE QUIRKS: WELCOME TO NORMAL - Erin Soderberg
THE FAIRY TALE MATCHMAKER - E. D. Baker

Graphic Novels:

TREATIES, TRENCHES, MUD, AND BLOOD - Nathan Hale
EL DEAFO - CeCe Bell
SISTERS - Raina Telgemeier
WHY GRIZZLY BEARS SHOULD WEAR UNDERPANTS - The Oatmeal
DRAMA - Raina Telgemeier
RESIDENT MAD SCIENTIST - Howard Tayler
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 1: COSMIC AVENGERS - Brian Michael Bendis
ANDRE THE GIANT - Box Brown

Picture Books: 

SAM AND DAVE DIG A HOLE - Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett
MOO! - David LaRochelle and Mike Wohnoutka
GASTON - Kelly DiPucchio and Christian Robinson
HUG MACHINE - Scott Campbell
THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES - Brigette Barrager (My daughter has had the Princess Matching Game based on this for years, and I just realized that there was a book featuring this beautiful art, and the princesses are all flower names, too!)
UNI THE UNICORN - Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Brigette Barrager
WAITING IS NOT EASY - Mo Willems
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS - Jan Pienkowski
THE PIGEON NEEDS A BATH - Mo Willems
FOUND - Salina Yoon

Summer Reading 2014

GUESS WHAT?!

THAT'S RIGHT!  IT'S TIME!

It's time for Auntie Jessy's Summer Reading Challenge!

YAY!

But first off I want to thank all of you who contributed to our Indiegogo campaign for ALTERED PERCEPTIONS!  Thanks to you, we were able to raise $110,000 for our friend Robison Wells, which will ease the burden of debt on him and his sweet family!  We even went over our goal, and were able to give that extra money to the dear Sara M. Eden, a fine historical fiction writer and gracious woman who suffers greatly from depression and rheumatoid arthritis.  So thank you all for your help, and for putting up with my constant blogging, tweeting, and talking about the campaign.

And now on to Summer Reading!

For those of you who are just joining us here on the blog, every June I challenge myself to read a gross ton of books during the summer, and then I post my results in September.  You are welcome to put your summer reading goals in the comments, and let us know your results in the fall!

This summer I'd like to read sixty books.  Will I?  Let's see!

I always say the summer reading term is from Memorial Day to Labor Day, so I'm off to a rip-roaring start with four books already under my belt:

PEYTON PLACE - Grace Metalious

MIDWINTERBLOOD - Marcus Sedgwick

THE CHAPEL WARS - Lindsey Leavitt

FARTHING - Jo Walton

WORDS OF RADIANCE - Brandon Sanderson

Admittedly, I did start reading WORDS OF RADIANCE long before Memorial Day, due to its incredible longness.

Other books I'm hoping to read this summer include THE ROSIE PROJECT, and GIDGET, just to name a couple.  I'm very curious about GIDGET.  I grew up watching the Gidget movies and the TV show starring Sally Field, about the cheerful, somewhat air-headed surfer girl and her boyfriend Moondoggy.  I just discovered this last year that it was originally a book, and based on the author's own daughter and her friends.  It sounds like a fun summer read.  As does THE ROSIE PROJECT, SEARCHING FOR SKY, MY REAL CHILDREN, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, and a number of other delightful books that I have on my Goodreads to-read shelf.  I just got back from BEA as well, and am loaded to the gills with new books . . . I feel like I'm surrounded by scrumptious chocolates of many different types, whichever shall I eat first?!

Helping a Friend

Aloha, fishes!

I have a little project that I'm involved in, and I'd like to take a minute to tell you all about it.

Some of you may know personally or have heard of Robison Wells, a fellow Utah YA author and good friend of mine.  Rob is the author of VARIANT, FEEDBACK, and BLACKOUT, all three of which are superb YA sci fi, and I highly recommend them.  You may have seen these titles on my "Best of" book lists the last three years or so.  Along with being a fine, gifted writer, Rob created the Whitney Awards for LDS authors, and I'm very proud to say that DRAGON SLIPPERS won the award for Best Novel by a New Author back in 2008!

Rob also, like many creative people, suffers from mental illness.

I have struggled with depression since high school, most seriously after the birth of our first child, and mental illness is horrible and something I would not wish on my worst enemy.  Which is why I am doing this for Rob, my friend.  Rob has depression, OCD, agoraphobia, and a panic disorder.  Yep.  I keep asking him if he offended an old Gypsy woman as a child, he's a little vague on that point.  His illnesses have greatly affected his life and the lives of his family (he and his sweet wife have three young children).  Until very recently, Rob didn't qualify for health insurance (many authors did not, as we are "self-employed") and so the bills for his medicine and therapy came entirely out of his own pocket.  Those bills have built up, and been added to student loans and delayed taxes (authors get SLAMMED with taxes).  Rob and his little family are in serious debt, which only adds to his mental burden.  None of this debt is from fancy vacations or shopping sprees.  It's most medical, and it is weighing heavily on him and his wife.

But the good news is that Rob has a lot of author friends!  And so we decided to help in the best way we could: with our writing!  We've put together an anthology and started a fundraiser on Indiegogo for Rob!  The anthology, called ALTERED PERCEPTIONS, is going to be fabulous!  It features authors such as Brandon Sanderson, Shannon Hale, Dan Wells (Rob's brother, and also a gifted writers), Brandon Mull, Bree Despain, Ally Condie, Lauren Oliver, and over a dozen more.  It will all be previously unpublished material, but the bulk of the stories will be alternate endings, cut chapters, and other goodies from our existing books!  I'm contributing the original ending of PRINCESS OF GLASS, which I ended up cutting because it, ahem, encouraged gambling.  Rob is adding a new epilogue for the VARIANT duology, which I am dying to read.  Shannon Hale is submitting a short story that is . . . horror!  No joke!  This anthology is going to be incredibly fabulous, people, incredibly.  As part of the Indiegogo campaign there will be other perks available as well.  An e-book of the anthology is just $10, a hardcover is $28, but there are also options for signed, numbered editions, library sets, and more.  You can also get a critique by one of the participating authors (not me, someone who's GOOD at critiques), have dinner with Rob, or spend a weekend at a guest house writing retreat!

We were featured in the Deseret News today:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865601820/Anthology-to-benefit-Utah-author-with-mental-illnesses.html?pg=all

And here, finally, is the link to the Indiegogo site with all the details, including a full list of the authors involved :

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/altered-perceptions#home

Check it out, and if you're able, please help us help Rob!

If we go over our goal, we will be setting up a fund to help other authors who have looming medical expenses.  No penny will be used to produce the book or any of the perks, 100% of the money will go to Rob or another struggling author.