I finished in time!

For the last few days I have been pondering what makes the difference between a good book and one of my favourite books. I liked To Kill a Mockingbird. I really liked it. Maybe loved it. But will it be added to one of my favourites? Maybe. Okay, I loved it.

To try and make this clearer, I will be compiling a list.

Favourites:

• the Harry Potter series


• Paper Towns


• The Mortal Instruments series


• Pride and Prejudice


• Just Listen


• The Book Thief


• The Hunger Games


• Going Bovine

Those are the top ones I can think of.

And now for some books that I think are well written or that I really liked:

• Jane Eyre


• Looking For Alaska


• Speak


• Liar


• The Penelopiad


• The Messenger

There's tons more of those, but that's all I could think of off the top of my head.

So there it is. The one outright noticeable difference? My favourites have happy endings whereas the ones I thought were well written (but didn't make the final cut) mostly didn't. There's exceptions, of course. Some were happy, some were neither happy nor sad, some were happy/sad and some where just sad. But that's endings for you.

All of the listed are great books. They all have wonderful stories and believable characters. But the point here is that there are two lists. Books that made me think and books that I fell in love with. That makes the first list sound sort of vapid. Let me just say that all the books made me think. Every book I listed has some sort of underlying current of intelligentness**. To conclude this paragraph, if you can convey a theme/message with witty dialogue, quirky characters and preferably believably romantic romance, you've completely won my heart. But back to the point...

No, I didn't completely devour TKAM in one sitting. It didn't grip me and, most of the time, there were no tears. There was no swooning, either. It was a pretty mellow book for the most part. So at the time, no, it probably wasn't a favourite. Looking back, however, I can happily add it to the first list. How else could I rate a book that is about not wanting to grow up and listening to everyone's story and just overall acceptance of others?

Now I could try and delve into the themes and morals of TKAM but I'm not going to. The reasons are that 1. I probably couldn't explain it in a way that would capture the brilliance that the book is due and 2. Matt did it and he was really awesome doing it and I'm not going to just parrot everything he said when I can just post his video...



Excellent book. And not only that, it was a great story and very well told. Next book will be revealed tomorrow, or when I decide.

*At first, I typed google book. I thought you should know that.

**I love irony.