I Just Can't Walk Away

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Depends on which one you'd define as "first." One I'd be probably just stand and stare. Another I'd probably go on up to him and ask what in the world he was doing there.

But the one I originally thought of when reading the question? I'd hit him. I'd walk up to him and fucking deck him. And then ask what the fuck was wrong with him, where the fuck was he years ago, and why the hell he'd appeared now when he worked so hard to cut himself off from me so completely.

I've obviously still got issues concerning him and I suspect that these will remain for awhile. :P

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...I am beyond frightened that just a quick, cursory glance at the answers for this question yields so many of the same freakin' series. That's wrong on so very many levels.

I'm not really sure how I'll decide on either answer because my best list wouldn't synch up with most other people's. *shrug* I've decided that worst has to be something that broke my brain or that I couldn't finish.

Worst:
1. The Harlequin - Laurell K. Hamilton
   Anita rapes an entire species (do weres count as a species? Whatever.) and a lot of them are her friends and then tries to justify it. She also turns her back on another species of weres because their king wouldn't sleep with her because his wife didn't want to share as she took their vows very, very seriously. This book pissed me off so much that had I bought it, I think I'd have found a way to a signing and demanded she fork over a refund and an apology for being so incredibly awful.

2. Shivers: Terror in the South - Kevin Bozard
   Couldn't finish because the man kept mispelling things (and while I can't spell worth a damn, even I know you shouldn't let that go to print) and then mangled an expression so terribly that I had to say, "Honey, I don't think that word means what you think it does in this case," to a freakin' book. For all I know the rest of the book improved greatly, but the first thirty or so pages blew chunks.

3. Isle of Dogs or Blowfly - Patricia Cornwell
  I'm really not sure which one of these made my head physically hurt and which one just annoyed me greatly, but they're both pretty awful and signified the downward spiral of the Scarpetta books. Isle is included because the best part of the damn thing was talking crabs and would have normally been left off because I hated the first two Andy Brazil novels (and I remember when they weren't billed as such) but I chalked that up to wanting what I wasn't being given. These? Hurt.


Best disqualifies any book I've read for the first time this year. I have to have had time to re-read and love the book, so thus this is more... favorite than best.

Best:
1. The Season of Passage - Christopher Pike
  It doesn't hold up as well over time in parts, but it is easily my favorite adult Pike novel and one of those books I buy over and over again whenever my current copy dies a horrible death. I love stories that contain stories within. I love the monsters on Mars angle and that not everything ends happily ever after. You may not understand the love, but that's simply your loss.

2. The Evil Twin - Sweet Valley High #100
  I think I could look up who actually ghost-wrote this baby, but it's not all that important, really. The Evil Twin is one of those books I read every year because it wouldn't be the holiday season without Margo trying to kill Elizabeth. Which is just ridiculous, not because she'd be forever bleaching her hair, or the contacts, or anything logical. No, it's ridiculous because she made such a god awful Elizabeth. And yet every freakin' year I want the book to change and have Margo actually manage to pull it off. Just once.

Slot number three is open. The first two are fairly easy because they are two of my favorite books, everyone else be damned. The third rotates and makes me wish I had a 'better' answer. So I offer a variety of answers and you can take your pick.

I believe everyone who has a passing interest in mythology or awesomeness should at least attempt Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I think Scott Westerfeld writes some amazing things and I hope you go beyond his Uglies series because he's pretty damn awesome. Lisa Bright and Dark was the first book I absolutely had to read on my own for school that I actually liked and while I know now that it's got some serious flaws, nothing can take away the feeling of reading something that's required and still liking it. That almost never happened for me, you see, and it always baffled everyone. "But you love to read. Why wouldn't you like ...?" Even things I picked out didn't tend to work out. The Truth About Forever actually made me cry for the first time in a loooong time. Practical Magic is pretty much perfection. 13 Reasons Why still haunts me a year later, but it's only been a year so...