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BookLoons Recommended Reads 2011
by Hilary Williamson


It's that time of the year all over again - time for getting in touch with old friends and new; planning and participating in festive occasions; anticipating family reunions, while missing loved ones who cannot be with us; giving and receiving good wishes and gifts. Though it's getting cold and bleak outside, hearts are warming inside.

Books have always been a big part of my holidays - a pile of my own favorites to read by the fireside, and carefully selected books to give to friends and family. If you're looking for ideas for book gifts, peruse our best-of-2011 recommendations below (limited to three per genre with great angst, and admittedly with personal bias). These are mainly hardcovers - find excellent choices most likely published in paperback in 2011 in our Recommended Reads 2010.

FICTION
Contemporary Fantasy Historical
The Four Ms. Bradwells
The Language of Flowers
State of Wonder
A Dance with Dragons
Prospero Regained
The Wise Man's Fear
The American Heiress
Madame Tussaud
The Paris Wife
 
Horror Literary Mystery
Dead of Night (review coming soon)
The Night Eternal
The Passage
Irma Voth
The Sense of an Ending
The Tiger's Wife
The Complaints
Northwest Angle
Sister

Romance SF Thriller
Chasing the Sun
First Grave on the Right
You Belong to Me
Fuzzy Nation
Ready Player One
Robopocalypse
The Leopard
Trackers
You're Next
 
NON-FICTION
Biography General Travel
The Reading Promise
Story of Charlotte's Web
An Unquenchable Thirst
At Home
The Moral Lives of Animals
Unnatural Selection
Little Princes
Lost in Shangri-La
To a Mountain in Tibet
KIDS
Picture Books Chapter Books
The Day Tiger Rose Said Goodbye
Happy Hippo, Angry Duck
Me ... Jane

The Luck of the Buttons
Lulu and the Brontosaurus
TEENS
YA Contemporary YA Fantasy Graphic Novels
If I Stay
LIE
Shaken
7th Sigma
Anna Dressed in Blood
Mastiff
Freshman
Gandhi
The Last Dragon

Find more book gift suggestions in our many previous Holiday Columns. And if we missed any of your own 2011 favorites, please email and tell us about them.


All of us at BookLoons wish you and yours the best of times, the happiest of
holidays, and a healthy, joyous, prosperous and peaceful 2012 to follow!!


Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons.