Thursday, May 30, 2013

Armchair BEA 2013 - Day 3 - Literary Fiction

Day 3 of Armchair BEA is about literary fiction.

Wikipedia defines literary fiction as "fictional works that hold literary merit. ... To be considered literary, a work must be 'critically acclaimed' and 'serious.'" --See...I had to look it up.

And so here's the thing...I just don't read many books that "critics" like. It's the same with movies. If a book or movie is "critically acclaimed," it tends to be the opposite of what I like.

But I did I find this site with a list of book awards and their winners.

Ooo...ooohh...I found one I've read and loved! Code Name Verity was an honor book for the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction in 2012. Here's my review for Code Name Verity.

Code Name Verity

By: Elizabeth Wein

Published: February 6th 2012 by Egmont Press

447 pages

Genre: YA, Historical Fiction

Sourc: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!)

( Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository | Booksamillion.com )

Goodreads description--I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team.

I'm not going to retype my review, but I loved this book. Typically I want to read books where people fall in love, but Code Name Verity still measured up despite not having anything to do with people falling in love. I put off reading it because the description wasn't what I normally read, but it was so worth breaking outside of my norm.

What about you guys? What award-winning books am I missing? Let me know!