Best Reading for 2011 Survey

All the cool kids did this last week, but better late than never, right? I'm copying off Trish (because really, she has the best posts) and only answering the reading questions from this year end survey. I was originally hesitant to do it at all, since I didn't love a slew of books last year, but sometimes you can't help yourself.

1. Best Book You Read in 2011?
Divergent by Veronica Roth

2. Most Disappointing Book/Book You Wish You Loved More Than You Did?
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Movie Tie-In): A Novel by Jonathan Safran Foer

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2011?
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan.  I was incredibly annoyed by it when I started it, but I find myself thinking about it often.

4. Book you recommended to people most in 2011?
Divergent by Veronica Roth

5. Best series you discovered in 2011?
The only series I discovered in 2001 was Susan Mallery's Fools Gold series. I loved the first three. I found it awfully repetitive by the end, but if I hadn't read them back to back it may have helped.

6. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2011?
Kathleen Flinn, Karen Marie Moning, Veronica Roth, Susan Mallery

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you?I stuck very close to home this year, but Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was the biggest leap I took.

8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2011?
Divergent, again.

9. Book you most anticipated in 2011?
River Marked (Mercy Thompson, Book 6) by Patricia Briggs

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2011?


11. Most memorable character in 2011?
Lola from Lola and the Boy Next Door . Or Four from Divergent.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2011?
I don't think any of them were particularly beautifully written. They were badly written either, just not lyrical or anything.

13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2011?
It was the last one I read, but The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn really changed the way I thought about a lot of things, especially the chapter on cooking out of the box.

14. Book you can't believe you waited UNTIL 2011 to finally read? The oldest one I read was only published in 2003, so nothing really. No classic at all this year.

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2011? I don't ever mark passages, but if I had it would have been from The Kitchen Counter Cooking School. There were a lot of good ideas in that one.