Who Are You? A Topic for Each Week of the Year {Week 4: Birthdays}

Week 1: Birth
Week 2: School
Week 3: Hobbies

4. How did you celebrate birthdays as a child?

There are a lot of things I remember about celebrating my birthdays as a child, and the funny thing is that almost none of those things includes presents. I only remember a couple of big presents that I got for my birthday as a kid. What I really remember is spending time with friends and family. As the birthday girl, I would get to choose my dinner. I never had a set thing that I always asked for. I remember asking for taco salads once, lasagna another year, and pizza another. It just all depended on my mood. I wasn't a terribly picky eater, so there were lots of things that I liked.

I also remember that on the Sunday nearest my birthday, my grandparents would come and visit. I always got so excited when they would come. Both sets of grandparents would usually make it out, and we'd have cake and ice cream and I'd get to open a couple of presents. I really loved having my grandparents come over just for me; it made me feel very special.

When it came to the cake and ice cream, I generally didn't care much about the cake. I've never been a big fan of cake, and especially not of icing, but I LOVE ice cream. I would always have to get some kind of fruity-flavored ice cream because I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, either. There were quite a few years where I didn't even eat any of the other cake; my mom would make it for the benefit of those attending my parties. I would just eat a bigger portion of ice cream.

Isn't that cake adorable?

My brother Ben is on the left and my Grandma Brown is on the couch in the background.

I also usually got to have a friend birthday party. My birthday is in the middle of July. It gets hot in Utah in the middle of July. So the main theme I remember from my childhood birthday parties is water. We would always end up playing in the yard with water balloons or squirt guns. One year my parents got me a Slip 'N Slide for my birthday, and it became the main event at my birthday party that year.

We would also do cake and ice cream at those parties. One of the most memorable birthdays in that respect was one year when my parents decided to put trick candles on the cake. No one but them knew they were trick candles, and when the candles would not blow out, my friend Andrew laughed and laughed and laughed for way longer than was necessary. He thought they were the funniest things ever.

The birthday party that always sticks in my head the most, though, was my tenth birthday party. I got to invite a few select friends to go to Classic Skating and Water Park with me, and I still remember it being the funnest birthday ever. We got to go roller skating and eat pizza and go on awesome water slides.

L to R: Clifton, Andrew, me, Brindi. I was a little excited, I think.

L to R (I think, sorry it's kind of fuzzy): Brindi, Amelia, me, Elise

Me and Elise

Andrew and Clifton look thrilled in this photo.

The whole group. Shaun is on the front left, and his mullet is amazing. Pretty sure my mom cut his hair.

One of my favorite memories from this birthday party is of Clifton. He was terrified of the big slides, so he spent two-thirds of the time playing in the kiddie pool. The rest of us finally convinced him near the very end of the party to go on one of the big slides, and he LOVED it. He was so sad that he only got to go on the slides a couple of times before we had to go home. This has been made an especially sweet memory because Clifton passed away about seven years ago from brain cancer. He was one of my very best friends growing up.

I always loved my birthdays, and I think that's because my parents and siblings did such a great job of making me feel special. It's interesting to look back and not remember most of the presents I got, but I always remember the people I was with and the fun that I had.

Collections

Andrew has this really cool collection of cameras. He's got quite a few. Some are really cool antiques, like this one that we used as a prop in some of our wedding photos:

I am more than okay with his collection. The cameras sit on top of our bookshelves, and they look great displayed that way. He's come home with a few new ones since we've been married, most of which have been old Polaroid cameras. Just a couple of weeks ago he came home with a late 1950s early 1960s Polaroid camera that he got from DI complete with the owner's manual, which had some amazing pictures in it, let me tell you.

I've always kind of wanted my own really cool collections, but I never really knew what I wanted to collect. A while ago, I mentioned in passing to Andrew that I've always wanted a typewriter. Before Christmas, he asked me if I was serious about that. I instantly said yes. I didn't know if he would be able to find what I wanted, but of course he did. Because he's amazing like that. He ended up getting me a 1930s Royal typewriter that is so cool. Little did he know that he created a monster.

Last weekend, Andrew and I wandered around downtown Salt Lake looking for antiques stores. We found one called Jitterbug Antiques, and sitting outside the doors were two typewriters in their cases. Of course, I had to look at them both before we even went inside the store. I was able to pull myself away, mostly because it made me excited to see what was actually inside. There was one more typewriter set up inside, and I just fell in love with it. It had this amazing leather case that was in great condition, considering it was from the 1940s. So we bought it. And I still just love it.

The green one is the one Andrew gave me for Christmas. The black one is the new addition.

We also found this incredible 1887, four-volume edition of Les Misérables at a little rare books store we found. Andrew and I both absolutely love books, especially pretty books, so it was a little dangerous for us to go in the store to begin with. But I am so glad we did. These are by far the coolest books that we own, and it's given me the itch to find even more. Oi vey.

But I am so excited to have a little collection of my own. I can't say that I think the typewriter collection will grow a ton more. It's hard to collect a lot of typewriters; I mean, where would I keep even five of them? The antique books collection, on the other hand, could grow a lot more, especially since Andrew and I would both be contributing to it. I can't wait until we have a house and the room to really display the cameras, typewriters, and books to do them justice. 

Who Are You? A Topic for Each Week of the Year {Week 3: Hobbies}

3. What were your favorite activities as a young child? Were you interested in sports?

To a degree, I was a bit of a boring child. My main hobby and my first love, of sorts, was reading. I was always, always, always reading something. I was reading adult-sized novels by the time I was nine or ten (which was when I started reading The Work and the Glory). I would take them to reading time in elementary school, and when we had substitutes, they would often do a double-take when they saw the size of the books I was reading.

In eighth grade, my schoolwork was slipping. I was getting some of the worst grades I had ever gotten, and my mom's threat? If my grades didn't improve, she would take away my books. Because I was spending too much time reading the books I wanted to read and not enough time actually doing my homework. My grades turned around quite quickly because I knew she would follow through. Also, as a five-year-old, I would usually sleep with a pile of picture books next to my head, so I was quite literally always with a book.

A related hobby was writing. I wrote my first story in second grade, and then in third grade I started writing more because of my teacher's focus on creative writing. It then became a bit of an obsession. I would carry a legal pad and a bundle of pens with me most places I went. At family gatherings, I could be found sitting by myself and writing stories. I loved making my own "books" (which were usually binders that I had decorated). I wanted to be an author when I grew up until I discovered my penchant for editing.

My love for writing also manifested itself in journal writing. I started my first journal when I was eleven, and it quickly became my mode of venting. I would write about all my eleven-year-old woes and fears. Sometimes I'll go back and read the funny things I wrote in that journal. This is a hobby that has stuck with me throughout my adult life. I have now finished fourteen journals and have just started my fifteenth. I have started keeping ticket stubs and programs and anything else that can be easily stuck inside my journal, so they have also become my scrapbooks of sorts.

As a kid, I also really enjoyed certain kinds of crafts. I was always trying to find some new little craft I could do. My favorite was probably friendship bracelets. I had a few different ways I would make them, and I often wore five or six of them until they would start to fray. Another craft I really enjoyed was counted cross stitching. I loved watching the picture take shape as I would work my way through each color. The last craft I did on a regular basis was crocheting. I loved doing it because I could sit and watch TV while crocheting, and it was always really satisfying to finish a project.

Another love of mine was music. My whole family is very musical. We all sing, five of us play the piano, two play the drums, and a couple of us fiddle around with guitars. I grew up listening to my dad play the piano, so I learned at a very early age how much I liked music. I started taking piano lessons at about seven, and I had three different teachers. I started with Sherry Evans, whom I loved because I was really good friends with her son. Then she and her family moved back to Idaho, and I started going to Kristen Sorenson. I only took lessons from her for a little while because my mom ended up switching me to Brenda Tuttle, who lived in our ward. I knew her family really well. I babysat her kids regularly and her husband was also my Sunday school teacher. I loved taking lessons from her. She would set up recitals at Riverton Music, where we would get to play concert grand pianos in their recital hall. I still dream about playing those pianos; they were amazing. I stopped taking lessons at about fourteen mostly because I wasn't interested in learning classical music, so Brenda said she couldn't teach me anything else at that point. I still very much regret not applying myself more and continuing my lessons.

I also very much loved singing. I sang all the time, but I was really afraid of singing in front of people. I would get really embarrassed when someone would walk in on me singing in my room or singing to my walkman. That was the worst because I usually didn't even realize I was singing. I didn't get over my stage fright until tenth grade when I started performing in choir.

Choir tour in Southern California, junior year. I'm the first on the left in the pink. Pretty sure we were singing "Up" by Shania Twain here.

Choir tour in Orlando, senior year. This was at Epcot in Disney World. This was the Beach Boys medley.

Orlando tour again. This was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I'm sitting with Preston and Troy. Troy's hair is honest to goodness one of my favorite memories from high school.

I never participated in organized sports, though I really wish I had. I played softball and basketball with neighborhood friends and at recess. I considered doing organized softball when I was in junior high, but that never worked out. I also considered auditioning for the junior high volleyball team, but I chickened out.

But what I did love was watching sports with my dad. When I was in elementary school, I loved watching Atlanta Braves games with my dad. I love, love, loved baseball. I still remember being crazy excited when the Braves won the World Series in 1995. (We were Braves fans because my dad followed Dale Murphy and then stuck with the team because there isn't an MLB team in Utah.) I also loved watching and going to Utah Jazz games with my dad. I still vividly remember going to my first Jazz game at five years old. My dad kept telling me that if I got tired, we could go home. He took me to a preseason game because he was sure I wouldn't last the whole game, but I proved him wrong. The Jazz beat the 76ers that night, and I watched the entire game and loved every second of it. Some of my favorite sports memories are watching the playoffs with my dad when the Jazz went to the finals in 1997 and 1998. Especially 1997 when John Stockton hit the last-second three to send the Rockets home and advance to the finals for the first time ever. It was awesome. It's mostly thanks to my dad that I am such a huge sports fan now.

Who Are You? A Topic for Each Week of the Year {Week 2: School}

Since I'm a couple of weeks behind, I'm going to write the next couple of posts over the next couple of days. That way I'll be on track to finish the last week of December instead of the middle of January.

2. Where did you go to school? Did you have any memorable teachers? What were your favorite subjects?

Cyprus High School graduation 2005. From left to right (I'm in the middle): Traci Sell, Kate Brown, Kyle Powell, Cami Nelson, Marla Oveson, and Faith Peterson

I started school at Pleasant Green Elementary in Magna, UT. I went there for kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. I remember enjoying going to school there, but I don't remember much about any of my teachers. I have a vague memory of running into my kindergarten teacher (whose name I can't remember) at a store somewhere and being overly excited about it. And I think in first grade my teacher was Mrs. B. Johnson and my second grade teacher was Mrs. K. Johnson. Or vice versa. I remember liking all of them, at least.

After second grade, Webster Elementary, another elementary school in Magna, closed down because it was really old and wasn't handicap accessible. They didn't build a new elementary to replace Webster, so instead, they shifted all the boundaries around. So from third grade on, I went to Copper Hills Elementary, which was close enough that I was no longer bused and could walk to school. When it was warm outside, my friend Brindi and I would ride our bikes or roller blade to school. I didn't liked walking, but I did like it when I could do something more fun to get to school.

I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with elementary school. While I really enjoyed school and learning, I didn't have a lot of friends, and I got made fun of a bit. So the social aspect wasn't awesome, but I had a lot of teachers that I really loved. In third grade, I started the GT program (gifted and talented), which meant my time was split between two teachers. I had Mr. Brown for part of the day, and I LOVED him. I thought he was the funniest person ever. He taught us a rhyme that I still think about if I ever need to know what 8x8 is: "8x8, drop it on the floor, pick it up it's 64." For the other half of the day, I had Mr. Gregerson for the GT program. We all knew him as Mr. G. I loved Mr. G, too, which was a good thing because I ended up having him for the next four years. In fourth grade, I had another split class. I had Mrs. Pereira, I think, and Mr. G again. Then in fifth and sixth grades, they changed things around so that GT kids only had Mr. G and we stopped switching around.

Elementary school was really when I decided that I wanted to do English-y things when I grew up. Mr. G was very focused on creativity and the arts. We had time set aside every day to write stories. Sometimes we were just writing whatever we wanted, and at other times we had certain requirements we had to fulfill. For example, when we read The BFG by Roald Dahl, we had to write a story using at least ten of the words Dahl made up for the story. My stories always ended up being way longer than the page limit because I couldn't stop writing. 

I then went to Brockbank Junior High, where I learned to enjoy math more, mostly because of Mrs. Pienezza, who was the best teacher ever. She was this really intimidating woman who was really loud, and most kids were terrified of her. But all three of my siblings had had her before me, and she had been to my house for dinner a couple of times when my mom was PTA president, so I knew she was all bark and no bite. I also enjoyed Ms. Shafer's English class. She was a really eccentric teacher who definitely had her favorites, and I wasn't one of them. But that didn't keep me from really enjoying her class.

I then went to Cyprus High School, which is where I really started participating more. Two of my siblings had been in choir there, so I grew up watching them performing and wanting to do the same thing. So at the end of ninth grade, I steeled my nerves and auditioned for Show Choir, and made it. I loved every second of it, and that was where I started making some really good friends and developing a more mature singing voice. Mr. Moore was the choir director, and he pushed us hard. He was also my German teacher. I loved both choir and German, even though I had a bit of a rocky relationship with Mr. Moore. I made the audition choirs my junior and senior years too, and I took German through my senior year as well. 

In my senior year, I also auditioned for and made Play Productions, the advanced drama course. This was an especially big deal because I had never taken a single drama class before then. Basically all of my friends were in drama, so it made sense for me to get drawn in eventually. I loved the class and my teacher, Mrs. Smith, so much that I was quite upset with myself for not auditioning earlier. I was in Much Ado About Nothing, Cinderella, and a one-act play about World War II that was one of the best experiences I've ever had. That was where I learned just how much I loved performing and being on stage.

I also had Mrs. Roach for English my senior year, and she really helped solidify my decision to study English in college. I loved writing and reading and even editing my classmates' papers, and that was where I started seriously considering becoming an editor. 

Me and my niece at my high school graduation, 2005.

I then moved down to Provo to attend BYU. It was really the only university I wanted to attend. My grandpa, my dad, and my brother all went there, and I wanted to be part of that. It was the only school I applied to, so I count myself quite lucky that I actually got in. I declared my English major from the day I applied, though in my first couple of semesters, I also considered linguistics and vocal performance. But I stuck with English, and eventually added my editing minor. One of my favorite professors was Prof. Howard, who taught Music Civ 201 and 202. They were some of the hardest classes I took on campus, but I enjoyed them so thoroughly that I would study for hours on end for the exams. I was determined to ace those courses. Other favorites were Prof. Walker, who taught Bible as Lit and Modern English Lit; Sister Black, who taught Church History; and Brother Gardner, who taught a few of my editing classes, including Magazine Editing. He made me really love editing. In his classes, I knew I was pursuing the right career.

I graduated in December 2008, and I walked the next April. I was able to walk with my brother Matt, who had just graduated with his Masters degree. It was cool to walk with Matt, but it didn't feel quite as exciting simply because I had already been graduated for four months. But I loved going to BYU, and I'm so glad I was able to have that experience.

Me and Matt at the Cougar.

Who Are You? A Topic for Each Week of the Year {Week 1: My Birth}

This is a cool challenge that I stole from my friend Megan. It's a way to record your own history regarding specific subjects. I'm a great journal writer, but I feel like answering targeted questions like these will bring some more specific information that I don't get around to writing about in my journal, which is where I generally write about day-to-day things and whine when I need to vent.

1. Where were you born and what were the circumstances of your birth? Were there other children already in the family? How did your parents choose your name?

Left to Right: Chelly, me, Dad (Dave), Mom (Jeanine), Matt, Ben

I was born in Murray, UT on July 18. I was the only one of my siblings to be induced. It was before cell phones, and my dad was attending school at BYU, so to make sure that I didn't come while my dad was in Provo, the doctor thought it was best to have a planned day for me to be born so my dad wouldn't miss it. I was born at around noon on a Saturday, but my mom didn't get to hold me until about 5:00 pm. She kept bugging the nursery because she wanted to hold her baby, and when they finally brought me in, they let my mom know that for some reason, my body temperature wouldn't come up, so they had to leave me in the incubator. My mom was quite angry that they hadn't told her that earlier, especially after she had asked to see me so many times.

I am the youngest of five children. Bobby isn't in the picture above because he died before I was born, so I never met him. I've always wondered what our family life would have been like had Bobby lived. I wonder what the dynamics between me and my siblings would have been like. I'd like to think that things wouldn't have been so different, especially at this point in our adult lives. We're all pretty good friends now, regardless of how much some of us used to fight when we were younger.

As for my name, my dad worked with a lady whose name was Andralynn and who went by Lindy. My mom and dad really liked the sound of both names. My mom also had a thing for nicknames. Her name is Jeanine, which isn't very nicknamable, so she wanted her kids to have nicknamable names. So we have Benjamin (Ben), Robert (Bobby), RoChelle (Chelly), Matthew (Matt), and Andralynn (Lindy). The boys got the common names. The girls did not. This has been a constant source of confusion in my life. I also don't have a middle name, which has at times made me feel left out. My sister's middle name is Joy, which is also our dad's mom's middle name, and she passed the name on to her youngest girl. My sister-in-law also passed her middle name on to her daughter. I thought that was the coolest things, and I felt like I got the shaft because I didn't have a middle name I could pass on to my daughters. But at the same time, my mom doesn't have a middle name and neither does her mom, so I could pass that tradition on if I want to.

The Problem with Self-Esteem

I have struggled with self-esteem issues my whole life. I'm always incredibly hard on myself, and I've never particularly liked my body. I always want to be skinnier, to be maybe a little bit taller, to have straighter hair, to have clearer skin (because, really, at 26, these stupid breakouts need to just end already).

And while I was single, I always seemed to have this persistent, nagging thought hovering in the back of my mind. It was a thought that I knew intellectually was ridiculous, but I couldn't keep myself from believing it a little anyway. That thought was this: "Once I get married, these self-doubts will go away. My insecurities will be gone because I'll have someone there who loves me for me."

Well, I am now married, and I have been for nearly a year. I do have someone who loves me for who I am and is always there for me. But I can now say from personal experience that that persistent little thought is a complete and utter lie. All those self-esteem issues I had before getting married still exist. And that's the problem with self-esteem; no outside force can create it, regardless of how effectively outside sources can tear it down.

Two years ago, I spent six months working diligently to lose weight. I knew I was out of shape, and I knew I wasn't as healthy as I needed to be. So I made a major commitment to myself to do better, and I succeeded. In about six months, I lost roughly 25 pounds. I only needed to lose 5 more pounds to hit my goal weight. But then I started dating Andrew, and I stopped tracking my food because we would go out to eat and get ice cream and seeing the calories rack up was depressing. And going to the gym started falling by the wayside because I just wanted to spend time with Andrew. In the roughly year and a half since Andrew and I started dating, I have gained all the weight back that I lost, and then a little bit more. I had to put my favorite pairs of jeans away because they just no longer fit. And the more I thought about how much weight I had gained, the crappier I felt about myself.

So why am I writing this post? It's not intended to be a wo-is-me post. I don't want anyone to feel bad about me or tell me how great I am. I'm writing this to remind myself that the only person who can change the way I view myself is me. Though I have let outside forces form my perceptions of myself, it's time for me to stand up for myself to . . . well, myself. I've been thinking about this post for the past week and how I wanted to go about it. I have a draft of a giant post detailing all the things that helped fuel my poor self-esteem. But then I realized that's not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about how I could improve myself, about how I could learn to love myself. Because someday probably sooner rather than later, I'm going to be a mom. I might have little girls who look up to me. And I don't want those little girls to learn from their mom that it's normal to hate yourself and your body. I don't want them learning that they should be fixated on the scale and how many pounds they lost that week.

I want my little girls to learn from their mom that it's okay to love themselves for who they are. I want them to look at me as an example of how to accept themselves and improve themselves without negativity. I want them to want to exercise because it's good for them and because it's healthy, not solely to fix some problem they have with their thighs or their stomach. I want them to have a real person be a good role model of beauty for them instead of being swayed by the media and the unattainable ideal we're always sold.

If I want my daughters to learn those things from me in the future, I need to start implementing some changes in my life right now. So I'm making a list of things I need to do to improve my own self-esteem, since no one else is going to do it for me.

1. Stop the negative thoughts. When I look at myself in the mirror and see something I don't like, I'm going to stop the thought in its tracks. I'm going to pause and think something positive about myself instead.
2. Continue my efforts to be more active. My goal right now is to lose some weight, but I need to make that a goal that is more about my health than it is about my appearance. I am not the healthiest I could be, so I need to make efforts in that regard. I also need to focus on how good I felt when I was so good at keeping up my goals two years ago. I felt better about myself then than I have at any other point in my life, and that is a goal worth achieving.
3. Eat healthier and watch my portion sizes. This falls into line with being more active and getting healthier in general.
4. Attend the temple more often. Andrew and I met with our stake president this week, and he talked about the temple in a way I had never heard before. He said that as we attend the temple and make it a real part of our lives, we feel better about ourselves because we begin to view ourselves through Christ's eyes. That struck me to the core, and I knew it was something I needed pretty desperately at this point in my life.

I am also hoping to have some updates on these items that I will post in the future. Now that I've written these goals down, I need to account for them in some way, and I figure this blog is as good a way as any. In fact, here's a quick update already: I started working out and tracking my food on January 1. Since then, I've lost 3.4 pounds, and I've exercised at least three times a week. This, my friends, seems like a promising start.

In doing these four simple things, I think I will be able to overcome my self-doubts. Because the truth is, I am pretty awesome. Andrew must think so, or he wouldn't have married me in the first place. I have a pretty dang amazing life right now, and I have a Heavenly Father who loves me and is involved in every part of my life. That is the most important thing to remember: I am a daughter of God. He knows me and loves me despite my many flaws, of which he knows every tiny detail. It's time for me to start loving myself, too.

My Books of 2013

Every year on Goodreads, which is a website that I am a huge fan of, you can set a goal for how many books you want to read. I love doing this because I want to be reading as much as I can every year, and it's really fun to keep track and see how many I've read compared to previous years.

For 2013, I made the goal of reading 40 books. All told, I ended up 44, which I think is pretty impressive. It is true that some of them were novellas, meaning they were short and I read them in one sitting, but there are plenty of others with enough bulk to make up for the lightweights. I also included the ones I invested a good amount of time in without finishing.

Anyway, here is the full list of the books I read in 2013. The "Book List" tab will now restart for 2014. I'm excited about the books I might discover this year.

1. The Guardian by Gerald Lund (Unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to finish this. It was a really weird book. And Gerald Lund is too old to be writing from a 16-year-old girl's perspective. He just couldn't pull it off.)
2. Flesh & Bone (Benny Imura #3) by Jonathan Maberry (This was intense. I read nearly 400 pages in one night.)
3. The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Trilogy #1) by Jonathan Stroud
4. Isolation by Dan Wells
5. Between Husband & Wife by Stephen E. Lamb
6. The Golem's Eye (The Bartimaeus Trilogy #2) by Jonathan Stroud
7. Ptolemy's Gate (The Bartimaeus Trilogy #3) by Jonathan Stroud
8. Zorro by Isabel Allende
9. Change the Culture, Change the Game by Roger Connors and Tom Smith (I had to read this for work, and it's terrible and pointless.)
10. Fragments (Partials Sequence #2) by Dan Wells
11. A Night of Blacker Darkness by Dan Wells
12. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
13. Divergent (Divergent #1) by Veronica Roth
14. Free Four (Divergent #1.1) by Veronica Roth
15. Insurgent (Divergent #2) by Veronica Roth
16. Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson
17. The Book of Three (The Chronicles of Prydain #1) by Lloyd Alexander
18. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling
19. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter #2) by J.K. Rowling
20. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter #3) by J.K. Rowling
21. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter #4) by J.K. Rowling
22. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) by J.K. Rowling
23. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling
24. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling
25. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
26. The Rithmatist (Rithmatist #1) by Brandon Sanderson
27. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
28. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
29. The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1) by Maggie Stiefvater
30. Matched (Matched #1) by Ally Condie
31. Crossed (Matched #2) by Ally Condie
32. Reached (Matched #3) by Ally Condie
33. The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Fire and Thorns #1) by Rae Carson
34. The Crown of Embers (Fire and Thorns #2) by Rae Carson
35. Legend (Legend #1) by Marie Lu
36. Night by Elie Wiesel
37. Variant (Variant #1) by Robison Wells
38. Feedback (Variant #2) by Robison Wells
39. The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
40. Prodigy (Legend #2) by Marie Lu
41. Fire & Ash (Benny Imura #4) by Jonathan Maberry
42. The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
43. The Bitter Kingdom (Fire and Thorns #3) by Rae Carson
44. The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater
45. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher