Saved by the Meme!

Earnest English tagged me for a meme, so I'm going to post on this rather than on the headachy, blah way I'm feeling at the moment.

Five Loved Books of 2007:

This meme is going to say something about me and my reading tastes. When I read for fun (i.e., not obscure Middle English romances), I read trash. Yep, that's right. Trash. The kind you get in airports and bus stations. I also read my favorite books over and over again. 4 or 5 times means nothing to me (especially with something like Michael Crichton). My all time favorite is classic Dean Koontz (before he got all namby-pamby as his work has been lately). So, with that caveat having been uttered, here are the favorite books I read this year:

1) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - how could this have NOT been on my favorite list??

2) Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - this one is a re-read, but I taught it last semester and realized why I loved it so much the first time around - totally great, classic Gaiman urban fantasy, which I liked even better than American Gods.

3) The Wheel of Darkness, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - the latest in the series of Agent Pendergast novels. Pretty good, but my personal favorite still continues to be Cabinet of Curiosities.

4) Peter Benchley's Amazon: The Ghost Tribe - this one was a random pick-up in some airport somewhere in North America. It's just good clean fun about a band of 17c Puritan settlers who get blown off course and end up in South America and must scrape out an existence in the bush. Way cool.

5) In addition to loving trash novels, I also prefer historical British naval fiction. I am re-reading (for the third time) Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. These are the books that the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World are based on (and it's a pretty good movie, too!). While I did like the Horatio Hornblower series, the Aubrey-Maturin novels will always be my favorite. I've read all 20 books (plus the Wine-Dark Sea) twice and I'm now on my third reading of the series at book #2, Post Captain.

I tag Squadratomagico, Dame Eleanor Hull, and heu mihi (and anyone and everyone else who wants it!)

Ahoy.