Amazon's Holiday Picks of the Year

With the Christmas season comes (at least in the blogging world) gift lists. And predictably, those of us who blog about books have lists of books that are perfect for gift giving.

I'm personally still working on mine (hope to have it up in the next few days), but I got an email from Amazon.com the other day with the top 8 choices they suggested to give to teens this Christmas. I thought their picks were interesting, and so I thought I'd share.

So here's Amazon.com's top 8 gift choices for teens this year. With commentary by yours truly. :) No idea if these are in a specific order or not, but I'm just doing them in the order they were listed in with the email.

1. Torment (Fallen)by Lauren Kate - I suppose this makes sense. Fallen, the prequel to Torment, was definitely one of the hottest wants last year. I haven't read my copy of Fallen yet, but it seems like Angels are the new vampires as far as paranormal teen fiction goes.


2. Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, Book 1)by Cassandra Clare - This is the first book in a companion series to The Mortal Instruments books by the same author. Those books are very popular... though I confess I haven't read them yet either. I'm not sure if I will, since they don't seem to appeal to me much. If I do get into that series it will be because I get hooked on this new one. The steampunk feel it has to it slightly intrigues me.


3. The Scorch Trials (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 2)by James Dashner - Another sequel to a recent teen bestseller. Are you sensing a theme with these lists?


4. Night Star (The Immortals)by Alyson Noel - This is the latest from The Immortals series. If you look this one up on Amazon right now all you'll see is an ugly placeholder image for the cover. Which is really a shame, since I do like the cover of this one. But it's yet again another series for me to get into (I think this is book 5?) so no, I haven't read this one yet either.


5. Beautiful Darknessby Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl - Yep, another sequel. This one is for Beautiful Creatures, which was one of the battle books for this year. But so far it seems to have the highest review ratings on Amazon of these 8 so if you know someone who enjoyed the first book this would probably be a safe bet.


6. The Fledgling Handbook 101 (House of Night)by P. C. Cast - This is a guide-type companion novel for the House of Night series. So I can see why it would be an easy gift idea for someone who liked the series, but in the top 8 of best of the year? Really? I kind of frown on "guides" in general I guess. They're good for gifts but not much else. If I ever find one I'm remotely interested in I check it out from the library. In the end they're good for die hard fans, but don't really have that much additional material. I'd rather have another book added to the series than one of these. But that's just me.


7. Revolutionby Jennifer Donnelly - This is one of the only books that isn't a sequel or part of an existing This is also the only book on the list I've read. Sort of. Because I'm only on Chapter 6 so far. And it's not wowing me so far. Granted, I do have a long way to go (it's just shy of 500 pages) but my hopes are high. I hope they're not disappointed. Based on what I've read so far it makes me wonder if this book is partly floating on Jennifer Donnelly's reputation. Her other teen book A Northern Light has a Printz honor (that's like the Newbery Award only for teen books). Guess I'll need to see where it ends up.


8. Haloby Alexandra Adornetto - This would be the other non-series book on the list. And oh look, that's the third angel book. Anyone else seeing a paranormal theme to go with the series theme? I actually don't know much about this one other than bloggers have been swooning over the cover. And I have to agree, it's a gorgeous cover.



So that's what Amazon has picked for their top gift choices. My personal suggestions will come later this month, but what do you think? Would you have picked these eight?