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Well, it's time to round up my favorite reads of the year. But while last year I didn't even know where to BEGIN, I'd read so much that was Awesome, this year... I didn't read so much, period.
According to the list I tried to keep up to date first at Virtual Bookshelf and then, when that died, Goodreads, I only read 31 novels this year-- and we're not talking huge tomes here, we're talking children's and YA, some of which WERE pretty long, but generally aren't very. I once more forgot to keep track of nonfiction and picture books, but I only read a few nonfiction-- all adult, and mostly those I just skimmed; and I read lots of picture books and easy readers, but there are so very many and it's been such a long year that I can't pick any in particular OUT.
And when I looked at my list of 31 novels, I first thought I'd separate them again into 2011 books and older books, to make two different Best of lists, but I couldn't decide on which titles to pick to round OUT each list, and it turned out the titles I'd already ranked, if I mixed the lists together, worked out to be exactly ten anyway, so that's what you get: my top ten favorite books read this year:
1. Hardinge, Frances: The Lost Conspiracy, originally published as Gullstruck Island in the UK, if you're reading this from abroad, which is more likely than I once assumed. I put off reading this because it's long and apparently required thinking, and-- well, I've TOLD you what my reading habits have been like lately. BUT, NO, me: it's the sort of long that you DON'T MIND because every sentence is pure awesomeness and you don't want it to end! It takes place on a volcanic island in a brilliantly original fantasy world like nothing you've seen: while it deals with a clash between two cultures, these are not allegorical portrayals of any real cultures, but distinctly original and thoroughly developed fantasy cultures. And there's no clear black-and-white good guys and bad guys, either, though some individuals are clearly more bad than others-- and I'm not sure anyone gets away with being clearly "good"-- everyone has their motivations, and they're all so well-drawn and rounded and complete, you will love them or hate them or be disappointed in them or cheer or WHATEVER. And the plot's complicated and compelling, and... This is just a Just Read It. We'll leave it at that.
2. Bray, Libba: Beauty Queens. This book. Is. Insane. It is not as perfectly crafted as her Going Bovine was, but it may be more enjoyable to READ, at least if one is a fan of off-the-wall satire. I'm just going to copy what I wrote in my last review of it because I'm lazy: "a book that satirizes... EVERYTHING. Beauty pageants, television, marketing, corporations, society in general. There is desert island survival, spies and assassins, evil dictators, pirates, and Things Exploding. It is Just Whacked. And yet the characters are all surprisingly well-developed. I would say that the only downside (if you LIKE completely off-the-wall absurdity) is that the messages often feel a bit didactic, but since EVERYTHING in the book is over-the-top, I'm not sure this isn't entirely intentional...." When I look back at the books I've read this year, this one rises to the top if only because it's stuck in my memory so well-- I still giggle just thinking about the Evil Dictator in question. It's so Wrong it's completely right.
3. Cooper, Michelle: The FitzOsbornes in Exile. Disclaimer: Michelle Cooper recently made me The American Ambassador to Montmaray. Mostly because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
punterschlagen told me to ask her to. BUT THAT'S BECAUSE I ALREADY WAS A HUGE FAN, AND HAVE SAID SO ONLINE ALREADY. SEVERAL TIMES. So here is another one of those times. This is the sequel to A Brief History of Montmaray, which you really ought to read first. The sequel is more straight-up historical fiction than the genre-elusive first title was (though there still wasn't ACTUALLY a Montmaray), but every bit as compelling as the first. I saw this recently recommended for fans of Downton Abbey, set at the start of a DIFFERENT World War, which is a very clever recommendation, because it's probably true, so I'm going to repeat it. But, much as I enjoyed that show, I think these books are better. So, read 'em.
4. Yee, Lisa: Warp Speed. Rarely do you find, in any media, something that portrays the REALITY of bullying so ACCURATELY-- that doesn't try to tie things up with neat, rosy-glassed solutions. It's refreshing also to see something that so clearly SHOWS, without ever outright telling, the thing I myself most want to say (and I do, over and over again) about bullying: how very complex people actually are, that even when people DO fit a stereotype-- which Marley certainly does-- there's always so much more to them than JUST that one aspect of them. Like all Lisa Yee's books, this one is so TRUE it makes you laugh and wince in pain at the same time.
5. Westerfeld, Scott: Goliath. Final book of the Leviathan trilogy, which really you must take as one whole. There's a scene in this where the (WWI-era) characters are watching The Perils of Pauline for the first time, and I thought, this is like that, like watching an old adventure serial back when it was new, full of the JOY of unexpected marvels and gasp-inducing perils you can experience from the safety of your chair. Thoroughly satisfying.
6. Booraem, Ellen: Small Persons With Wings. This book is so very Diana Wynne Jones-like that I was surprised to see only one other reviewer (that I read, at least) suggest the connection. Reality-based fantasy, full of the imperfections of life, unflinching from the dark side while being wry or outright funny. Then throw in outlandish fantastical twists and make everyone react accordingly. Pure fun. And honestly, if you ARE a DWJ fan, you'll find yourself right at home in it.
7. Stroud, Jonathan: The Ring of Solomon. I've never actually read the other Bartimaeus books, but this prequel-of-sorts is entirely stand-alone, and a treat that makes me plan to GET to the other books someday, if I ever develop a proper obsessive reading habit again and can catch up. What a voice! What a twisted, totally fun narrative! What an interesting take on ancient times!
8. Oppel, Kenneth: This Dark Endeavor. This is a prequel to Frankenstein, and I honestly didn't know what to expect, beyond that I've loved Kenneth Oppel's work in the past. Would the 19th century-style language be hard for my lately-reading-stupid brain to get into? Um, no. Because the nonstop DEATHLY PERIL was gripping enough for me to get my head around. It had BEEN awhile since I'd read a proper horror-suspense novel! And it's a believable look at the psyche of someone who's going to grow up to get himself into quite a lot of trouble...
9. Selznick, Brian: Wonderstruck. It may be that my problems getting into reading this year have to do with something in my brain, an overload of the written word or something, which may be why I appreciated this book so much. I've never been able to get much into graphic novels-- something about that close-detail visual storytelling doesn't grab my brain quite right-- but BIG, full-page visual storytelling I've been coming to love, in picture book form. Which is why reading this book felt ...REFRESHING. To have novel-length narrative coming at me in full-page pictorial form, it woke up bits of my brain I didn't realize were sleeping, and rested the parts of my brain that were starting to see words as Too Much Noise. Best yet, it was telling a story that WAS experiencing story in a different way. It all tied together! Speaking of, my favorite bit was the transitions between the two (text and image) storylines--the seamlessness of it, how one would illustrate (in words or pictures) what was happening in the other, even as they were taking place at different times. The stories themselves didn't grab me so much, but the refreshing, dynamic format was well worth it.
10. John, Antony: Five Flavors of Dumb. I won't say that incorporating the history of rock music into a book is a SURE way to get me to love it (the book: I already love the rock history), but it definitely helps. I thought it would just be a quick, fun read-- deaf girl becomes manager of a rock band, interesting concept, I'll give it a try-- but as soon as the characters started tracking down important Rock History Pilgrimage Sites all over Seattle, my heart just connected. I AM SO TOTALLY WITH YOU. I UNDERSTAND THE TRUE IMPORTANCE OF JIMI HENDRIX'S HOUSE OR LACK THEREOF! This story just really just captured the very essence of Rock, AND I AM ALL FOR THAT.
So, I give you ten books I loved. I did LIKE --and even LOVE-- some more than that, but these are the ones that most stand out, so these are the ones I'm sticking with.
Maybe next year I will have healed whatever problem my brain is having with reading, and I'll be back in the swing of things. Maybe if I learn to play rock drums I will rejuvenate my brain. Or if I just hunker down and learn to play "Fearless" properly out of the piano book my sister got me for Christmas. That might work, too. Well anyway. Have you read any of these books and have anything you'd like to add in the comments? Do you now WANT to read any of these books I have mentioned? Would you like to say something completely unrelated? I am all about the comments, so chime in below!
According to the list I tried to keep up to date first at Virtual Bookshelf and then, when that died, Goodreads, I only read 31 novels this year-- and we're not talking huge tomes here, we're talking children's and YA, some of which WERE pretty long, but generally aren't very. I once more forgot to keep track of nonfiction and picture books, but I only read a few nonfiction-- all adult, and mostly those I just skimmed; and I read lots of picture books and easy readers, but there are so very many and it's been such a long year that I can't pick any in particular OUT.
And when I looked at my list of 31 novels, I first thought I'd separate them again into 2011 books and older books, to make two different Best of lists, but I couldn't decide on which titles to pick to round OUT each list, and it turned out the titles I'd already ranked, if I mixed the lists together, worked out to be exactly ten anyway, so that's what you get: my top ten favorite books read this year:
1. Hardinge, Frances: The Lost Conspiracy, originally published as Gullstruck Island in the UK, if you're reading this from abroad, which is more likely than I once assumed. I put off reading this because it's long and apparently required thinking, and-- well, I've TOLD you what my reading habits have been like lately. BUT, NO, me: it's the sort of long that you DON'T MIND because every sentence is pure awesomeness and you don't want it to end! It takes place on a volcanic island in a brilliantly original fantasy world like nothing you've seen: while it deals with a clash between two cultures, these are not allegorical portrayals of any real cultures, but distinctly original and thoroughly developed fantasy cultures. And there's no clear black-and-white good guys and bad guys, either, though some individuals are clearly more bad than others-- and I'm not sure anyone gets away with being clearly "good"-- everyone has their motivations, and they're all so well-drawn and rounded and complete, you will love them or hate them or be disappointed in them or cheer or WHATEVER. And the plot's complicated and compelling, and... This is just a Just Read It. We'll leave it at that.
2. Bray, Libba: Beauty Queens. This book. Is. Insane. It is not as perfectly crafted as her Going Bovine was, but it may be more enjoyable to READ, at least if one is a fan of off-the-wall satire. I'm just going to copy what I wrote in my last review of it because I'm lazy: "a book that satirizes... EVERYTHING. Beauty pageants, television, marketing, corporations, society in general. There is desert island survival, spies and assassins, evil dictators, pirates, and Things Exploding. It is Just Whacked. And yet the characters are all surprisingly well-developed. I would say that the only downside (if you LIKE completely off-the-wall absurdity) is that the messages often feel a bit didactic, but since EVERYTHING in the book is over-the-top, I'm not sure this isn't entirely intentional...." When I look back at the books I've read this year, this one rises to the top if only because it's stuck in my memory so well-- I still giggle just thinking about the Evil Dictator in question. It's so Wrong it's completely right.
3. Cooper, Michelle: The FitzOsbornes in Exile. Disclaimer: Michelle Cooper recently made me The American Ambassador to Montmaray. Mostly because
punterschlagen told me to ask her to. BUT THAT'S BECAUSE I ALREADY WAS A HUGE FAN, AND HAVE SAID SO ONLINE ALREADY. SEVERAL TIMES. So here is another one of those times. This is the sequel to A Brief History of Montmaray, which you really ought to read first. The sequel is more straight-up historical fiction than the genre-elusive first title was (though there still wasn't ACTUALLY a Montmaray), but every bit as compelling as the first. I saw this recently recommended for fans of Downton Abbey, set at the start of a DIFFERENT World War, which is a very clever recommendation, because it's probably true, so I'm going to repeat it. But, much as I enjoyed that show, I think these books are better. So, read 'em.4. Yee, Lisa: Warp Speed. Rarely do you find, in any media, something that portrays the REALITY of bullying so ACCURATELY-- that doesn't try to tie things up with neat, rosy-glassed solutions. It's refreshing also to see something that so clearly SHOWS, without ever outright telling, the thing I myself most want to say (and I do, over and over again) about bullying: how very complex people actually are, that even when people DO fit a stereotype-- which Marley certainly does-- there's always so much more to them than JUST that one aspect of them. Like all Lisa Yee's books, this one is so TRUE it makes you laugh and wince in pain at the same time.
5. Westerfeld, Scott: Goliath. Final book of the Leviathan trilogy, which really you must take as one whole. There's a scene in this where the (WWI-era) characters are watching The Perils of Pauline for the first time, and I thought, this is like that, like watching an old adventure serial back when it was new, full of the JOY of unexpected marvels and gasp-inducing perils you can experience from the safety of your chair. Thoroughly satisfying.
6. Booraem, Ellen: Small Persons With Wings. This book is so very Diana Wynne Jones-like that I was surprised to see only one other reviewer (that I read, at least) suggest the connection. Reality-based fantasy, full of the imperfections of life, unflinching from the dark side while being wry or outright funny. Then throw in outlandish fantastical twists and make everyone react accordingly. Pure fun. And honestly, if you ARE a DWJ fan, you'll find yourself right at home in it.
7. Stroud, Jonathan: The Ring of Solomon. I've never actually read the other Bartimaeus books, but this prequel-of-sorts is entirely stand-alone, and a treat that makes me plan to GET to the other books someday, if I ever develop a proper obsessive reading habit again and can catch up. What a voice! What a twisted, totally fun narrative! What an interesting take on ancient times!
8. Oppel, Kenneth: This Dark Endeavor. This is a prequel to Frankenstein, and I honestly didn't know what to expect, beyond that I've loved Kenneth Oppel's work in the past. Would the 19th century-style language be hard for my lately-reading-stupid brain to get into? Um, no. Because the nonstop DEATHLY PERIL was gripping enough for me to get my head around. It had BEEN awhile since I'd read a proper horror-suspense novel! And it's a believable look at the psyche of someone who's going to grow up to get himself into quite a lot of trouble...
9. Selznick, Brian: Wonderstruck. It may be that my problems getting into reading this year have to do with something in my brain, an overload of the written word or something, which may be why I appreciated this book so much. I've never been able to get much into graphic novels-- something about that close-detail visual storytelling doesn't grab my brain quite right-- but BIG, full-page visual storytelling I've been coming to love, in picture book form. Which is why reading this book felt ...REFRESHING. To have novel-length narrative coming at me in full-page pictorial form, it woke up bits of my brain I didn't realize were sleeping, and rested the parts of my brain that were starting to see words as Too Much Noise. Best yet, it was telling a story that WAS experiencing story in a different way. It all tied together! Speaking of, my favorite bit was the transitions between the two (text and image) storylines--the seamlessness of it, how one would illustrate (in words or pictures) what was happening in the other, even as they were taking place at different times. The stories themselves didn't grab me so much, but the refreshing, dynamic format was well worth it.
10. John, Antony: Five Flavors of Dumb. I won't say that incorporating the history of rock music into a book is a SURE way to get me to love it (the book: I already love the rock history), but it definitely helps. I thought it would just be a quick, fun read-- deaf girl becomes manager of a rock band, interesting concept, I'll give it a try-- but as soon as the characters started tracking down important Rock History Pilgrimage Sites all over Seattle, my heart just connected. I AM SO TOTALLY WITH YOU. I UNDERSTAND THE TRUE IMPORTANCE OF JIMI HENDRIX'S HOUSE OR LACK THEREOF! This story just really just captured the very essence of Rock, AND I AM ALL FOR THAT.
So, I give you ten books I loved. I did LIKE --and even LOVE-- some more than that, but these are the ones that most stand out, so these are the ones I'm sticking with.
Maybe next year I will have healed whatever problem my brain is having with reading, and I'll be back in the swing of things. Maybe if I learn to play rock drums I will rejuvenate my brain. Or if I just hunker down and learn to play "Fearless" properly out of the piano book my sister got me for Christmas. That might work, too. Well anyway. Have you read any of these books and have anything you'd like to add in the comments? Do you now WANT to read any of these books I have mentioned? Would you like to say something completely unrelated? I am all about the comments, so chime in below!
