Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
This is the time of year to consider the books we read and decide which ones we
liked the best. It is always interesting to see a book I disliked pop up on someone’s favorite list or the other way around.
The best books do not have to have been published this year or even read this year if you want to list a favorite book. I keep lists each month so I know what I have read. If I didn’t have lists in files, I would never remember. It is good to review them because sometimes I forget how many really good books I did read.
I have read 177 books this year so far.
Most of the books were good and some were very good. I would like to share the best titles on my list with you, though I understand that people often enjoy different books than those I choose.
A hat tip to Limelite for some neat categories to think about. Mine didn’t really fit these so I will make a different set, but for my readers to reply in comments, Limelite’s questions might be just the ticket.
Absolute Best Read of 2011
Without a Doubt Worst Read of 2011
Book I'd Read Again
Book I'd Most Highly Recommend to a Fellow Bibliophile
Book I Wish I'd Never Opened but Curiosity Got the Better of Me
Surprise Best Read of the Year
Best Discovered New Author
Hardest Slog
Best Children’s Books of the year
1. The Storm Before Atlanta by Karen Schwabach. I cared about the characters and the research was so excellent I felt that I was really there.
2. The Rendering by Joel Naftali. It is sort of like the Ninja Turtles and Transformers mixed together with computers. Also funny.
3. Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson. It is a fun children's book...very different than the usual.
4. Ashley Bryan's ABC of African American Poetry
Best Young Adult
1. Haunting Emma Trilogy by Lee Nichols
Deception
Betrayal
Surrender
The Best General Mysteries
1. The books by Tana French with Cassie
In the Woods
The Likeness
2. Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton and The Lock Artist
3. Fadeaway Girl by Martha Grimes This is the fifth book of the series with the little girl who rides in taxis.
4. Execution Dock by Anne Perry (a Monk and Hester story) and
Acceptable Loss by Anne Perry.
I was glad I read these two together because the story continued from Execution Dock more as a sequel than usual.
Best Mysteries that were a bit different
1. Regarding Ducks and Universes by Neve Maslakovic. A mystery and parallel universes...fun and a quick read.
2. The City and the City by China Mieville
3. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
4. Crooked Letter Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. Much more than a mystery and though it was very sad, I thought it was a good book.
The Best Hero of the Year
Jack Reacher in Lee Child’s books.
Killing Floor
Die Trying
Tripwire
Running Blind
Echo Burning
Without Fail
Persuader
The Enemy…sort of a prequel
One Shot
The Hard Way
Bad Luck and Trouble
Nothing to Lose
Gone Tomorrow
61 Hours
Worth Dying For
The Affair (a prequel)
Best Historical Mysteries
1. The Ian Rutledge series by Charles Todd set after WW I
Murder Stone
Test of Wills
Search the Dark
Wings of Fire
Legacy of the Dead
Watchers of Time
A Fearsome Doubt
A Cold Treachery
A Long Shadow
The Red Door
A Lonely Death
2. The Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd set during WW I
A Duty to the Dead
An Impartial Witness
A Bitter Truth
3. The Benjamin January series by Barbara Hambly set in New Orleans in the 1830’s
Best mysteries set in other countries
1. The Louise Penny books set in Quebec should be read in order.
Still Life
A Fatal Grace
The Cruelest Month
A Rule Against Murder
The Brutal Telling
Bury Your Dead
A Trick of the Light
2. A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church and Hidden Moon. The mysteries with Inspector O really made me understand the horror of living in North Korea. I bought the next two in the series, also. They need to be read in order.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Best Books
1. Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss..re-read so I could read the sequel.
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, the sequel to Name of the Wind
2. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
3. Betrayer by C. J. Cherryh
4. Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt.
5. Spellweaver by Lynn Kurland
6. Broken Blade by Kelly McCullough
7. The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke
8. A trilogy by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (The Liaden Universe)
Fledgling
Saltation
Ghost Ship
9. Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
General Fiction
1. Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos. Unique.
2. The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama...a small book which is good for the spirit. It takes place in Japan in 1937 and 1938 so that the war in China has already begun. A young Chinese man who has TB is recovering at his father's Japanese beach house. Well done.
3. Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni...set in India and very well done.
4. The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin
5. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai also set in India
6. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
7. Hungry as the Sea by Wilbur Smith...a great adventure story
8. Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd
9. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Fifth Business
The Manticore
World of Wonders
10. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, a re-read.
Non-fiction
1. The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals ed, by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo.
2. When the Trees Say Nothing by Thomas Merton...a tiny books of his nature sayings. Fun to read. They appear in another book I have, but this is the kind of book you can pick up each day and re-read. It reminds me of the things I saw growing up on twenty acres and a pond.
3. Narrow Road to the Interior by Matsuo Basho trans. Sam Hamill, journal of the writer who walked with a friend in Northern Japan in 1689.
4. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt. Another challenge book that took nearly three months to read. I put lots of sticky notes in it and I learned a lot. The Marshall Plan was a savior after WW II as we all knew, but whew!
5. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill.
6. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
7. What There Is to Say We have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell ed. by Suzanne Marrs
Non-fiction: War Stories
1. Thunder Below: The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in WW II by
Admiral Eugene Fluckey
2. Chancellorsville by Stephen Sears. I marked the places where my great-grandfather's regiment is mentioned.
3. 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart...a good book!!!
4. World War II on the Air: Edward R. Murrow and the War that Defined a Generation by Mark Bernstein and Alex Lubertozzi
What were the best books that you read this year? Of course, you may also
mention a favorite book from any year.
Diaries of the week
Write On! at the end of the writing year...
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Thursday Classical Music OPUS 62: Beethoven and the Music of Personal Strength.
by Dumbo
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Books That Changed My Life: January sign-up
by aravir
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early.