Top Ten reads this year (2011)

[Fried Egg]

Almost exactly a year ago I asked the same question. What are you top ten books you have read this year?

I've found it particularly difficult to decide this year. Easilly the author I've enjoyed most this past year is Robert Aickman. But my top ten looks something like this:

1) Cold Hand in Mine, The Wine-dark Sea, The Unsettled Dust - Aickman, Robert *
2) The Forever War - Haldeman, Joe
3) Grey Area - Self, Will
4) The Lost Valley and Other Stories - Blackwood, Algernon
5) I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - Ellison, Harlan
6) The Glamour - Priest, Christopher
7) Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Wilhelm, Kate
8) The Lottery & Other Stories - Jackson, Shirley
9) Midnight Call and Other Stories - Thomas, Jonathan
10) The Imago Sequence and Other Stories - Barron, Laird

* I read three collections by Aickman last year. Rather than taking up the top three spots, I've merged them into one.

And some individual short stories, not in any of the collections above, that are still worth a mention:

• "With an Intent to Steal" by Blackwood, Algernon
• "The Exit Door Leads In" by Dick, Philip K.
• "By These Presents" by Kuttner, Henry
• "Resurrection in Bronze" by Onions, Oliver
• "The Garden of Adompha" by Smith, Clark Ashton
• "The Procession of the Black Sloth" by Barron, Laird
• "Songbirds" by Sketchley, Martin
• "Black God's Kiss" by Moore, C. L.

Biggest disappointment of the year: "Mission of Gravity" - Clement, Hal

 

[D_Davis]

Wow - you liked the Wilhelm book that much, eh? I think the year I read that I ranked it among my least favorites. Very interesting how people view things very differently.

Anyhow, this has been a fantastic year for reading. My top 10 looks something like this (for now):

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter, Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name- Edward M. Erdelac
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. The Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
4. The Circus of Dr. Lao - Charles G. Finney
5. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
6. The Comforters, Muriel Spark
7. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
8. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
10. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale

 

[Fried Egg]

Wow - you liked the Wilhelm book that much, eh? I think the year I read that I ranked it among my least favorites.

I've had quite a few disappointments with the S.F. Masterworks series this year ("Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement, "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner, "Dr. Bloodmoney" by Phillip K. Dick, "City" by Clifford D. Simak) but "Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang" wasn't one of them.

 

[Coragem]

Oh, how I wish I had more time to read.

I'm lucky if I read ten books in a year!

Maybe not surprising, my favs for this year have been by some of my favourite authors.

A Dance with Dragons. No page turner, but that's not the point with this one. Richness, depth, quality, crafted sentences and fully realised world.

Aside from that, I found Gay Gavriel Kay this year, and The Lions of Al-Rassan was straight away one of my favourite books of all time.

I've also begun getting into Jack Vance and Celia Friedman, both of whom I now rate very, very highly.

Coragem.

 

[D_Davis]

I've had quite a few disappointments with the S.F. Masterworks series this year ("Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement, "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner, "Dr. Bloodmoney" by Phillip K. Dick, "City" by Clifford D. Simak) but "Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang" wasn't one of them.

Crazy! Dr. Bloodmoney a disappointment? Man, I rank that in my top 10 PKD easily, and I think it's probably his most well-written and unique novel. It might even break into the top 5 for me.

I also dig the heck out of City, which is somewhat similar to Dr. Bloodmoney, so it makes sense that you were disappointed with both.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Great thread idea, but I'll need to give it some thought. I'm rubbish at remembering what I read (recently shredded some receipts, couldn't remember some of the books and could've sworn I'd had others for much longer).

 

[elvet]

I've been keeping track of my books at Goodreads, so it's fairly easy to look back at my 2011 list. My top 10 are:
5 out of 5 stars (I'm not counting my aSoIaF re-reads)
Reamde by Neal Stephenson
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie
A Dance with Dragons by G.R.R. Martin

4 out of 5 stars
The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
The Hammer by K.J. Parker
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks
Leviathan Wakes by James Corey
The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker

 

[jojajihisc]

Novels

Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan
Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding
Fevre Dream - George R.R. Martin
Counting Heads - David Marusek
Camouflage - Joe Haldeman
Dark Universe - Daniel F. Galouye
Ark - Stephen Baxter
Looking for Jake - China Mieville
In the Country of Last Things - Paul Auster
Of Men and Monsters - William Tenn

Short Stories (I read more short fiction this year than ever before)

"The Pure Product" - John Kessel
"The Spectre General - Theodore Cogswell
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursula Le Guin
"The Bone Man" - Frederic S. Durbin
"Ginny Sweethips Flying Circus" - Neal Barrett, Jr.
"The Emperor of Mars" - Allen Steele
"Allamagoosa" - Eric Frank Russell
"Arvies" - Adam-Troy Castro
"The Things" - Peter Watts
"The Bagatelle" - John Varley

Honorable Mentions:

"Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance" - Paul Park
"Graves" - Joe Haldeman
"Frankenstein, Frankenstein" - Will McIntosh
"The Lunatics" - Kim Stanley Robinson
"Muse of Fire" - Dan Simmons
"Caught in the Organ Draft" - Robert Silverberg
"Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment - M. Rickert
"The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" - Kij Johnson
"The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk" - Eugie Foster
"Ragnarok" - Paul Park
"The Barbie Murders" - John Varley
"More Than the Sum of His Parts" - Joe Haldeman
"The Arrows" - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
"Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds" - Dan Simmons

 

[Kierkegaurdian]

Top Ten of 2011:

1. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
2. The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
3. Peace by Gene Wolfe
4. V. by Thomas Pynchon
5. The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
6. The Reefs of Earth by R. A. Lafferty
7. Gravity's Rainbow - by Thomas Pynchon
8. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
9. The Book of the Long Sun - by Gene Wolfe
10. The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson (bks. 1-6, reading 7 now)

As you can see, it has been a Wolfe and Pynchon year. I had as a goal reading all of the books by these authors in 2011. I probably won't make it, but I did a good job. Cheating a little and counting the New Sun books (read in Dec. of 2010), I am 15/30 for Wolfe, and 4/7 for Pynchon over the last 12 months.

Honorable mentions:

Castleview, The Sorcerer's House, The Knight, and An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe. These were all great, great books. I really enjoyed the "urban-fantasy" feel of the first two in particular.

Disappointments:

Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. I thought a lot of the "quirks" of these books were very forced, and the gimmicks outweighed the genuinely good writing (of which there was some, I admit). Didn't quite do it for me.

 

[Heather Myst]

Here are my favorites from this year:

Dance with Dragons Martin
Wise Man's Fear Rothfuss
Among Thieves Hulick
Black Prism Weeks
Wintertide Sullivan
Way of Kings Sanderson
Kings Wrath McIntosh
King Rolon's Kin: The Usurper Daniells
River of Shadows Redick
Farlander Buchanon

Best of the rest:

Heroes Abercrombie
Palace of Impossible Dreams Fallon
Dark-Eyes war Coe

 

[J-Sun]

It might have been easy to pick 3, 8, 13, 20, etc. but 10 was hard. And, as is usually the case, a different day would produce a different list. Plus, I don't know what, if anything, I read in January and I might be missing some others along the way. But, alphabetically by title:

The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke
Dragon's Egg - Robert L. Forward
Gladiator-at-Law - Frederik Pohl/C.M. Kornbluth
A Good Old-Fashioned Future - Bruce Sterling collection [1]
The House That Stood Still - A.E. van Vogt
The Lost Fleet (6 vols.) - Jack Campbell
Michaelmas - Algis Budrys
Schild's Ladder - Greg Egan
The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon - Theodore Sturgeon collection
The Year's Best Science Fiction, 28th Annual - Gardner Dozois anthology

Honorable mention to Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys, but he already had one in the list.

Some noteworthy stories from sources not listed above:

"Call Me Million" (The Gold at the Starbow's End, Frederik Pohl)
"The Castle of Light" (Retief!, Keith Laumer)
"Eight Miles" (online Hugo nominee, Sean McMullen)
"Enchanted Village" (Monsters [2], A.E. van Vogt)
"The Merchants of Venus" (The Gold at the Starbow's End, Frederik Pohl)
"Midnight in the Mirror World" (The Mind Spider, Fritz Leiber)
"The Night of the Long Knives" (The Night of the Wolf, Fritz Leiber)
"The Oldest Soldier" (The Mind Spider, Fritz Leiber)
"The Vault of the Beast" (Monsters, A.E. van Vogt)
"Wicker Wonderland" (Retief!, Keith Laumer)

[1] Finished it this year after starting it about a decade earlier.
[2] A re-read from Destination: Universe.

 

[Extollager]

Several weeks remain, so I'm going to list just five. I'm going to list only books that were new reads for me. Finally, I decline to say that these are "the best"!

P. K. Dick A Scanner Darkly
D. Lindsay The Haunted Woman
Ian Frazier Travels in Siberia
T. Vesaas Spring Night
B. Caldwell City of Tranquil Light

 

[jojajihisc]

And, as is usually the case, a different day would produce a different list.

Isn't that the truth.

 

[J-Sun]

Isn't that the truth.

BTW, I just read the linked 2009 and 2010 threads, which I somehow missed the first time(s) around. Interesting to see people's read-counts (many made me feel better; some worse). To add that: my Top Ten reads for 2011 were chosen from about 42 books. Since this is week 48 and I don't know about weeks 1-4, that's almost exactly averaging one book per week. (There used to be times I averaged reading one book every day or two.)

 

[Quokka]

Not a big year for reading, I think I've finished between 20 and 30 books though looking back I also haven't posted here very much which makes this thread a lot harder, the monthly reading threads are my best chance of remembering what I've read when.

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
(popular science at it's best)
Starmaker - Olaf Stapledon
(Better than Last and First Men which I also really liked and I'm glad I read them in this order)
Martian Timeslip - PK Dick*
Born to Run - Christopher McDougall
(This one has developed a lot of hype but even if taken as a semi-fictional story it's a very entertaining read, afaik it's intended to be entirely factual, I'm a casual runner and keep barefooting to the grass and beaches but there's a lot of ideas in here I really agree with. It's a great motivational book and I run better for having read it which can't be a bad review.)
More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon
Emphyrio - Jack Vance
The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
Earth Abides - George R Stewart
The Invisible Man - HG Wells
Lord of Light - Roger Zelanzy

*Not sure if it was this year or late last year, if it was 2010 cut it and add PK Dick's Dr Bloodmoney to the bottom of the list.

Honorable Mention

The Last Theorem - Arther C Clarke & Frederik Pohl, The only science fiction story I read in 2011 that was less than 10 years old... and I don't think I have read a fantasy story at all! (not counting the Chronicles writing challenges )


I might just fit Richard Matherson's The Shrinking Man into 2011 but it's looking unlikely at this point.

 

[Connavar]

Wow - you liked the Wilhelm book that much, eh? I think the year I read that I ranked it among my least favorites. Very interesting how people view things very differently.

Anyhow, this has been a fantastic year for reading. My top 10 looks something like this (for now):

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter, Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name- Edward M. Erdelac
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. The Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
4. The Circus of Dr. Lao - Charles G. Finney
5. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
6. The Comforters, Muriel Spark
7. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
8. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
10. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale

Nice!

The first book of that series was a big suprise to me and easily a must in my top 10 reads of this year. Few books was more fun to read than way he wrote the action,the mythology, the cool hero.

Im glad to see book 3 is coming out soon

 

[jojajihisc]

BTW, I just read the linked 2009 and 2010 threads, which I somehow missed the first time(s) around. Interesting to see people's read-counts (many made me feel better; some worse). To add that: my Top Ten reads for 2011 were chosen from about 42 books. Since this is week 48 and I don't know about weeks 1-4, that's almost exactly averaging one book per week. (There used to be times I averaged reading one book every day or two.)

Mine were chosen from about 35 and of those only about 25 were genre fiction which I limited my picks to. So picking the top ten novels wasn't terribly hard for me.

 

[elvet]

My list was chosen from 102 books, all but a few are SF and fantasy.

 

[D_Davis]

Nice!

The first book of that series was a big suprise to me and easily a must in my top 10 reads of this year. Few books was more fun to read than way he wrote the action,the mythology, the cool hero.

Im glad to see book 3 is coming out soon

Totally. Definitely one of the coolest books I have ever read. Not the best, but the coolest. Great hero, amazing set pieces and action, and a fantastic blend of mythologies.

 

[Connavar]

I have read 79 novels so far this year and most of them were i see in goodreads classics field, general fiction,crime,very few SF or fantasy.

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. The Dirdir by Jack Vance
3. Complete Poems by Edith Södergran( she is sort of Edgar Allan Poe of nordic poetry)
4. Siddharta by Herman Hesse
5. Butcher's Moon by Richard Stark
6. Ticket to the boneyard by Lawrence Block
7. Somewhere in time by Richard Matheson
8. Det Mest Förbjudna by Kerstin Thorvall( 70s powerful,personal feminist novel)
9.Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter by Edward M.Erdelec
10. A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Had to cut out quality books by Sara Lidman, Duras,Ibsen,Matt Hughes,Jim Thompson etc

Hardest year to choose top 10 easily so far for me. Those top 10 was the ones i felt i must list as quality reads this year.