Top Ten reads this year (2013)

[Heather Myst]

It has been a bad year when I can't even come up with a top ten.

1. Crown Tower Michael J. Sullivan
2. The Rose and Thorn Michael J. Sullivan
3. The Blinding Knife Brent Weeks
4. A Dance With Dragons George R.R. Martin (re-read)
5. Emperor of Thorns Mark Lawrence
6. Red Country Joe Abercrombie
7. The Folding Knife K.J. Parker

On a positive side I did discover the BBC show Luther which I have become hooked on.

 

[elvet]

It has been a bad year when I can't even come up with a top ten.

1. Crown Tower Michael J. Sullivan
2. The Rose and Thorn Michael J. Sullivan
3. The Blinding Knife Brent Weeks
4. A Dance With Dragons George R.R. Martin (re-read)
5. Emperor of Thorns Mark Lawrence
6. Red Country Joe Abercrombie
7. The Folding Knife K.J. Parker

On a positive side I did discover the BBC show Luther which I have become hooked on.

Glad to see you liked The Folding Knife. I subscribe to BBC streaming. I'm going to check out Luther.

 

[Rafellin]

Been a difficult year for new fiction, I have read far too many that disappointed.

Babylon Steele - Gaie Sebold
Control Point - Myke Cole
All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye - Chris Brookmyre
Avenging Angel - Thom Ryder
Angel Alone - Thom Ryder
Wave Rider - Hilbert Schenck
Of Ice and Steel - D. Clayton Meadows
Zones of Chaos - Mick Farren
Black Dogs Circled - Mick Farren
Thief With No Shadow - Emily Gee

Graphic Novels:

Nowadays - Merk 'n' Martell
Midnight Nation - J.Micheal Straczynski & Gary Frank
Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead - Steve Pugh & Warren Ellis
Black Summer - Warren Ellis & juan Jose Ryp
Dead@17 - Josh Howard (Ultimate TP & both sequels)

 

[Connavar]

This will be the hardest year ever to choose a top 10. I have read 20 odd books and half not as strong or as great as i would have liked.

I will have to read some fav great in the last 3 weeks of this year to make a list i can be proud of......

 

[Connavar]

I seem to be increasing in number too, and I keep a listing for each year (saddo that I am):
2010 - 29
2011 - 25 (a dip, my excuse being poor health)
2012 - 43
2013 - 49 (so far)

Another stat (I love stats ): most read author in 2013, PG Wodehouse (7 novels)

Good for you Bick in your increase. 7 PG Wodehouse in one year nice? That much of big fan are you?

One of those classic humour authors i wish i had already read.

 

[monsterchic]

In no particular order:

Hunger Games Trilogy--Suzanne Collins (rereads)
The Dark Side of Innocence--Terry Cheney (not SFF, but a memoir about growing up bipolar. Best book of the year for me)
The Castings Trilogy--Pamela Freeman
Under the Dome--Stephen King
Fox and Phoenix--Beth Bernobich
Ripper--Stephen Petrucha

Not been a whole lot of reading for me this year (which constitutes 100 books or so...I read fast) because of strange work hours and school schedules.

 

[Bick]

Thanks for the del Rey info, J-Sun. I'll have to give the novel I have ago.

Good for you Bick in your increase. 7 PG Wodehouse in one year nice? That much of big fan are you?

Thanks Connavar. Yeah, big fan of Plum. I read a fair few one after the other; they go down like a chilled G&T on a muggy day in summer.

 

[williamjm]

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Ace of Skulls by Chris Wooding
Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
War Master's Gate by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Red Country by Joe Abercrombie
Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie
River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Fade by Chris Wooding
Wool by Hugh Howey
Hide Me Among The Graves by Tim Powers

 

[Connavar]

The usual reading pace, level for me these last 3 years:

2011 - 110 books
2012 - 88 books
2013 - 26 books


1. The Illiad - Homer
2. Poems of Al-Mutanabbi
3. The Colossus - Sylvia Plath
4. The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett
5. Who Fears Death - Nnedi Okorafor
6. A Dance at the Slaughterhouse - Lawrence Block
7. The Hounds of Skaith - Leight Brackett
6. Grass - Sheri S. Tepper
9. Faust - Goethe
10.Emperor of Thorns - Mark Lawrence

Despite only 26 books i have read some real gems specially the year of the great poets for me with Homer, Mutanabbi, Plath. Funny one poet over 2000 years old and Mutanabbi over a 1000 year old and Plath not even a 100 years old.

 

[nubins]

I cant recommend 10 books ive read this year.. but of the books ive read those I would are...

1. Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon
2. The Daylight War - Peter V Brett
3. Richard Morgan - Fallen Angels
4. Joe Abbercrombie - The Red Country
5. Niall Ferguson - Empire
6. The Desert Spear - Peter V Brett

Thats all I can remember as being good books that I read this year. How tragic

 

[Lilmizflashythang]

Tragic Nubins? Try picking the top ten books out of 150, and that's so far. I don't know if I can make any additions to the list.

 

[nomadman]

I haven't been reading much SF this year so I have quite a bit of regular fiction on the list.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates - brilliant unflinching tale about a prickly suburban couple living in 1950s America and their dreams of a better life. I never thought I'd enjoy a novel like this, but I couldn't put it down. Absolutely riveting stuff.

Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - poignant reflection of a man looking back on his life and trying to fathom out what it all meant. Read this in a single sitting, it was that good.

Flashman by George Macdonald Fraser - first of the Flashman novels and a rip-roaring ride through 19th century Britain and the Colonies. Loved every moment of this, and learnt quite a fair bit in the bargain.

Uncle Dynamite by PG Wodehouse - preferred this to the more celebrated Uncle Fred in the Springtime, it's a hugely enjoyable comedy of errors set in and around Blandings Castle and its environs. Pure enjoyment from start to finish.

A Spectre is Haunting Texas - a satire on American politics set in a future where Texas has taken over most of the United States and subverted all the non-whites to a kind of cybernetic slavery. Enter Christopher Skully, a travelling actor from an orbiting colony where the lack of gravity has caused everyone to grow incredibly tall and thin. A very odd read, but one which made a twisted kind of sense, and Leiber's writing is absolutely top-notch here.

The Princes of the Air by John M Ford - space opera set in one of the most complex and original future universes I've ever read. Ford crams an enormous amount of detail into this slim book while keeping things cracking along. It's disheartening to know just how little-known this book is. It deserves a far wider readership.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson - an epic poem based on an obscure Greek tale about a red monster called Geryon. It's a weird fusion of the modern and the archaic, mixing in symbols and metaphors with the real and the surreal in a heady brew. Carson's writing is gripping, her images fresh and powerful. A real surprise hit.

The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton - fictional retelling of the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, focusing on the build up and aftermath of the attack. The writing is sharp and wonderful, almost Borgesian at times, though there is not hint of the supernatural here. One of the best NYRB books I've read. Glad it's been reprinted.

The Saga of Grettir the Strong (anonymous) - an Icelandic tale of an man whose immense strength and swaggering bravado get his exiled and eventually slain. Bloody, brutal, humorous and saddening, the Sagas were some of medieval Europe's finest literature and it's works like this that show us why.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner - excellent YA fantasy in the Tolkien mould, and a deserved classic (if an obscure one). Like the best YA fantasy Garner's novel immerses us in its world on a particularly tactile and sensory level, and he isn't afraid to hold back on the terror; there's an absolutely harrowing sequence in a disused mine that made me feel physical panic, and a couple of scenes toward the end that had a potent nightmare quality.

Couple of honorable mentions: On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin, When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger, The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams (can't tell whether I liked this or hated it; I think I liked it), Mucho Mojo by Joe R Lansdale, The Voyage of the Short Serpent by Bernard de Boucheron, The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, Hrolf Kraki's Saga by Poul Anderson, Two Ravens by Cecilia Holland.

 

[Elvraie]

I had an excellent year of reading, among them, were those gems:

Ray Bradbury : The Zen in the Art of Writing
Tanith Lee: the Birthgrave (re-read it after 13 years, still excellent)
Megan Lindholm: The Wind Singers
Mary Corran: Fate
Joan D Vinge: The Snow Queen
Ursula Le Guin: The Dispossessed
China Mieville: Perdido Street Station
Clifford Simak: Time and Again
Jack Vance: The Houses of Iszm
And still reading, but already a hit:
Rober V.S Redick: The Voyage of the Chathrand

All in all, and in the SFF genre, a very good reading year.

 

[kythe]

I don't think I've read 10 books this year. I don't have that kind of free time.

Here's my (short) list:

Pompeii by Richard Harris - its historical fiction, but I really enjoyed it.

I re-read a couple of Pern books by Anne McCartney, as well as a couple more Pern books I hadn't yet read.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

If it counts, I also re-read "The Hobbit" as well as the Percy Jackson series with my preteen kids. That's a great Greek mythology-based young adult series.

 

[Lilmizflashythang]

Okay I think I have a list


Innocence - Dean Koontz
Changes - Jim Butcher
Relic - Preston & Child
Reliquary -Preston & Child
White Fire - Preston and Child
Watchers - Dean Koontz
Phantoms - Dean Koontz
Strangers - Dean Koontz
Breathless - Dean Koontz
The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings - Tolkien


And those were the ones I enjoyed the most. There are more that I really liked

 

[hitmouse]

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere Jan Morris
The Log from the Sea of Cortez John Steinbeck
Between the Woods and the Water Patrick Leigh Fermor*
A Dragon Apparent Norman Lewis
The Ocean at the End of the Lane Neil Gaiman
To Say Nothing of the Dog Connie Willis
Woodlands Oliver Rackham
Majestrum Matthew Hughes*
The Moon Moth Jack Vance
Boneland Alan Garner

*not sure whether read this year or last year. I read a lot.

Some explanations:
Continuing to read my way through the works of Jan Morris and Norman Davies, two fascinating and prolific writers. Morris' Last Letters From Hav is one of the most affecting and prescient fantasies I have read, and reading her book on Trieste was interesting, since the fictional city-state of Hav is clearly based on a thinly elaborated Trieste.
I finally laid my hands on a copy of Vance's The Moon Moth this year. This is widely hyped as one of his best novellas, but is surprisingly difficult to obtain. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I reckon I now have all but one of Vance's novels and novellas, and a good amount of his short stories. It is a bit disconcerting to be close to exhausting the deep well of Vance. I have been enjoying Matthew Hughes' works, initially suggested as a Vance substitute, but really much more than a simple pastiche.

 

[Gnrevolution]

Stand out books for me have been:

Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P. Hogan
Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds (although completely spoiled by the last book!)
Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

 

[Hypnos164]

A bit late to the party; I managed 57 books this year (which is on the low side for me - a mix of gaming in the early part of the year and way, way too many hours at work in the later part).

Milkweed, Bitter Seeds and Necassary Evil by Ian Tregillis (Ambitious and brilliantly executed alternate history)

Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence (A wonderful and fitting conclusion to Jorg's adventures)

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (Tangled time travel murder mystery)

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Very strong debut; great PoV character)

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (Amazing and educational too!)

Hit Man by Lawrence Block (Wistful and slightly sad murderer ... unexpected but it works)

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell (Bleak, minimalist and so moving)

Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear (Epic fantasy with a pleasantly unusual setting)