Top Ten reads this year (2014)

[Fried Egg]

Is it that time of the year again? Where does the time go...

My reading rate appears to be continuing to decline with a mere 36 books read this year. I committed to reading ten books from Ian Sales' SF Mistressworks list (which I am still trying to complete before the end of the year) and loosely hoped to read around 50/50 male/female authors. I would say I ended up with more like 55/45 but that is still well up on what I normally do. I also took a little time to re-read some of my favourite Lovecraft stories.

So here's my top ten reads of the year (excluding re-reads):

1) Dark Awakenings - Cardin, Matt
2) The Mabinogion Tetralogy - Walton, Evangeline
3) Intrusions - Aickman, Robert
4) The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All - Barron, Laird
5) The Nameless - Campbell, Ramsey
6) The Sundial - Jackson, Shirley
7) Sarah Canary - Fowler, Karen Joy
8) Time For The Stars - Heinlein, Robert
9) Annihilation - Vandermeer, Jeff
10) The Cormorant - Gregory, Stephen

Biggest disappointment of the year: Shikasta - Lessing, Doris

 

[Randy M.]

In order of reading,

Phil Rickman, Curfew
Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Karl Edward Wagner, Where the Summer Ends (story collection)
Marie Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger
Daryl Gregory, We Are All Completely Fine
Glen Hirshberg, Motherless Child
Ray Russell, Haunted Castles (story collection)
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Donna Leon, Blood from a Stone

Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects, Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence and Mark Samuels' The Man Who Collected Machen deserve mention, but the books that really carried me away were the Rickman, Flynn, Wagner and Russell.

Randy M.

 

[althea]

Randy M,you mention Things Fall Apart.Others have mentioned it too.
I did start it, but gave up on it early.It seems to me I'd better take another look at it.

 

[Randy M.]

Randy M,you mention Things Fall Apart.Others have mentioned it too.
I did start it, but gave up on it early.It seems to me I'd better take another look at it.

Hi, Desilu.

I was looking for something outside my usual genre reading and Things Fall Apart has been on my shelf for years. The writing is direct and simple, deceptively so since Achebe is able to make his main character, Okonkwo, both human (fear of failing; blindness to cultural change) and mythic (great warrior; legendary wrestler). In that sense, it's a reasonable suggestion for fantasy readers. Using Okonkwo and his village -- really, another character in the novel -- as focal points for a story dealing with that time just before and just after the intrusion of white men into Africa worked very well for me.

Right after I finished TFA I started Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard but couldn't accommodate the style of story-telling. I set it aside with the thought that, now I know what I'm getting into, maybe later I can start over and fall into it. Maybe that's how it'll work for you and TFA. I'd say it was worth another try.

Randy M.

 

[J-Sun]

Like FE, my reading rate took a dive. This has to be the least productive reading year of my reading life. I've read 34 SF books, my Analog subscription (except the December issue), a science book, and I'm currently in the middle of five history books. Usually my "best" list is a much more select percentage of my total reading and is probably of higher quality but these are still ten good-to-excellent books (in alphabetical order) despite the smaller-than-usual pool to choose from.

• The Devil's Eye (2008) by Jack McDevitt
• The Engine of Recall (2005 collection) by Karl Schroeder
• Heatseeker (1989 collection) by John Shirley
• Lights in the Deep (2013 collection) by Brad R. Torgersen
• Line War (2008) by Neal Asher
• Lockstep (2014) by Karl Schroeder
• Orbital Decay (1989) by Allen Steele
• Sex and Violence in Zero-G (1999 collection) by Allen Steele
• Space Lash (1969 collection) by Hal Clement
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and The Fairy Chessmen (1951 collection) by Henry Kuttner

Noteworthy stories from sources not listed above:

• "And It Comes Out Here" and "The Seat of Judgment" from Mortals and Monsters; "Vengeance Is Mine" and "For I Am a Jealous People" from Gods and Golems, both by Lester del Rey. (Really, this is arbitrary as I read or re-read all del Rey, mostly last year, and just happened to not finish those until the first day or two of this year. All my favorite del Rey stories are discussed here.)
• "The Enchantress of Venus", maybe "The Citadel of Lost Ages" and others from The Halfling and Other Stories by Leigh Brackett.
• My favorites from this year's Dozois annual were "The Other Gun" by Neal Asher, "Zero for Conduct" by Greg Egan, "Rock of Ages" by Jay Lake, "Pathways" and "One" by Nancy Kress, and "A Map of Mercury" by Alastair Reynolds.
• My favorites from this year's Analogs were "Life Flight" by Brad R. Torgersen and "Chrysalis" by David Brin.
• I also read the anonymously edited Dr. Cyclops which included the very enjoyable "The Harpers of Titan" by Edmond Hamilton and the remarkable, bizarre "Too Late for Eternity" by Bryce Walton.

 

[Heather Myst]

For the first time in years I can't even come up with ten books to suggest but here are the ones I can think of:

The Broken Eye - Brent Weeks
Prince of Fools - Mark Lawrence
Words of Radiance - Brandon Sanderson
Hollow World - Michael J. Sullivan
Sworn in Steel - Douglas Hulick
Murder of Crows - Anne Bishop
Tower Lord - Anthony Ryan

Not a very good year.

Dear Mr. Martin please write faster.

 

[Mangara]

Here are my 2014 5* reviews. I've got into my Graphic novels this year and also dipped heavily into history. My genre fiction has been a smaller pool but several have impressed.

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil
Collins, Stephen



The Lies Of Locke Lamora
Lynch, Scott



Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang
Wilhelm, Kate


One Minute to Midnight Kennedy, Krushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
Dobbs, Michael


The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine
Pappé, Ilan


The Chrysalids
Wyndham, John


Saga,
Vaughan, Brian K.




Fuzzy Nation
Scalzi, John


The Handmaid's Tale
Atwood, Margaret


The Year Of The Flood
Atwood, Margaret

 

[Bick]

Wow, it seems to have been a quick year. My reading in 2014 (41 books and counting) is somehow down on last year (52). I usually read more non-genre than I did this year, which was predominantly SFF. My top ten for 2014, in the order I read them:

John Buchan - The Thirty Nine Steps
Ben Bova - Jupiter
Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space
Alan Dean Foster - Nor Crystal Tears
J. G. Ballard - Best Short Stories
Anne Leckie - Ancillary Justice
Jack L. Chalker - Midnight at the Well of Souls
Clifford D. Simak - Why Call them Back from Heaven?
Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
Brian Stableford - Cradle of the Sun

 

[Michael F]

The year of the flood.
Recommended or not?

 

[Mangara]

The year of the flood.
Recommended or not?

Yes! Provided you are a fan of nature/environmental concerns. It's very heavy on these themes...

 

[althea]

Hi, Desilu.

I was looking for something outside my usual genre reading and Things Fall Apart has been on my shelf for years. The writing is direct and simple, deceptively so since Achebe is able to make his main character, Okonkwo, both human (fear of failing; blindness to cultural change) and mythic (great warrior; legendary wrestler). In that sense, it's a reasonable suggestion for fantasy readers. Using Okonkwo and his village -- really, another character in the novel -- as focal points for a story dealing with that time just before and just after the intrusion of white men into Africa worked very well for me.

Right after I finished TFA I started Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard but couldn't accommodate the style of story-telling. I set it aside with the thought that, now I know what I'm getting into, maybe later I can start over and fall into it. Maybe that's how it'll work for you and TFA. I'd say it was worth another try.

Randy M.

Thanks for taking the time to explain about TFA for me,Randy M.,I appreciate it.I will give it another go after I finish Lamentation by CJ Sansom.

 

[althea]

Yes! Provided you are a fan of nature/environmental concerns. It's very heavy on these themes...

I have read all of Margaret Attwood's books,I really like her writing.I enjoyed YOTF immensely,though it is not a happy story.

 

[althea]

Here are my 2014 5* reviews. I've got into my Graphic novels this year and also dipped heavily into history. My genre fiction has been a smaller pool but several have impressed.

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil
Collins, Stephen



The Lies Of Locke Lamora
Lynch, Scott



Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang
Wilhelm, Kate


One Minute to Midnight Kennedy, Krushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
Dobbs, Michael


The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine
Pappé, Ilan


The Chrysalids
Wyndham, John


Saga,
Vaughan, Brian K.




Fuzzy Nation
Scalzi, John


The Handmaid's Tale
Atwood, Margaret


The Year Of The Flood
Atwood, Margaret

It is years since I read Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang.It affected me deeply at the time.I had not read much sci/fi or sci/fantasy then.

 

[Vince W]

The Quantum Thief - Rannu Hajaniemi
The Peripheral - William Gibson
James Herriot's Vet books (there are eight of these)
The State of the Art - Iain M. Banks
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu (will be finished shortly)

 

[Boaz]

Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe was heads and shoulders above everything else I read in 2014. Where is joy? What is peace? How do you come to forgiveness? Is there value in confession? And then there's the swashbuckling parts! Is there time travel in the near future?

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Not in any particular order but these are some of the ones that spring to mind first:

Wool - Hugh Howey
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
Daredevil Born Again - Frank Miller (graphic novel)
Doctor Sleep - Stephen King
Red Country - Joe Abercrombie
Saga - Brian K Vaughan (graphic novel)
Tengu - Graham Masterton
Daredevil The Man Without Fear - Frank Miller (graphic novel)

 

[kythe]

I have always considered myself a sf/f fan because I have a few favorite series I keep re-reading. But I'm not very well read over all. So this year I decided to read only "new" books and I focused on older classics I have missed. I read 16 books I've never read before (counting series as a single work), starting with 3 by H.G. Wells.

By far my favorite was the Asimov Foundation and Robot series (I read 5 Foundation and 4 Robot books. The two series combine as they go along).

Other books that stood out to me this year:

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
The Island of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
H.P. Lovecraft - multiple stories
The Best of Leigh Brackett - multiple short stories

 

[j d worthington]

As with others, my reading took a steep nosedive this year; my work schedule -- already quirky and difficult -- became considerably more so (though there are compensating factors), leaving me almost no time for reading or writing. Nevertheless, I did get through some things.

However, as for a "top ten" list... that would be either ridiculously easy or impossible, depending, as nearly all of them would come from what can also be summed up as a single item (indeed, its author considered it to all be one novel): James Branch Cabell's Biography of the Life of Manuel (18 volumes). True, I had begun it much earlier and got sidetracked; true, also, that I had read some of the books independently over the years, so some of this was a reread; but I read the bulk of it this year and, for the first time, read those things which I had read earlier in their proper sequence/context, which put an entirely new slant on them.

At any rate, as I've said elsewhere, it has impressed me enough to move Cabell into my top four writers. so I would definitely put it (or them) as my top reads of the year....

 

[Nechtan]

Ok, top ten books of the year:

Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
River of Stars - Guy Gavriel Kay

Easily the two best books I've read this year. The following eight are in no particular order:

The Algebraist - Iain M. Banks
Player of Games - Iain M. Banks
Inversions - Iain M. Banks
The Liveship Traders - Robin Hobb*
City of Saints and Madmen - Jeff Vandermeer
The City in the Autumn Stars - Michael Moorcock
The Galactic Mileau Trilogy - Julian May*
Anno Dracula - Kim Newman

Honourable mentions:

Railsea - China Mieville
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin
A Natural History of Dragons - Marie Brennan
The Tropic of Serpents - Marie Brennan

*Counting these trilogies as one story

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Sadly this year I have found my fantasy reading a disappointment and doesn't make it onto my top ten - that is despite me making an effort with some of the bigger names like China Mieville and Brandon Sanderson.

However I have enjoyed
Hollow Earth and Bone Quill by John and Carole Barrowman
Second Murderer by Alanna Knight (Inspector Faro book)
The Inspector's Daughter by Alanna Knight (Rose McQuinn) - technically Alanna Knight books are classed as detective fiction but Inspector Faro has a possible Selkie grandmother and certain abilities as a result.
Trusted by Krista Wayment (my daughter loved this MG book about dragons- it had her captivated in a way no other book ever has)
Dog On It by Spencer Quinn (not fantasy as such but it is from the POV of the dog)

I found six vaguely fantasy books I liked this year.