Top Ten reads this year (2016)

[Fried Egg]

Another year gone by since last time already, what are your top ten reads this year?

My reading rate is still pretty low but I've enjoyed quite a few re-reads (which I've excluded from my list). They've included such classics as "I have always lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson, "Teatro Grostesco" by Thomas Ligotti, "The King of Elfland's Daughter" by Lord Dunsany and, most recently, "The Caves of Steel" by Isaac Asimov.

1) The World in Winter - John Christopher
2) The Echo - James Smythe
3) Hanted Castles - Ray Russell
4) The Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
5) Fantasms and Magics - Jack Vance
6) The Case Against Satan - Ray Russell
7) X's for Eyes - Laird Barron
8) The Road Through the Wall - Shirley Jackson
9) Timequake - Kurt Vonegut
10) We who are about to... - Joanna Russ

Biggest disappointment of the year: Lavondyss - Robert Holdstock

 

[J-Sun]

Quantitatively, this was defintely one of the worst reading years of my life. (Seems like every year I hope it will get better and every year it gets worse.) Qualitatively, it wasn't so bad, but many of the books I read were by a handful of authors, many of which clustered together with other books by the same author. This makes for a compact list but I have to count all the Bova collections as one thing to have it add up to ten.

The top books were easily:

• A Darkling Sea (2014) by James L. Cambias
• All Judgment Fled (1969) by James White
• The Kinsman Saga (1987 revised omnibus of Millennium (1976) and Kinsman (1979 fixup)) by Ben Bova (along with Privateers (1985) and a slew of collections (all of which ranged from fairly good to extremely good) the best of which were probably, unsurprisingly, The Best of Bova, Volume 1 (2016) or Prometheans (1986) and Escape Plus (1984))

Following those would be:

• The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1960 collection) and Strangers in the Universe (1956 collection) by Clifford (D.) Simak
• The Man Who Used the Universe (1983) and Nor Crystal Tears (1982) by Alan Dean Foster
• The Well of the Worlds (1952) by Henry Kuttner

Excluding Bova and Simak stories, essentially all short fiction I read this year falls into two groups: stuff from Alan Dean Foster's first two collections and stuff from what I reviewed for Tangent.

Foster's best (in the order I read them): "With Friends Like These...", "A Miracle of Small Fishes", "He", and "Ye Who Would Sing" from With Friends Like These... (1977) and "Bystander", "Surfeit", and "Village of the Chosen" from ...Who Needs Enemies (1984)

"Recommended" stuff for Tangent (in the order I read them):

• "Chasing Ivory" by Ted Kosmatka (Asimov's, January 2016, SF short story)
• "The Liar" by John P. Murphy (F&SF, March/April 2016, fantasy novella)
• "The Silver Strands of Alpha Crucis-D" by N. J. Schrock (F&SF, March/April 2016, SF short story)
• "Heavy Weather" by Rev DiCerto (Conspiracy!, 2016, SF short story)
• "The Mermaid Club" by Cat Rambo & Mike Resnick (Conspiracy!, 2016, fantasy short story)
• "A Right Jolly Old..." by James L. Cambias (Conspiracy!, 2016, fantasy short story)
• "A Partial Inventory of Things I Have Loved" by Michelle Ann King (Flash Fiction Online, June 2016, fantasy short story)
• "An Endless Series of Doors" by David Walton (Humanity 2.0, 2016, SF short story)
• "The Right Place to Start a Family" by Caroline M. Yoachim (Humanity 2.0, 2016, SF short story)
• "E^H" by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Humanity 2.0, 2016, SF short story)
• "Her Scales Shine Like Music" by Rajnar Vajra (Tor.com, August 2016, SF novelette)
• "meat+drink" by Daniel Polansky (Tor.com, October 2016, horror short story)
• "Mice Among Elephants" by Gregory Benford & Larry Niven (Bridging Infinity, 2016, SF short story)
• "Cold Comfort" by Pat Murphy & Paul Doherty (Bridging Infinity, 2016, SF novelette)
• "Seven Birthdays" by Ken Liu (Bridging Infinity, 2016, SF short story)

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

City of Mirrors
Ready Player 1
The Silence
The Darkness That Comes Before
Hell's Ditch
The Troop
Outcast Vol 1
The Fireman
The Martian War
Midian Unmade

 

[Fedos]

The Return of the Sorcerer by Clark Ashton Smith
The Aenid by Virgil
The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan
Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance
HP Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction
Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian Cameron Esselemont
Dune by Frank Herbert
To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams
Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Shelley's Poetry and Prose: A Norton Critical Edition

 

[TWErvin2]

My top 10, not in any particular order:

Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought in the Air War Against Nazi Germany by Donald Miller
The Rules of Supervillany, The Games of Supervillany, and The Secrets of Supervillany, by CT Phipps
Hard Luck Hank: Stank Delicious by Steven Campbell
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
Secrets of a D-List Supervillain by Jim Bernheimer
Salvage Merc One by Jake Bible
Staked by Kevin Hearne
Command Decision by Terry Mixon

 

[Paul_C]

Until recently I have been avoiding buying many books (partly finance, partly trying to catch up with unread books (not totally successfully)) and have re-read quite a number (including The Empty Space trilogy and the Jean Le Flambeur series).

So my top 10 are almost all the new books I read:

Jeff Vandermeer - Annihilation
Charles Stross - Saturn's Children
Mick Farren - The Song of Phaid the Gambler
Richard Paul Russo - Unto Leviathan
Richard Morgan - The Steel Remains
Walter John Williams - Hardwired
Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others
Edward Aubry - Unhappenings
M John Harrison - Pastel City & A Storm of Wings

 

[Brian G Turner]

Favourite reads so far this year, in no particular order:

Andy Weir - The Martian
Ralph Kern - Unfathomed
Lee Child - Bad Luck and trouble
Jo Nesbo - The Son
Bernard Cornwell - The Last Kingdom
Robert Fabbri - Furies of Rome
Jojo Moyes - Me Before You
Frances Saunders - Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman
Albert Speer - Inside The Third Reich
Erwin Bartmann - Für Volk and Führer

 

[hitmouse]

Good reads this year:
Uprooted Naomi Novik
A Deepness in the Sky Vernor Vinge
The House of Shattered Wings Aliette de Bodard
The Dark Forest and Death's End Cixin Liu
Walking the Woods and the Water: In Patrick Leigh Fermor's Footsteps Nick Hunt
What I talk about when I talk about Running Haruki Murakami
I Can't Stay Long Laurie Lee

Biggest disappointments:
Armada Ernest Cline
The long way to a small, angry planet Becky Chambers

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@hitmouse - I adore I Can't Stay Long. The Aberfan story has stuck with me forever.

My top ten

The Call by Peadar O'Guilin
The three Cormoran Strike novels by Robert Galbraith
Luna: New Moon by Ian MacDonald
The Woman who Stole My Life - Marian Keyes
Gentleman Jole and The Red Queen - Bujold
The Martian - Andy Weir
Once we were kings - Stewart Foster
13 minutes by Sarah Pinborough

 

[ralphkern]

Favourite reads so far this year, in no particular order:

Andy Weir - The Martian
Ralph Kern - Unfathomed
Lee Child - Bad Luck and trouble
Jo Nesbo - The Son
Bernard Cornwell - The Last Kingdom
Robert Fabbri - Furies of Rome
Jojo Moyes - Me Before You
Frances Saunders - Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman
Albert Speer - Inside The Third Reich
Erwin Bartmann - Für Volk and Führer

Wow, thats quite some company!

Until recently I have been avoiding buying many books (partly finance, partly trying to catch up with unread books (not totally successfully)) and have re-read quite a number (including The Empty Space trilogy and the Jean Le Flambeur series).

So my top 10 are almost all the new books I read:

Jeff Vandermeer - Annihilation
Charles Stross - Saturn's Children
Mick Farren - The Song of Phaid the Gambler
Richard Paul Russo - Unto Leviathan
Richard Morgan - The Steel Remains
Walter John Williams - Hardwired
Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others
Edward Aubry - Unhappenings
M John Harrison - Pastel City & A Storm of Wings

I really need to read Unto Leviathan again, I remember it being a particularly excellent book.

 

[kythe]

This has been a busy year for me, and I've only read 12 books this year including short YA.

Particularly outstanding was "Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut. He really grasps trauma, even without using the word for it.

Other books, in order of reading:

Mission of Gravity - Hal Clements
Heir of Abendau - Jo Zebedee
Interstellar Pig - William Sleator
The Door Into Summer - Robert A. Heinlein
The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick
The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
The Atlantis Gene - A.G. Riddle
The Boy Who Couldn't Die - William Sleator
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Shrinking Man - Richard Matheson
Dracula - Bram Stoker

 

[Parson]

This has been a year when I've listened to at least 5 books to everyone I've actually read and most of those have been mysteries and thrillers.

Science Fiction that would make the list

Xenogenesis Trilogy ... By Octavia Butler (This is really, really, good stuff)
Breakthrough Trilogy .... By Michael Grivley (Good hard science)
We Are Legion .... By our own Dennis E. Taylor (This is wonderful inventive Science Fiction headed toward Science Fantasy)

 

[thaddeus6th]

There are a few re-reads included in this list, but there we are.

Abendau's Legacy - Jo Zebedee
The Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
The Greatest Knight - Thomas Asbridge [even though it does refer to Common Era, which is the work of Satan]
Antigonus the One-Eyed - Jeff Champion
Outlaws of the Marsh - Luo Guanzhong
Alfred the Great - Justin Pollard
Twelve Caesars - Suetonius

I really haven't read much. Time, money, mongoosefish. Perhaps an addiction to XCOM 2 isn't helping.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Need to alter mine after finishing Tigana last night

City of Mirrors
Ready Player 1
The Silence
The Darkness That Comes Before
Tigana
Hell's Ditch
The Troop
Outcast Vol 1
The Martian War
Midian Unmade

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The Doctrine Of DNA – Biology As Ideology by Richard Lewontin

Shell Shock by Wendy Holden

The Construction Of Life And Death by Dorothy Rowe

Cogheart by Peter Bunzl

Home by Francis Pryor

What Is Palaeolithic Art? by Jean Clottes

The Neanderthals Rediscovered by Dimitra Papagianni

The Vital Question by Nick Lane

Festivalized by Ian Abrahams & Bridget Wishart

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

 

[Randy M.]

The strongest novels I read were,
Paul Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts
Gemma Files, Experimental Film

And right on their heels in terms of solid story-telling were two collections,
Angela Slatter, A Feast of Sorrows
Tananarive Due, Ghost Summer
I think I could even make a case that the Slatter and Due were better written than the novels, though maybe I’m responding more to changes in tone between stories.


These round out the 10 (no particular order),
Vera Caspary, Laura (included in, Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels from the 1940s)
Magdalen Nabb, Death of an Englishman
William Sloane, The Edge of Running Water
Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom
Joe Haldeman, Camoflage
John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos


Honorable mention:
Jonathan L. Howard, Carter & Lovecraft
Alexander Laing, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck
Anne Rivers Siddons, The House Next Door
William Sloane, To Walk the Night (a reread; actually, the two Sloane’s are interchangeable; both were entertaining)


Short stories I especially enjoyed, some rereads,
Ross Macdonald, “Gone Girl”
Edmund Crispin, “We Know You’re Busy Writing But We Thought You Wouldn’t Mind if We Just Dropped in for a Minute”; “Beware of the Trains”
W. F. Harvey, “The Clocks”
Theodore Sturgeon, “Slow Sculpture”; “The Professor’s Teddy Bear”
H.P. Lovecraft, “At the Mountains of Madness”; “The Thing on the Doorstep”
Charles Beaumont, “Perchance to Dream”; “Sorceror’s Moon”
David Case, “Fengriffen”
Tananarive Due, “Ghost Summer”; “Like Daughter”
Ted Chaing, “Story of Your Life”
Angela Slatter, “Sourdough”; “Bluebeard’s Daughter”; “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter”; “Sister, Sister”
H. G. Wells, “The Door in the Wall”


Randy M.

 

[Gnrevolution]

In order of favouritism :

1. Death's End - Cixin Liu
2. The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin
3. The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu
4. The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu
5. Inish Carraig - Jo Zebedee
6. Lock-In - John Scalzi
7. London - Frank Tayell
8. The Passage - Justin Cronin
9. Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer
10. Gathering - Brian Turner

Biggest disappointment was Old Man's War by John Scalzi, he really is hit/miss with me! Oh and Kill Decision, but then I should have guessed from the cover that it wouldn't be what I thought it would be....

 

[Jo Zebedee]

In order of favouritism :

1. Death's End - Cixin Liu
2. The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin
3. The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu
4. The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu
5. Inish Carraig - Jo Zebedee
6. Lock-In - John Scalzi
7. London - Frank Tayell
8. The Passage - Justin Cronin
9. Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer
10. Gathering - Brian Turner

Biggest disappointment was Old Man's War by John Scalzi, he really is hit/miss with me! Oh and Kill Decision, but then I should have guessed from the cover that it wouldn't be what I thought it would be....

I can live with that! Muchly thanks, GN. (And Thad and Kythe!)

 

[Parson]

Hand to forehead.

Another truly great S.F. I read this year


The Martian by Andy Weir (the best hard S.F. --- I know he took at least one big liberty, but still --- I've read in years.)

 

[Steve S]

In no particular order:

The Loney - Andrew Michael Hurley
Life Class - Pat Barker
Toby's Room - Pat Barker
Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd
Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve
The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick
A Crisis of Brilliance - David Haycock
Waterland - Graham Swift
Mervyn Peake: The Man and his art
I, Partridge, we need to talk about Kevin - Steve Coogan