Favorite Books You Read This Year

Cafe Society
21

Lots of 5 star books this year…

Pat Murphy The City, Not Long After (1989)
Richard K. Morgan Altered Carbon (2002)
Neil Gaiman The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013)
Leigh Bardugo Six of Crows (2015)
Ian R. MacLeod Song of Time (2008)
Nnedi Okorafor Who Fears Death (2010)
Natasha Pulley The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (2015)
Daniel José Older Shadowshaper (2015)
Robin Sloan Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (2012)
Connie Willis Crosstalk (2016)
Daniel José Older Half-Resurrection Blues (2015)
Nina Kiriki Hoffman The Thread That Binds the Bones (1993)
Matt Ruff Lovecraft Country (2016)
Max Gladstone Bookburners (2015)
Ruthanna Emrys Winter Tide (2017)
Ian R. MacLeod Wake Up And Dream (2011)
William Hjortsberg Falling Angel (1978)
Anthony Horowitz Magpie Murders (2017)
Neal Stephenson The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Fonda Lee Jade City (2017)
Catherynne M. Valente Space Opera (2018)
Ann Leckie Provenance (2017)
T. Kingfisher Summer in Orcus (2017)
Mary Robinette Kowal The Calculating Stars (2018)
Nina Kiriki Hoffman The Silent Strength of Stones (1995)
R. A. MacAvoy Twisting the Rope (1986)
Nnedi Okorafor Binti: Home (2017)
Seanan McGuire Down Among the Sticks and Bones (2017)
Yoon Ha Lee Raven Stratagem (2017)
Margery Allingham Look to the Lady (1931)
Seabury Quinn The Dark Angel: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin
Nicholas Blake The Smiler with the Knife (1939)
Louise Penny A Trick of the Light (2011)
Margery Allingham Dancers in Mourning (1937)
Louise Penny How the Light Gets In (2013)
Margery Allingham The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)

22

What? You only liked the second book in the 4 book Murderbot Diary series?

23

Mort Sahl and the Birth of Stand-up Comedy (Jim Curtis)

24

I saw him at the Hungry i back in the 70’s some time. Along with Nichols and May he was my all-time favorite. I’ll look for that book. Thanks.

25

A few I enjoyed, in no special order:

Twice over Lightly, by Helen Hayes and Anita Loos. Mainly by Loos, of course, but I guess she was modest. An exploration of New York City by these two in 1970, '71 or so, visiting many obvious but also many less than obvious sites, including an East River cruise on a garbage barge.

Going Down, by Jennifer Belle. A rarish (for me) novel. But set in the same NYC I remember ( ‘I noticed an ad that said “Women Against Pornography”, $10/hr, must be willing to yell at passers-by on the street." I always thought those women holding up pictures of naked legs and meat grinders did it for the love of it.’), so that made it easy to get into.

The Village Voice Reader. I realize compilations have it easy, nonetheless there was an awful lot of good stuff in the Voice’s first decade (1955-65). Btw, its sort of recent demise was anticlimactic, since it had gone from alternative newspaper to alternative-to-news paper on its 2006 takeover by “New Times Inc”, and so remained to the bitter end. On the bright side, the Bitter End on Bleecker Street is still going.

Jack’s Book, edited by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee Memories of Jack Kerouac. By various, even many. Which helps, of course.

A Freewheelin’ Time, by Suze Rotolo. Strikes a good balance between being Bob Dylan’s girlfriend for a year or so, Dylan himself during that young emerging period, and just Suze Rotolo, autonomous human being. Among, not between.

No Lifeguard on Duty, Janice Dickinson. Like Beverly Johnson, she describes some creepy behavior by Bill Cosby which she probably wouldn’t have bothered to mention were his actual behavior not creepier still. That is just one very small detail from the book, but I’m trying to make it relevant to today’s reader.

Is Everyone Hanging out without Me?, Mindy Kaling. I knew her name but wasn’t really sure who she was. Anyway, she is funny.

No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, by Johnny Rotten. “…people are quite boring, and they do like good tunes. That will always confound me. I’ve always preferred the raw edge, the racket. A good tune is just a good tune; it’s neither here nor there”. It might have changed by musical life, had I had one.

26

I enjoyed that book, all in all, but hated it towards the end when the bad guy told Harry exactly what he intended to do, without having to, and thus gave Harry the chance to stop him. As bad an example of a villain inexplicably, unnecessarily, and self-defeatingly “monologuing” as I’ve ever seen.
I highly recommend Ken Grimwood’s Replay, which has a similar premise but is IMHO a much better book. Likewise Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, come to think of it.

27

I really liked The Billion Dollar Spy. It was a really interesting story of how espionage worked in the Cold War and what life was like for a well off Soviet citizen.
For fiction All the light we can not see was very good until the climax.

28

I’m a wee late to the Party this year…

My Favorite ten books in no apparent order

(several of these are series because they were just that good!) (also disclaimer, most of these are m/m)

  1. The Sins of the City series by K. J. Charles. I loved the feeling of Victorian England and the mystery was intriguing, the inclusion of a non binary character was just icing on the cake.

  2. The Snow & Winter series by C. S. Poe. The mysteries were exciting and each of them had a literary connection. Her characters were fun to spend time with, interesting and Calvin, in particular, changed a lot from first to third book.

  3. The Beacon Hill Necromancer series by S. J Himes. Yeah Anne Rice, vampires CAN do the naughty and be elegant, deadly and remorseful with the need for beating the reader of the head with a Bible. The series has action, world building and dragons on the streets of Boston.

  4. Bedside Manner by D J Jamison. An emotional story about an ER doctor finally coming out of the closet at age 40 and falling for a much younger man, and what that means to his life, his career and his friends.

  5. *The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant * by Drew Hayes. So that Death and Taxes thing? Turns out even the undead still need to file and here’s Fred, ready to help, as well as help save his graduating class from werewolves, find a missing junkie alchemist, save a group of innocent Larpers from a wizard and more…

  6. How to Marry a Werewolf by Gail Carriger. FINALLY Major Channing meets someone strong enough to stand up to him but bendable to charm his heart. Ms. Carriger’s women are wonderful (except for Pru, sheesh), damaged and strong with fragile edges.

  7. Good Omensby Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaimon. Ridiculous and funny, it was just the thing for break time during a massive home improvement project.

  8. Ghostland by Colin Dickey. An interesting look at haunted places in America, from the viewpoint of why they are considered haunted instead of a salacious book about murders and tortured spirits.

  9. A Reason to Believe by Diana Copeland. A cynical cop sees a ghost of a murdered child and has to put aside his doubts to team up with a celebrity psychic to solve the mystery.

  10. Widdershins by Jordan L Hawk. Lovecraftian horror meets feminism, closeted professors and madcap hijinks in late Victorian Massachusetts. The end was a bit too “whatever” from the characters to be realistic, but the world building and characters totally carried the story.