Separated by genre, if you read genre, with links or comments if you feel up to it.
I only managed about 50 books this year, but I liked most of them, and some were standouts.
General fiction:
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson New Grub Street by George Gissing Black Swan Green by David Mitchell Flanders by Patricia Anthony
Fantasy/SF:
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Seriously folks, check this one out. The Book of Joby by Mark Ferrari Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Horror:
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill Throne of Bones by Brian McNaughton Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross The Terror by Dan Simmons
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Non-fiction:
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon
19th century adventure novels: Eric Brighteyes, by H. Rider Haggard. His version of an Icelandic saga; it is a kickass story.
Historical nonfiction: Founding Myths, by Ray Raphael. Makes a compelling case that the popular story of the American Revolution conceals the real story.
The Crusades by Terry Jones (formerly of Monty Python). Jones is, seriously, a medieval scholar, and gives a good overview of the bloody, sometimes insane history of the various Crusades.
Fiction The Eyre Affaire and Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
– I recently read the first two novels about Thursday Next and enjoyed them tremendously. I think they might be my favorite novels of 2007. The first two are all the library had, but I’m really looking forward to reading the next three.
Young Adult Fiction Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones
Sewing, Handcrafts, etc.
[url=http://www.amazon.com/Knitting-Vintage-Socks-Classic-Patterns/dp/1931499659/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198645944&sr=1-1]Knitting Vintage Socks](]The Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady[/url) by Nancy Bush
– It’s full of great research about turn of the 19th century sock knitting, offers some good information about substituting modern materials, and the sock patterns in it are really beautiful. Unfortunately, none of the socks are photographed on feet, but that’s the lone drawback.
Period Costume for Stage & Screen: Women’s Dress 1800-1909 by Jean Hunnisett
– I was finally able to read the sections on bodice fitting and have them make sense. Yay! A tremendous resource, full of good advice, tips, and million other things to improve your sewing.
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. A very good friend gave it to me on my birthday, and it’s not the sort of thing that I’d pick up. However, I found it totally captivating.
I went through a phase in which I reread a lot of Barbara Hambly’s fantasies. I don’t like her Benjamin January series, so I didn’t reread those.
I reread Howl’s Moving Castle this year, after seeing the movie. As is usually the case, I vastly preferred the book to the movie.
I thought The World Without Us was a real mind-blower. Depression at parts too. The Savage Wars of Peace, about our almost unknown long record of military adventurism, was pretty fascinating and had a lot of good stories and truly colorful characters like any good book on American history. Lincoln on Leadership read like it was written by a kid in a high school AP English class who couldn’t write essays for shit, but it still had good information on Lincoln that made it worth the read. Fiction, dug Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Pahlunuik, which was a trip.
I read a good bit this year, but it’s like the Oscars - not sure I can tell you what I read for the first half! Recently my absolute favorite “you have to read this!” book has been World War Z. I’ve handed it off to two people so far. I also really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, Operating Instructions, Have His Carcase, and, uh, about a zillion other books that don’t come to mind now that you ask and seem interested.
I keep my library notices, so I have a record of a lot of stuff I read this year; unfortunately not all of it.
The ones I most enjoyed:
The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill
The Observations: a novel by Jane Harris
The Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud
Ratman’s Notebooks, by Stephen Gilbert
She, by H. Rider Haggard
Gig : Americans talk about their jobs at the turn of the millennium. Edited by John Bowe, Marisa Bowe & Sabin Streeter.
One Red Paperclip : or how an ordinary man achieved his dreams with the
help of a simple office supply, by Kyle MacDonald
The Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson
Dark Harvest, by Norman Partridge
King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard (Currently reading, but I expect it to belong here)
Honorable mention:
The End, by Lemony Snicket
Tamsin, by Peter S. Beagle
How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff
Heart-shaped Box, by Joe Hill
Round Ireland with a Fridge, by Tony Hawks
The Ghost Writer, by John Harwood
The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood
Peter & the secret of Rundoon, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.
Wow, I read about a million books this year and now that you ask I can’t think of any to recommend. How about:
In Lucia’s Eyes by Arthur Japin
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
My Boring Ass Life by Kevin Smith
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows by JK Rowling
Relic, Reliquary, Cabinet of Curiosities, Still Life With Crows, and Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - all part of a series of books that I just discovered and quite liked this year. There are many others in this series that I haven’t read yet including Thunderhead, Brimstone, Dance of Death and Wheel of Darkness, but so far the ones I have read have been very interesting and enjoyable to read.
Fiction
The Stolen Child (Keith Donohue)
Men and Cartoons: Stories (Jonathan Lethem)
Popular Psychology
The Psychology of Harry Potter: An Unauthorized Examination of the Boy Who Lived (Editor: Neil Mulholland)
Biography/History
Banvard’s Folly: Tales of Thirteen People Who Didn’t Change the World (Paul Collins)
Autobiography
Strange Piece of Paradise (Terri Jentz)
The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Ishmael Beah)
Public Policy/Service Delivery
War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia (Chris Beyrer)
Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology 1: Social Lives of Medicines (Susan Reynolds Whyte, Sjaak van der Geest, & Anita Hardon)
Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Tracy Kidder)
Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin
Memoir from Antproof Case, Mark Helprin
Fifth Business, Robertson Davies,
Flanders, Patricia Anthony
A Very Long Engagement, Sébastien Japrisot
e: A Novel, Matt Beaumont
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
Up Country, Nelson DeMille
Word of Honor, Nelson DeMille
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, Alexander Mccall Smith
Slammerkin, Emma Donoghue
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
Maus I & II, Art Spiegelman
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Janet Malcolm
The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story, Susan Hill
I’ll take credit for The Woman in Black and maybe Slammerkin.
But Flanders? Beautiful book, but someone would have to be almost sadistic to recommend it. I think we can credit another Doper for that one, but I don’t remember who.
I came into the book cold. I know their poetry, but I didn’t know much about the Sylvia /Ted soap opera, other than a little from the rather grim movie, Sylvia. The book assumes you’ve read the other big biographies, so I was at a bit of a disadvantage. That said, it was fascinating dish, in what seems to me as a pretty even handed look at two such sad, talented and fairly peculiar people. (Speaking of peculiar, I also couldn’t get enough of Ted Hughes’s very frightening sister. Yowser.)
I was interested in the way Janet Malcom talked about how memory transforms the dead and how that transformation effects the living. She quotes a letter from Ted Hughes where he complains about how easily people assume they know all about him and Sylvia, based on impressions of their work, stranger’s opinions and such small fragments of what is known about their lives. It was hard not to sympathize. She also showed how he edited what he said about her, shaping and refining his position over the years. Really interesting stuff.
The book made me want to go read all the other biographies, reread Ariel and The Birthday Letters and compare stories. I’m not a total Sylvia/Ted geek yet, but give me a year or two.