I liked them all for the same reason, really: well-written, comprehensive, and well-researched. Also, I really like survival stories like #4 and #6.
I abandoned my Goodreads challenge in April or so, because i was falling behind and it was making reading feel like a chore instead of like pleasure. So I don’t have a great, comprehensive list of books like I did for the past few years. That said, here are the ones I remember really liking. All are fiction, because that’s my jam:
- Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, by Carlos Hernandez. I read this every year with my fifth graders, and I fall in love with it every year. It’s extremely smart middle-grade or YA fiction, very funny and warm and just everything I’m looking for in a novel. In December, as we approached the end of the book, on a whim I looked up the author on Facebook and sent him a quick note thanking him for writing such a great book and telling him about how much my students enjoyed it. Carlos Hernandez responded to the note by offering to Zoom with my students. A week later we had a 45-minute Q&A with him; my kids asked great questions, and his answers just blew me away with their warmth, humor, and intelligence. I cannot recommend this book enough.
- Translation State, by Ann Leckie. I’ve really enjoyed other books by her, but I know that the deliberate chilliness of Ancillary Justice and its sequels puts some folks off. If that’s you, you might want to give this book a try. It’s no Becky Chambers, but I found the characters a lot more relatable than in her other books. And it’s super weird.
- The Book that Wouldn’t Burn, by Mark Lawrence. This isn’t like high literature or anything, but it’s a very solid fantasy with a few twists that genuinely surprised me. I’m sure other folks will see them coming, but I didn’t, and that made it a lot of fun.
- City of Last Chances, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Another solid, non-groundbreaking fantasy in the “gritty weird highly political city” subgenre. I like that subgenre.
- Changeling, by Victor Lavalle. My awesome brother in law is a big horror fan, and he tends to give me horror novels for Christmas. We’re not talking “Boo scary monster!” novels, we’re talking books that I damn near nope out of. This book was no exception. I’m cool with the Stephen King kind of scary, but books where the non-villainous characters commit violence against those they love? oh hell no. So, that’s a vague spoiler, but you probably could’ve figured it out from the title anyway. I’m glad I stuck with it, though, because it turned into a really interesting book after That Scene.
- A Restless Truth, by Freya Marske. Like queer fantasy? Like it when it’s really, really spicy? It’s not my usual read, but hot damn. It’s a sequel to another equally queer, equally spicy fantasy. Enjoy!
- Leech, by Hiron Ennes. Super creepy super chilly fantasy-horror about something that’s sort of like vampires only not. Good stuff.
- Hellbent, by Leigh Bardugo. This was a romp–wizards at Yale. Somewhere in the middle of Harry Potter and The Secret History, but punker.
- Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. If you like your science fiction to be super lesbian and also really funny and plus a bunch of body horror not to mention necromancers but you want the storytelling to be straightforward, this is not the series for you. But if you want all that other stuff and you want the book to be a total mindfuck where you spend 90% of the time trying to figure out just what the hell is going on, I cannot recommend this series highly enough. It’s brilliant, and not a light read.
- Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. It owes a very clear debt to The Hunger Games and to the US prison system, and it doesn’t exactly hide its agenda. The violence in the book is nonstop, but not really played for joy, and it’s constantly suggesting the reader is complicit. Not a fun read, but a really thought-provoking read.
I forgot one of my favorite books this year: Number Go Up: Inside the Wild Rise and Staggering Fall of Crypto by Zeke Faux.
It’s funny, it’s informative, it’s at times appalling, without being gratuitous. It’s very accessible. If you don’t know much about crypto or what led to the whole Sam Bankman-Fried fiasco, this is the book to read. Like, I knew the whole thing was a scam, but not the extent to which it is a scam, and it’s actually a lot stupider than I ever imagined.
Oh congratulations! That’s so cool, and I’m sure the kids loved it.
I read 60 books this year, and had a higher percentage of good stuff than usual. I suspect it’s because I upped consumption of T. Kingfisher this year, and I still have plenty to go! Life is good.
The September House, by Carissa Orlando. I had a favorite this year and this was it! About a woman who loves her haunted house too much to leave it.
The Sight, by Melanie Golding. About a woman who can see how people will die. Not scary, it’s more about her life with a travelling carnival and how her power affects her family relationships. Well-written.
The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi. All you guys have read it, I think! I wish this book was non-fiction.
Even Though I Knew the End, by C.L. Polk. A supernatural mystery, unexpectedly heart-wrenching.
Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher. A retelling of Sleeping Beauty, with a lot less about the princess and a lot more everything else.
Summer in Orcus, T. Kingfisher. A girl finds a portal to another world, yadda yadda. Yes please.
Bryony and Roses, T. Kingfisher. A retelling of Beauty and the Beast, with some horrific scenes, but I like that.
The Hexologists, by Josiah Bancroft. New series by one of my favorite authors, about a magical married couple solving mysteries.
Broken Light, by Joanne Harris. Imagine Stephen King’s Carrie, going through menopause.
Pet, by Catherine Chidgey. A novel about a teacher who gains a hold over her pre-teen students, and what she does with it.
Honorable mention:
Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, by Dolly Parton
An Honest Man, by Michael Koryta
A House With Good Bones, T. Kingfisher
Holly, by Stephen King
The Talking Parcel, by Gerald Durrell
The Future Is Female! Vol. 2: The 1970s: More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women
That one’s on my list, too!
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
I LOVE novels that take stories set in different times and places that tie together thematically, and this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It takes an historical story of a medieval siege, a modern day story of a troubled youth seduced into an ecoterrorism plot, and the futuristic story of a young girl on a plague-ridden generation spaceship and ties them together with themes that revolve narrowly around a specific book and more broadly about the power of storytelling.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
I love a good time travel story and good futuristic world building, and this book has both, plus there was a tenderness in the story line that I found appealing. The author does tie in characters and plot lines from her previous novels Station 11 and The Glass Hotel, so while they aren’t exactly prerequisites, you will like the book better if you’ve read those previous works.
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
This novel is about a teenaged girl who is groomed and sexually abused by a teacher. I wish I could make everyone that’s doubted a sexual abuse victim read this book. The main character will frustrate you with her shifting stories and her attempts to protect her abuser, but she makes it understandable.
Number Go Up, Inside Crypto’s Wild Ride and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux
I was going to read Going Infinite, but I like Michael Lewis and didn’t want to lose all my respect for him, so I picked this skeptical expose of cryptocurrency-which covers the FTX downfall as well as other crypto disasters— instead. Spoiler alert —- it’s all a scam.
Red Clocks by Leni Zuma
Set in a post-Roe dystopian US, this is the story of a group of women navigating family and motherhood and the complexities of choice in a world where abortion and in-vitro fertilization are illegal.
Zero Fail - The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig
Both a history of the Secret Service and an expose of the scandals that befell them. It was a fascinating and eye-opening read.
Tracers in the Dark -The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg
Awesome true crime stories about the federal agents who trace cryptocurrency to take down drug marketplaces and child sex abuse material rings.
Bye Bye Baby by Max Allen Collins
This is one of Collin’s Nate Heller novels. Heller is a well-connected private investigator who manages to insert himself into notable early and mid century true crime investigations….and he usually ends up inserting himself into at least one of the females in the story. Bye Bye Baby is his take on Marilyn Monroe’s suspicious suicide, and possibly the best novel in this series.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
This one made the list only because I had a disappointing year for fiction. This book definitely clicks my box for “stories set in different times and places but linked together thematically” and it was critically acclaimed, but the set of stories in the middle of the book bored me, partly because I don’t really like dialect in my reading material. ( The book uses the structure where the story started in the first chapter is continued in the last chapter, the story started in the second chapter is continued in the next to last chapter……it was the story in the middle, told in adjacent chapters, that lost me) The rest of the book was enjoyable and thought-provoking if somewhat ambitious.
The Mirage by Matt Ruff— This one was a reread, it’s one of my all time favorite books. The book is set in an alternate upside down universe where the Middle East is populated by prosperous first world countries known as the United Arab States, Israel is in Germany, and the US is a collection of third world terrorist havens. The book is set in the aftermath of the Nov 9th terrorist attacks on two UAS office towers, and the investigators keep finding artifacts, such as a copy of the NY Times with articles about 9/11 that lead them to believe that their may be more to their world than Mets the eye.
You may not want to listen to this podcast, then. (You should, though. It’s a great podcast. But Michael Lewis does not come out looking great. Bummer for me, as The Big Short is one of my favorite movies.)
Aaand I just added Cloud Cuckoo Land to my TBR list!
So many books to read… so few years of life left to read them.
So, a few people now have mentioned Sea of Tranquility. I looked into that one once I found out it’s about time travel, because I love a good time travel story… but at the same time, I’m sort of a snob about time travel stories, and need for them to have very rigid rules that they follow (there’s some leeway in precisely what the rules are, but whatever they are, once laid out, they have to be absolute). And a number of reviews I saw online said that it was good as long as you don’t think too much about it, which sounds to me like a sign that it’s not what I’m looking for.
So, any comment on that?
I like time travel stories, too, and didn’t notice Sea of Tranquility violating any of its internal rules. I thought it held together very well.
Ann_H, I’m a big fan of both Sea of Tranquility and Cloud Atlas (hope you’ve seen the movie - different from the book, but well worth a watch). Both Zero Fail and The Mirage sound intriguing. Thanks for the tips!
This is a very interesting and inspiring thread, and you are not the first one to recommend this book. So I went to amazon (sorry! it is not easy to buy English books abroad) and bought it. Of course I read the reviews too, and there it gets interesting. Many five stars, with comments along the line of what you and the others here have written. Aaaand… many one stars. They all write “the author has not understood crypto at all!”. I find it fascinating how people refuse to accept they are wrong and have been the victims of a scam. See Trump, or homeopathy, or, or, or…
To be clear: I am sure the five star reviews are correct, as is your appraisal of this book. By the way: the nom de plume of the author is great. And should it be his real name, my mind would be blown away!
Now I am waiting with Vorfreude (to be happy in advance of something happening, like Schadenfreude, but the other way around and timewise reversed) for it to arrive!
Oo! Adding Vorfreude to my vocabulary.
My pleasure. Vor means before, Freude means pleasure. Together: what I wrote, evident. The “V” is pronounced like an “F”, just to make sure.
This was #1 on my top ten list the year I read it. As the reader, you see exactly what’s going on, and why the teacher’s behavior is so inappropriate. But the really impressive thing is how well Russell makes you see things from the child’s perspective, too. You really see how the teacher makes an awkward and shy girl feel special. You’re right there in her head with her as she craves more attention from the teacher, wanting to impress him and feeling desperate for his admiration and approval.
Thanks! It was pretty flippin awesome.
I’m glad people are appreciating this book (which I haven’t read, and won’t be reading) because I remember following the controversy around it and feeling like this woman got a raw deal.
He Zoomed with your class?! This year I read that book.