Best Books You Read This Year?

[deer of the dawn]

What's the best book/s you read this year? Can you describe it/them briefly and say what captivated you?

I loved Gavrielle Kay's Sarantine Mosaic, a duology that was richly atmospheric and didn't get lost along the way, like so many trilogies do... maybe I need to look into more duologies. I felt Kay nailed the ending.

Of course, Against All Things Ending along with other the 1st Chrons.

And for memorability, the Crystal Singer trilogy by Anne McCaffrey (RIP).

How about you?

[Orlion]

I've read quite a few good ones this year for the first time. Seemed like, mostly, if it was not for the book club I was involved with until June, it was very enjoyable. Here are the ones that particularly stood out:

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift: Very well written, very insightful book. Popular culture does it a huge disservice by only focusing on the Lilliputians.

Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin: Once again, a very well-written book. Baldwin's mastery of the craft is particularly on display during John's spiritual experience towards the end of the book. Such experiences are normally handled very poorly, but Baldwin pulls it off very nicely. Before that, it is a story about John's family history: mostly his aunt, father, and mother, as they all struggle to make a meaning out of their trials.

Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford: It is with this sequence of four novels that I am convinced that I like modernist literature. Set in the times of World War I, the sequence details the relationship between Christopher Tietjens and his wife Sylvia as they struggle with their loveless marriage, the strictures of traditional "Tory" values, and the impending changes the Great War is bringing about.

Novelties & Souvenirs by John Crowley: This is a short story collection. There is no over-arching theme except authorship, but there are a few gems in there. Some memorable ones include "Her Bounty to the Dead", a tale about home and the afterlife; "Novelty", a look at disappointment and frustrated hopes; "Snow", which utilizes an interesting technology to look at memory (particularly that of lost loved ones); "Great Work of Time", which tells of the efforts of a group of time travelers to change events in time to preserve the British Empire; and "The Nightingale Sings at Night", which is a re-telling of the story of Adam and Eve.

[I'm Murrin]

Hmm, let's see... If I had to pick a few out of all I've read this year:

- Big Questions by Anders Nilsen - great graphic novel. Uses a strange story of small birds encountering a crashed plane to explore all sorts of things about death, and faith, and love.
- Fun Home by Alison Bechdel - another great graphic novel, exploring Bechdel's childhood and her relationship with her closeted gay father.
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin - a deserving sci-fi classic.
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Excellent novel which manages to be a tribute to the early days of comics, the experiences of Jews displaced by WW2, and escapism (of the Houdini sort).
- The Sandman series written by Neil Gaiman - Excellent, excellent storytelling in comic and graphic novel form.

Yes, I've read a lot of comics this year; more than in the past.

[deer of the dawn]

For short stories, I did love Gifts in Sand and Water by Annie Bellet.

For nonfiction, I thought Crazy Love was very thought-provoking. It's supposed to be action provoking--- we'll see.

[Holsety]

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift: Very well written, very insightful book. Popular culture does it a huge disservice by only focusing on the Lilliputians.

I agree...I watched what felt like at least an hour or an hour and a half of a recent remake starring Jack Black a few weeks or months ago on TV. I thought the idea of casting Jack Black as Gulliver was pretty funny, and I like him enough that I enjoyed what I saw,
But it was like they were spending the whole movie on an expansion of the Lilliputian story, and I just wanted to see their depictions of the other parts of the book.

[Avatar]

No other version or rendition has ever covered the other parts, to the best of my knowledge. Not even the giants, let alone the horse-people. Back then though, it was all biting social satire.

--A

[Holsety]

No other version or rendition has ever covered the other parts, to the best of my knowledge. Not even the giants, let alone the horse-people. Back then though, it was all biting social satire.

--A

Do you know what "My Little Pony" is? If you don't, I suggest you not google, but it's sort of an internet fad (among other things). Kid's show that's gone viral.

It'd be funny if someone did something with the horse-headed people in Gulliver's Travels and MLP.

[I'm Murrin]

No other version or rendition has ever covered the other parts, to the best of my knowledge. Not even the giants, let alone the horse-people. Back then though, it was all biting social satire.

--A

I've seen adaptations featuring Brobdingnag, the flying city, and the horse people & yahoos. The one that comes immediately to mind is the miniseries starring Ted Danson, which I've seen a few times on TV, but I think I might've seen at least one other.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels_(TV_miniseries)

[deer of the dawn]

No other version or rendition has ever covered the other parts, to the best of my knowledge. Not even the giants, let alone the horse-people. Back then though, it was all biting social satire.

--A

I've seen adaptations featuring Brobdingnag, the flying city, and the horse people & yahoos. The one that comes immediately to mind is the miniseries starring Ted Danson, which I've seen a few times on TV, but I think I might've seen at least one other.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels_(TV_miniseries)

I admit to never having made it through the book.... but I did like the miniseries. In fact it might be one of the best miniseries I've ever seen. That
, and the Merlin series with Sam Neill.

Oh yeah, books. I finished Mere Christianity at 11:30pm New Years Eve (I'm not much of a party girl, not that there was a party to go to in Jos anyway) and it was just as WOW as it was 20 years ago when I first read it. C.S. Lewis has the stuff.

[Avatar]

Do you know what "My Little Pony" is?

Yes Holsety, I do. I'm personally not a fan, but it was a tv show when I was a kid. Of course it wasn't as popular as it is now, except among 8 year old girls.

I've seen adaptations featuring Brobdingnag, the flying city, and the horse people & yahoos. The one that comes immediately to mind is the miniseries...

Haha, cool, thanks Murrin. I didn't know they existed. But even with them, I'd be surprised if one person in a hundred knew what brobdingnagian was if you asked them. Or even that Gulliver went to other places too. (Except here obviously. )

--A

[Linna Heartbooger]

"Princeps," L.E. Modessitt Jr.:
For me, Modessitt realllllly brought home the point that people who are "heroic figures" desperately need and deeply appreciate competent support people who:
A. understand them and
B. are diligently working towards their vision.
And he did it with vivid examples that I could store up in my heart and recall to remind me in real, everyday-life situations.
That stuff's darned useful for me.
Also, I thought it was beautiful.
The main hero was questing for increasing justice in a situation that was messed-up on many different levels.


"Purple Hibiscus," Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:
This was an eye-opener... I especially appreciated how, on the personal and family-relationships level, it deals with controlling and being controlled.

"The Joys of Motherhood," Buchi Emecheta:
Emecheta was brilliant at drawing me into her protagonist's mind.
So much that after reading the book, I was thinking out a logical explanation for the concluding sentence of it through an animistic, ancestor-worshipping kind of worldview. (although that is very contrary to my own.)
Also, following a character through so many unbelievable changes-
from rural to urban, pre-war to post-war, single girl to married mother, one generation to the next.

"Things Fall Apart," Chinua Achebe:
Exciting, painful, drawing me into another world.

[Holsety]

Urth of the New Sun
If you know something of Wolfe, you've got something of this, I think. I've read a lot of his stuff, so I feel comfortable saying so.

Spoiler

The Book of the New Sun, is a 4 part series, monomythic'ish, but autobiographical in its form of telling, and feels at least somewhat like something spoken (not stream of consciousness). Perhaps it might be said it is written something like a testament - actually, while much longer, and probably less well structured as an explanation of rule itself (as opposed to the origin of rule), it resembles in my mind the Res Gestae (Augustus).

Urth of the New Sun, is the followup to the "origin story" that - or so I've heard *chuckle* - was never particularly intended to be written, winding together hints of what into something like answers.

I basically took up this book, thinking that I'd be getting a bit of a D or F on my Book of the New Sun reading, and was a bit surprised at the extent to which I may have understood. Maybe more like a C. I only make a remark like this, because in finding out this work existed, I found out (at the same time) that Wolfe apparently considered most of the developments to be things readers "might/should have expected" or something like that.

EDIT-And we're now into 2013...I reread it in 2012.

[Avatar]

I read it myself relatively recently. Strange book. But then, we're talking about Wolfe...

--A

[peter]

HHhH by french author Laurent Binet (trans Sam Taylor) tells the true story of the attempted assasination of Reinhardt Heidrich by two Czech insurgents in the darkest days of the Nazi occupation in 1942.

(The title is an acronym for a phrase that translates as Himmler's brain is called Heidrich, in use at the time the 'Butcher of Prauge' was at his damnedest.)

[Krazy Kat]

The best book I read in 2012 was going to be - Planet Narnia by Michael Ward. It's a fascinating theory on the symbolizm and structure of the Narniad.
The rev.M.Ward's analysis states that Lewis used the structural qualities of the pre-Capernicus universe to give each book a fixed foundation on which to build the entire series.

Jove - for example dominates the Wardrobe book.
Mars - must then be Princes Caspian.
Luna - the Silver Chair.
...and so on.

All very convincing. And I learned a little about literary analysis.


But then, while browsing the library today I found the second book of the www.trilogy - Watch - by Robert J Sawyer.
I'd forgotten about the first book - Awake; how it had gradually sucked me in to a very odd sort of fantasy story. The awakening conciousness of the world wide web.
The book was borderline sentimental, and it weaved in and out between nerdy and geeky. But it took me by surprise and gave me a lump in the throat that was a challenge I haven't had to face since God knows when.

Thouroughly enjoyed the many snippets of Internet Technological trivia as well.