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Top 3 Books You Read in 2012


Maithanet

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Couldn't distinguish any order among these three, but they are the tops:

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

Close honorable mentions to The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman and Red Country by Joe Abercrombie.

I am always happy to see Matterhorn getting love anywhere. That would have been tops on my books read in 2011 - probably top 3 of books I have ever read.

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I appear to have had a pretty awful year, bookwise. I'm really struggling to think of 3 books that were simply blow-me-away excellent, and i've got none in fiction. I read about 70 books this year, and the three that make the cut are

- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

- Jack Glass, by Adam Roberts,

- Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer

Life was the best of the three, Jack Glass was flawed but interesting and unusual and Into Thin Air is excellently written and gripping, but it feels like a flimsy book to name one of the top 3 of the year, but I guess it's been that kind of year. I enjoyed sequels to a few series I usually enjoy - Tchaikovsky, Novik, Griffin, Aaronson, Banks, but all of them feel a little insubstantial and more of the same. I also like the new books from Rowling, Brin, Reynolds and Robinson, but all were way short of best books of the year status. I read some older stuff, but none of it was mindblowing and some of it downright bad (hi, Tigana) though I did finally find some Charles Stross I could like and the Ken Macleod and Jasper Fforde books weren't bad.

I cannot believe you didn't mention the vampire angels in your worst of the year. :devil:

No top-three contribution yet, maybe after Christmas.

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I'm not sure it counts as a book, y'know? But, yes, objectively speaking it's definitely the worst thing i've read in a long time. (And not just in a funny way or a HAHA WOMEN STUPID condescending-to-genre-romance way. It's just bad.)

What's freaking me out is that I keep thinking about checking out her other books. Maybe one of the Cajun ones (because how many Vikings can one read about, really?) I feel like I need to expand my familiarity with her entire, er, body of work, perhaps putting the Angel Vampire Viking book into better context. Or possibly she's infected my brain.

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3. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1974). Wonderful book. Think it has really stood the test of time. Probably about 3 days to read this one, I cried, I laughed, I loved it.

I read that this year as well. Definitely making my top 3.

"Matterhorn" really was fantastic. I read it in 2010, I believe (maybe 2011) and it was in my top 2 for that year (I read it the same year I read "The Passage")

Matterhorn was, I think, the best book I read in 2010. Utterly fantastic.

My top 3:

1. Fevre Dream - George R. R. Martin - First book I read this year and still the best. Probably my favorite Martin novel.

2. The Price of Spring - Daniel Abraham - A sad and great capstone to the series.

3. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman - A very engrossing read, quick, emotional and action-packed. It gets a little close to being dated, like a lot of classic sci-fi, but it avoids this on the strength of the ideas, characters and the world.

Honorable Mention:

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi - Not perfect, but once it got going I was very engrossed in the setting and (most of) the characters.

Disappointment of the Year:

Son of Heaven - David Wingrove - I had been looking forward to reading this for a long time as I was intrigued by the idea, but the actual execution left a lot to be desired. I finished it, more out of a sense of obligation than out of enjoyment and while it wasn't terrible or the worst book I had ever read, it was a massive disappointment for me.

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Matterhorn was, I think, the best book I read in 2010. Utterly fantastic.

My top 3:

1. Fevre Dream - George R. R. Martin - First book I read this year and still the best. Probably my favorite Martin novel.

2. The Price of Spring - Daniel Abraham - A sad and great capstone to the series.

3. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman - A very engrossing read, quick, emotional and action-packed. It gets a little close to being dated, like a lot of classic sci-fi, but it avoids this on the strength of the ideas, characters and the world.

I like your taste! Matterhorn, Price of Spring, Forever War, all absolutely excellent. Adding the others to my to-read!

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According to Goodreads I read 38 books this year.

The best for me were:

Limit by Frank Schatzing

The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

I would also like to mention a non fiction book : The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

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Although opinions seem to vary, I loved Use of Weapons. Ending blew me away.

I'm going to be caught up on the Vorkosigan books early in the new year, and I'm thinking The Culture will be my next big sci-fi series. It seems that Use of Weapons and The Player of Games are the two that should be read first. Should I definitely go with one of these over the other? Or should I start with something else?

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I'm going to be caught up on the Vorkosigan books early in the new year, and I'm thinking The Culture will be my next big sci-fi series. It seems that Use of Weapons and The Player of Games are the two that should be read first. Should I definitely go with one of these over the other? Or should I start with something else?

IMO Use of Weapons is the better book by quite a fair margin but The Player of Games makes a much better introduction to the series. I'd tried to read UoW a few times and struggled to get into it until after reading tPoG.

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I'm going to be caught up on the Vorkosigan books early in the new year, and I'm thinking The Culture will be my next big sci-fi series. It seems that Use of Weapons and The Player of Games are the two that should be read first. Should I definitely go with one of these over the other? Or should I start with something else?

I've been reading them in order published, which starts with Consider Phlebas.

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I think it's been one of those years when I've read a lot of good books, but I don't know if I'd consider many of them to be genuinely great books. Goodreads tells me I rated three books with 5 stars this year, they are:

Peter F. Hamilton's Great North Road - I think this is one of Hamilton's best books and while sometimes he's had some subplots that are less interesting than others I found both of the main plots compelling. There's a good variety between the plots varying from a detailed murder mystery investigation in 22nd Century Newcastle to a tense journey through an alien jungle that feels like a mixture of The Thing and Predator.

Iain M. Banks - Feersum Endjinn. I've read mixed reviews about this in the past, so I wasn't quite what to expect but I thought this was one of Banks' best books. At times it is tough to read, I think the chapters written by an illiterate narrator who writes everything phonetically took me about three times as long to read as the others, but I think the literary devices like the varied writing styles and the non-linear narrative did work very well. It was an entertaining read with an imaginative setting and some memorable characters.

Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus. This is one I didn't think was flawless, in particular I thought the main characters maybe remained a bit too enigmatic through the story and the character development was a bit lacking. On the other hand, I thought there was some excellent writing in here and the author did a wonderful job of describing the setting, it would have been very easy for the author to tell us how magical the circus felt to people who encountered it but I think she did a good job of showing it as well.

Honourable mentions - "The Air War" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, "Caliban's War" by James S.A. Corey, The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham, This Immortal by Roger Zelazny, Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronvitch.

IMO Use of Weapons is the better book by quite a fair margin but The Player of Games makes a much better introduction to the series. I'd tried to read UoW a few times and struggled to get into it until after reading tPoG.

I'd agree with this, I think it does help to be familiar with the Culture before reading Use of Weapons even if there's not direct plot connection with either of the earlier books. Because they're completely independent I think either Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games could work as an introduction to the Culture, I think Player is the better book (it's probably the second-best Culture novel after UoW) but CP is a good introduction because it gradually introduces the Culture (most of the book being written from the perspective of an outsider fighting against the Culture).

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I haven't read many books, only fantasy and scifi, so the top three new books that I've read are:

1. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker - just finished it; will pick up the sequel soon.

2. Blood Song by Anthony Ryan

3. Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

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