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Best books you read in 2016?


Calibandar

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I'm not very good at ranking what my favourite books are or remembering when I read particular books for that matter so it's probably biased towards the books I read in the last few months of 2016 but a few of the of books which stand out for me were; The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin, A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall and The Tiger and The Wolf by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch and Black Wolves by Kate Elliott were pretty good as well.

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In no particular order:

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino

The Aleph and Other Stories - Borges

Agamemnon's Daughter / The Successor - Ismael Kadare

The Warrior-Prophet - R. Scott Bakker

Rhetorics of Fantasy - Farah Mendlesohn

Thermonuclear Monarchy - Elaine Scarry

Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond

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6 hours ago, 3CityApache said:

I only gave five stars to five books on Goodreads in 2016, and they were surprisingly all Jim Butcher books, as I was catching up with the Dresden Files: Summer Knight (#4), Blood Rites (#6), Proven Guilty (#8), White Night (#9) and Skin Game (#15).

I'm surprised you left out the two best ones--Dead Beat and Changes.

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Books I gave 5 stars to:

 

Ready Player One - Ernest Clines

Promise of Blood - Brian McClellan

Cibola Burn - James S.A. Corey

Bands of Mourning - Brandon Sanderson

Morning Star - Pierce Brown

Arcanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson

Although I started a few books that will probably end up getting 5 stars (White Luck Warrior, Fall of Light, Kushiel's Dart).  Morning Star is my #1 pick.

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I posted this in the Self Reading Challenge, but the three best books I read this year were:

Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.  Great nonfiction about the University of Washington's 1936 Olympic Rowing team that went on to defeat the Germans at the Berlin Olympics.  I don't really care for rowing, and I still found this really interesting.

Roots:  The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley.  Plenty of good history if you consider it historical fiction rather than nonfiction as it was initially billed. 

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson.  How internet shaming happens, how it hurts people who mostly don't deserve it, and why we should all think twice about joining the bandwagon.  Had some really interesting details about the post-shaming lives of temporary internet villains like Jonah Lehrer (who committed plagiarism) and Justine Sacco (who made a sorta-racist joke on Twitter and was fired from her job).

I read a fair bit of SFF, but nothing that really blew me away.  Spider's War, The Great Ordeal, Sharp Ends and Ancillary Justice were all good, but none great. 

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Duncton Wood, Wlliam Horwood

Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavic

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924, Orlando Figes

Champlain's Dream, David Hackett Fischer

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Simon Schama

A History of The Vikings, Gwyn Jones

A Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart ( Can't recall if this was a 2015 or 2016 read)

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Since I re-read A Game of Thrones in November, that's #1 for me, followed by another re-read: Best Served Cold

But for first time reads I would mention:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell

Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie

The Call by Peadar O'Guilin

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Fiction
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephensen

Lolita - Valdimir Nobokov

NonFiction
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century - Ronald Bailey

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman

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6 minutes ago, Seiche said:

Fiction
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephensen

Lolita - Valdimir Nobokov

NonFiction
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century - Ronald Bailey

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman

This is a stellar list.

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8 minutes ago, Isis said:

This is a stellar list.

Marine extraordinaire Bobby Shaftoe, Humbert the charming, terrifying, narcissistic sociopath, climate change and sausage making. What more could one need in life?

Cryptonomicon's Chapter 64 'Organ' is a standalone work of genius. A breathless dive into the frantic, inept, brilliant, horny, nerd psyche which is letter perfect. Fucking brilliant.

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13 hours ago, End of Disc One said:

I'm surprised you left out the two best ones--Dead Beat and Changes.

It's true Dresden Files are generally very well written and almost equally good. I thought about five stars for Changes, but eventually went for four. Dead Beat, on the other hand, is a Dresden novel that suited me the least. Not sure if I didn't give it three stars only.

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In terms of books published in 2016 and fiction it was "the spider's war" by Daniel Abraham. An excellent ending to a fantasy series with great characters and a slightly different approach to the standard.

Old fiction was "the wastelands" by King but I spent most of the year reading his Dark Tower and tie-in books and starting to appreciate him a lot more as an author because of it.

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On 1/4/2017 at 1:45 PM, Maithanet said:

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson.  How internet shaming happens, how it hurts people who mostly don't deserve it, and why we should all think twice about joining the bandwagon.  Had some really interesting details about the post-shaming lives of temporary internet villains like Jonah Lehrer (who committed plagiarism) and Justine Sacco (who made a sorta-racist joke on Twitter and was fired from her job).

Read that in 2015 and would recommend it to anyone who ever uses social media.

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A Short History of Nearly Everything by BIll Bryson. Second book of his I've read and it was amazing. If you like science, history, and are interested in how things came to be, this is a wonderful read. Bryson takes all the facts of what has gotten the Earth to this point and makes them relevant, insightful, and interesting at the same time. 

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I have really enjoyed my reread of ASoIaF on the new Apple enhanced ebook versions. The new layout really keeps you dialed in as to where everyone is at as well as who’s who of every major and minor character as well as a embedded glossary of terms. If you haven’t tried the ebooks I would highly recommend them

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