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Best books you read in 2016?


Calibandar

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Something of an annual tradition, even though we have the monthly reading threads, it is nice to see what people's favorite reads were in 2016.

It does not need to be a book released in 2016 by the way. Just the best books you read during 2016.

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My top reads in alphabetical order by author:

 

Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang

Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi

Children of Earth and Sky, Guy Gavriel Kay

The Wolf in the Attic, Paul Kearney

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu

John Adams, David McCullough

The Call, Peadar O'Guilin

The Devil You Know, K.J. Parker

The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar

 

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I should really take and keep notes, probably:

Jack Vance: Lyonesse (especially/mainly the first book)

Terry Pratchett: Small Gods (the best Pratchett I have encountered so far)

Neal Stephenson: Snowcrash (wild ride, a pity I didn't read this when it came out in the 1990s)

not sure if I am convinced of the greatness but certainly fascinating: Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun

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The Obelisk Gate by N K Jemisin

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney

Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie.

 

From that list, I enjoyed each of them in different ways so it's hard to really judge them against one another. But I think The Obelisk Gate is probably my favourite. It's just such a fresh approach to fantasy, IMO, and the way the novel is written is very interesting too. 

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Top 10 novels in approximate order:

  • Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  • Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay
  • The Call by Peadar O Guilin
  • Babylon's Ashes by James S.A. Corey
  • City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
  • Slade House by David Mitchell
  • Uprooted by Naomi Novik
  • A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
  • Touch by Claire North

The best short story collections I read were

  • Stories of Your Lives and Others by Ted Chiang
  • The Best of Ian McDonald
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My top ten of 2016 in no particular order: (Note: List includes books published previous to 2016 as well as books published in 2016)

1. Dancer's Lament by Ian Cameron Esslemont

2. Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

3. Fifth Season by NK Jemisin

4. Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin

5. City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

6. The Warriot Prophet by R Scott Bakker

7. Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone

8. The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

9. Black Wolves by Kate Elliott

10. The Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan

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These are the best Young Adult books I read this year:

Corinne Duyvis, On the Edge of Gone 

Franny Billinsley, Chime

Hugh Howey, Sand Omnibus

Melissa Landers, Starflight

Kathy MacMillan, The Sword and the Verse

Marie Rutkowski, Winner's Kiss 

Alison Goodman, The Dark Days Club

Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

Robin Mckinley, Chalice

 

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So you can click on the link below to see my reading and ratings for 2016 and how my taste compares to yours.

2016 reading in brief.

For me the big revelation of 2016 was The Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman.  It has always been on my radar and i know it has one of the most intense love it or hate it reputations in fantasy but this was the year where I finally worked out which camp I would fall into; i really, really loved it. 

I can definitely see why some people would hate it though. For the first book the main character is basically an irredeemable little shite and Grossman also seems to have a love/hate relationship with the fantasy genre and its fans. Its sometimes hard to see the loving homage dotted in amongst his savage mockery of everything the genre stands for, but to my mind its definitely there. If you can't relate to the protagonist in some way, or distance yourself from him or Grossman's barbs then you will really struggle to enjoy this series.

Even for someone like me who adores this series and ranks it as one of the greats i can see the flaws; the successive books aren't as well written as the first one making it tonally inconsistent and Grossman seems to be overcompensating for his first book by making the end of the third one saccharine sweet. But for me these are insignificant blemishes in an otherwise spectacularly good series of books.

The other highlight of the year was the non-fiction book Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene. For me the hype for this book was well and truly justified. Eye-opening. 

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7 hours ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

The other highlight of the year was the non-fiction book Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene. For me the hype for this book was well and truly justified. Eye-opening. 

I read this in 2014 or 2015. It is interesting but highly problematic. Greene is overplaying his hand and while his psychological research is sometimes fascinating, almost everything he writes on moral philosophy should be taken with a truckload of salt. It is hard to believe that someone with a philosophy degree from a major university could be so casually dismissive. And for many laypeople this will probably the only book on moral philosophy they ever read, so they take his facile dismissals and his advocacy of utilitarianism (a stance disproportionally less popular among professional philosophers than among guys like Greene) as "scientific fact".

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My top reads of 2016 according to Goodreads were:

The entire re-read of the Empire Trilogy by Janny Wurts and Raymond Feist.   Still one of my favorite fantasy series of all times.

Penric's Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Making of Outlander:  the Official Guide to Season 1&2.  Love the TV show.  Enough said.

The King's Blood and The Widow's House from The Coin and Dagger series

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Kushiel's Justice by Jaqueline Carey

Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff

 

 

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On 02/01/2017 at 2:32 AM, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Top five (no particular order):

  • The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson
  • Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
  • The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

I love all of these! I read the latter in 2016.

Of the 50 books I read last year I would give these five stars:


The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) - Jemisin, N.K.
Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) - Leckie, Ann
The Haunting of Hill House - Jackson, Shirley
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Jackson, Shirley
Tenth of December - Saunders, George
Railsea - Miéville, China
A Monster Calls - Ness, Patrick
Slade House - Mitchell, David
Undermajordomo Minor - deWitt, Patrick
The Glamour - Priest, Christopher
Black Swan Green - Mitchell, David
The Luminaries - Catton, Eleanor

I'm surprised it took me so long to get around to reading Shirley Jackson. But I feel as if I can detect her influence in many similar works now. To my shame I had never heard of George Saunders until a friend gave me this short story collection but it was a revelation and I want to read everything of his now.
 

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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).

Other great books (from four star reviews) were: Soumission by Michel Houellebecq, Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson, Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie, The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney and Przyjdzie Mordor i nas zje, czyli tajna historia Słowian by Ziemowit Szczerek.

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