I wouldn’t necessarily read too much into this post
existing. I still fight with conflicting motivation to write, and to
specifically write about books and stories and people telling grand lies
for money. But, I am still reading voraciously
and last year I read 126 books and I wanted to acknowledge, somehow,
the best of what I read. Or, more accurately, what I enjoyed the most
out of what I read. There won’t be a Hugo nomination post, because I’m
not a supporting member of Worldcon this time
around and I don’t plan to be this year or next. There likely won’t be
a post where I list out my top nine books read in 2013 or my top nine
books published in 2013, though I did always enjoy writing up those
entries in years gone by.
Happily, though, I use Goodreads and so I don’t
have go through my list of all the books I read during the year and
decide which ones I liked best. I can just click on what I read that I
rated 5 stars, pull out the comic books and voila!
We have list!
This is in no particular order, so unless I get extra ambitious, don’t expect ranking.
I will say, though, that if I absolutely had do a
ranking, the top of the list would include those books with stars
below. Think of it as a bonus mark of distinction.
The First American: Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, by H. W. Brands
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
The Inexplicables, by Cherie Priest
*The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
Defending Jacob, by William Landay
The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson
Red Country, by Joe Abercrombie
Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to Ever-Ending Earth, by Craig Childs
Legion, by Brandon Sanderson
My Share of the Task, by Stanley McChrystal
*The Round House, by Louise Erdrich
The Human Division, by John Scalzi
*N0S4A2, by Joe Hill
*Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, by Michael Moss
Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King
The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume Three, by Joseph Gordon Levitt (editor)