Favorite Reads of 2013

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)