Ah yes, the unexpected high of actually getting through (over!) 50 books this year! Quite an unexpected range of material to choose from for this list.
In no particular order other than approximate chronological order they were read in, here are my top ten books I read this year:
Clockwork Boys: Clocktaur War Book One – T. Kingfisher
Great setting, story, and characters. Kingfisher can tell the hell out of a story.
It was a bit of a toss-up between this first book and the second in the series as to which I preferred — the first one sets the story beautifully, while the second one has the payoff and a great climax along with some nice twists and turns. But I figured if this list is going to be any influence on anyone, the first book is definitely the place to start.
Elder Race – Adrian Tchaivovsky
I’m so glad to have discovered Adrian Tchaikovsky a couple of years ago. He’s one of those writers who not only does very diverse stories, and does each with enviable skill and style, but has a deep backlog of material I’ve yet to find an end to, offering a wealth of reading material.
In Elder Race, he gorgeously mixes two genres I had never thought could blend so well together: Fantasy and science fiction. You think you’re reading one but then learn it’s more the other. Then finally realize that both are kind of true at the same time from the perspective of the characters. Brilliantly done.
Paladin’s Grace – T. Kingfisher
Kingfisher spins another engaging story in her Clocktaur Wars world, here dealing with a paladin who’s shattered and hollowed out when his god — one of the major gods of this world, and the paladin’s very raison d’être — suddenly dies. A chance encounter with Grace, a woman who feels an unlikely candidate for being appealing or in love (not an uncommon set-up in Kingfisher books, I’ve realized) leads to an unexpected adventure where both find that they are both still worthy, after all.
More romance than I was expecting, which isn’t my usual thing, but still a really fun read.
We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around And Make Something – Amie McNee
Chronology aside, this was easily my favourite book of the year. I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything more inspiring and encouraging for artists, full stop. McNee has made it her life’s work to not just make her own art and get it out into the world, but to push everyone everywhere to make whatever art is inside them (and she argues that everyone has something artistic in them that deserves to be realized) and put it out into the world, as well.
Whether or not you already make art or even think you can, but especially if you’ve ever questioned if there’s even any point in it (and haven’t all artists of all types wondered that?), read this book ASAP. Simply, unfalteringly fantastic.
A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
I was first introduced to Fredrik Backman earlier this year when my wife sent me a clip of Backman opening a speech behind a dais in front of an audience. Do yourself a favour and take a few minutes to watch it. Outside of comedians, there aren’t many people who have had me laughing so much. And I knew immediately that I had to check out his writing.
A Man Called Ove (pronounced “OO-va”, if the audiobook I listened to is to be believed) was easily the book of his most referred to online. So I grabbed it.
If the Amie McNee book above hadn’t hit my radar this year, A Man Called Ove would be the walkaway choice for my favourite book of the year. It’s an easy read but with so much care and finesse around complex issues that all add up to an exquisite read.
I’ll be looking for the rest of his books this coming year and hopefully beyond.
Tales from The Loop – Simon Stålenhag
I didn’t know what to expect when this book popped up in a couple of lists of suggested books that I came across this year. It turned out to be something of both an eye-opening and humbling experience. Stålenhag is not only a deft writer who excels in saying a lot in very little space, but he’s also a professional-level fine painter.
Tales from The Loop turned out to be an unusually shaped book where nearly every page has a brief bit of fiction beside gorgeously rendered (sometimes approaching photo-realistic) paintings from the imagined Swedish landscape where in an alternate history, an enormous subterranean/suboceanic particle accelerator (The Loop) has long been abandoned, but where its cooling towers and old access hatches and highly advanced but (usually) dead and rusting technology still dot the Swedish landscape and are simply part of everyone’s life for generations now.
Tales from The Loop is the first of a trilogy of books, each an offshoot of this setup but both being distinct stories unto themselves.
This kind of thing isn’t for everyone — particularly with the following books, it can get visually and conceptually disturbing at times — but if science fiction with a dark side is your scene, definitely give all of these books a read.
Automatic Noodle – Annalee Newitz
This was another book that kept popping up in peoples’ lists of books they recently enjoyed, and the blurb summarizing the story intrigued me enough to check it out. Definitely happy I didn’t miss it.
This is a near-future setting on Earth where robots have existed for a while — some mentally and emotionally advanced enough to be granted rights as living people — and just after the war between America and California has ended, many robots with niche uses during the war find themselves at odds for what to do now. A group of them happen by coincidence to come together and decide that they’d like to open a restaurant.
There’s more depth to the story than first meets the eye (with having equivalent human intelligence and emotion can come questions of self-confidence and the PTSD that humans suffer from wartime trauma), but more broadly it’s an upbeat, quirky story that stuck with me for months.
The Original – Brandon Sanderson & Mary Robinette Kowal
This book admittedly came up when I was looking for short (ideally audio) books I could easily get through on my goal to finish 50 books this year, but it proved to punch above its weight.
In an alternate reality where cloning is common for end-of-life scenarios and peoples’ memories and personalities are copied down into the new bodies, a clone is made of a woman who is charged with killing her husband in the hopes that she can help the authorities hunt down her original.
The Obstacle Is The Way – Ryan Holiday
I’ve read a couple of Holiday’s books in the past, and always taken away helpful, insightful information from them. He’s a student of the classic stoics of history, learning from them ways to think about and deal with issues that come up in everyday life.
In The Obstacle Is The Way, he takes the approach as a handful of others have in the past, that people do themselves a disservice when they think of the apparent obstacle between them and their goal as a problem rather than what alternate solutions the obstacle makes them consider that would otherwise have been overlooked. Those alternate solutions can be the way, sometimes it turns out the only way that would have been possible for people to end up achieving their goals.
Great lessons for everyone in a compact, easily digested book.
Several People Are Typing – Calvin Kasulke
As I’m sure I share with many (most? all?) writers, it’s not unusual for me to read good books and wish that I’d thought of those ideas because of how well they’re done. In this case, it wasn’t only the idea of the story, but the (to my experience) unique approach of relaying the story that was enviable.
Kasulke tells this entire story in the digital space of several coworkers talking in an online work group chat. Literally, there’s not one word in this book that describes anything or anyone in the story outside those back-and-forth discussions among different members of the group.
And yet it somehow works really, really well.
… and that’s a wrap for another year!
I won’t do myself the undue stress of trying to get in 50 books again next year — although if it happens, it happens (spoiler alert: Unless I work at it, that absolutely won’t happen) — but as always, I look forward to what great, unexpected finds I get to enjoy.
What have you read this year that you really enjoyed?