The 2009 Books

[leahbobet]

Despite my inability to get it through my head this year, I have most of my gifts put together, there is a chicken in my fridge for the big New Year's Eve dinnerstravaganza, and it is time to do this post. I'm leaving the Grand Metrics for tomorrow, since I do plan to write a bit tonight.


So here's what I read this year:

#1 -- Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories
#2 -- Ekaterina Sedia, Locomotive to Crimea (in draft)
#3 -- Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories
#4 -- Chris Coen, Kith and Kin (in draft)
#5 -- Nicholas Christopher, The Bestiary
#6 -- K.J. Parker, Shadow
#7 -- Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, The Fall of the Kings
#8 -- John M. Ford, The Last Hot Time
Not-#9 -- Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl
#9 -- Peter S. Beagle, The Innkeeper's Song
#10 -- Claudia Dey, Stunt
#11 -- Sean Stewart, Clouds End
#12 -- Patricia C. Wrede, Searching for Dragons
#13 -- Patricia C. Wrede, Calling on Dragons
#14 -- Madeleine L'Engle, Troubling a Star
#15 -- Scott O'Dell, Sing Down the Moon
#16 -- Patricia C. Wrede, Talking to Dragons
REREAD -- Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing With Dragons
#17 -- Sean Stewart, The Night Watch
REREAD -- Madeleine L'Engle, Dragons in the Waters
#18 -- Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
#19 -- Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
#20 -- John M. Ford, The Dragon Waiting
#21 -- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
#22 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Brothers in Arms
#23 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance
#24 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Komarr
#25 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
REREAD -- Michael Stackpole, Once a Hero
#26 -- Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
#27 -- Carrie Vaughn, Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
#28 -- D.J. Taylor, Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age
#29 -- Carrie Vaughn, Kitty Raises Hell
#30 -- Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
#31 -- Mike Carey, Thicker Than Water
#32 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free
#33 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity
#34 -- Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge, eds., Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends
#35 -- Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Not-#36 -- Samantha Henderson, Heaven's Bones
#36 -- Connie Willis, Remake
#37 -- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
#38 -- Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America
#39 -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
#40 -- Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
#41 -- Lisa Mantchev, Eyes Like Stars
#42 -- China Mieville, The City & the City
#43 -- Merrie Haskell, The Herbalist's Apprentice (in draft)
#44 -- William Gibson, Spook Country
REREAD -- William Goldman, The Princess Bride
REREAD -- Catherine Bush, Minus Time
#45 -- Caitlin R. Kiernan, The Red Tree
#46 -- Maggie Helwig, Girls Fall Down
#47 -- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
REREAD -- Lloyd Alexander, Taran Wanderer
REREAD -- Lloyd Alexander, The High King
#48 -- Amanda Downum, The Drowning City
REREAD -- Gael Baudino, Maze of Moonlight
REREAD -- Gael Baudino, Strands of Starlight
REREAD -- Gael Baudino, Strands of Sunlight
REREAD -- Michelle Sagara, Into the Dark Lands
REREAD -- Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
REREAD -- Louise Titchener, Greenfire
#49 -- Howard Akler, The City Man
#50 -- Joe Ollmann, This Will All End In Tears
#51 -- Stephen Geigen-Miller and Greg Beettam, Xeno's Arrow #1
#52 -- Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim
#53 -- Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring
#54 -- Daniel Rabuzzi, The Choir Boats
#55 -- Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling
#56 -- Cordelia Strube, Lemon
REREAD -- Jim Munroe, Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask
#57 -- Emma Bull and Steven Brust, Freedom & Necessity
#58 -- Tory Woolcott, Mirror Mind
REREAD -- Nicole Kornher-Stace, Desideria
REREAD -- Emma Bull, Territory
#59 -- A.M. Dellamonica, Indigo Springs
#60 -- Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
#61 -- Piers Anthony, With a Tangled Skein
#62 -- Piers Anthony, Being a Green Mother
#63 -- Piers Anthony, For Love of Evil
REREAD -- Patricia McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
REREAD -- Patricia McKillip, Heir of Sea and Fire
REREAD -- Patricia McKillip, Harpist in the Wind
REREAD -- Paul Kropp, Ellen/Elena/Luna
#64 -- Connie Willis, Lincoln's Dreams
#65 -- Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
#66 -- Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man
#67 -- Emma Bull, Bone Dance (in progress)


There are a couple notable trends this year: one is that I reread a lot of already-owned books this year. This is what I do when I'm stressed. You can pretty much pinpoint the months I was having a rough go of something by those clusters of rereads.

The other is that I rarely read anything new when it came to genre fiction. This year, I read backlist. I read literary novels. I read Toronto books by Toronto authors about Toronto. I read graphic novels. I read WWI and 1920s research books. But I didn't especially read new genre fiction.

This is the second year in a row where I've been feeling like I am just Not The Target Audience (tm) for most of what's coming out in genre: I'm not especially fond of either paranormal romance or military SF, and those seem to be where a lot of energy is focusing -- and not wrongly, since the paranormal romance makes money and we all like having that. A lot of my favourite genre authors didn't have books out this year, the hard SF section felt exceedingly thin, and that odd, niche style of fantasy I like didn't make much of an appearance, either. When it did it was spectacular -- see: The City and the City and The Manual of Detection -- but it was pretty far between.

It is also, methinks, possible that my tastes are just changing. I may be becoming more of a literary reader. But that's something to revisit next year, to see if it bears out.

Stuff I loved gibberingly and unabashedly, and would handsell like an evangelist at Rapture time if still at the bookstore: The Last Hot Time, Pattern Recognition, The Manual of Detection, The City & the City, Girls Fall Down, Freedom & Necessity, The Maltese Falcon and weirdly enough The City Man, which I didn't think much of right after finishing and then had grow on me slowly and steadily. I had good luck, by and large, with the Coach House Books list: even the stuff which made me occasionally roll my eyes and I didn't so much love gave me some take-home value.

The to-read shelf is decently stocked at the moment, although it's mostly with more Dashiell Hammett, literary novels, essays, and nonfic, and hopefully once I'm through that some of the 2010 books I'm looking forward to will be available. Or I'll discover a rich vein of criminally-neglected backlist. Or someone will have written me some goddamned hard science fiction already.

Comments

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I reread a lot of already-owned books this year. This is what I do when I'm stressed.

Why yes, Virginia, Leah and I *are* two separate people.

Well, actually, I'm quite certain everyone knew that, but, hey! 'Nother thing in common. (Though. This may be a REALLY common thing, and nothing to write Santa Claus about.)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I wonder, now. Maybe I should do a poll.

[c0untmystars.livejournal.com]

That is a truly impressive number of books. I do the "stress re-reading" thing a lot... this year was one of those for me too. I wish I had had more time to read new things, but a lot of that was given over to assignments for my second job as Cable Network Slush Reader.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...oooh, TV slush. That has to be seriously interesting.

[c0untmystars.livejournal.com]

Well, TV-movie slush. Half scripts and half books, which is why I haven't done more recreational book-reading this year. It's a good gig, but nowhere near as fun as when I read for 1492 Pictures, which was all romantic comedy and Harry Potter knockoffs :D

[ckd]

Oh did I ever fall into the comfort re-read zone this year.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Some parts of this year were sort of Like That, I think.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

You have read quite a lot of books I really like this year. (Also The Sparrow, which is one of the books I despise most, but nobody's perfect.)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I had a really complicated relationship with The Sparrow. which I should expound upon at some point when I don't have dinner guests coming in an hour.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

I'm just having a hard time looking at Freedom and Necessity and A Civil Campaign/Diplomatic Immunity and grokking that these really *are* backlist now...

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Also, I'm curious about your reaction to the Sparrow, which I liked even though it didn't make sense from any point of view that resembles compassion or humanity, and whose sequel struck me as so very horribly contrived and messed up.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Okay. The Sparrow.

In some ways it really did get me: she writes these very human characters. Even if they are a little too perfect, they're very real, and I cared about them enough that knowing they were all going to die hurt me. But the problem was that the whole equation was drawn out so long that the hurt over their tragic deaths (tm) turned into "well, are we there yet?" and by the time the killing actually started coming, I almost didn't care anymore. It's like finding a big red reaction button in the reader and jamming your finger on it for 200 pages; eventually it stops working.

The deal-breaker, though, was that once I got to the point where I didn't care how they got killed and just wanted to find out what happened to him that was so very awfully bad and skipped ahead to read the end, I was...let's say, quite disappointed in what she used as the locus of trauma. For something that'd been the subject of so much keepaway, I felt like it was really a small thing. Yes, he's a priest and thematically it's bad that he's repeatedly raped. But he's supposed to have grown up in a slum and known murder and violence before the age of 12: like he's never seen rape? Like he's not aware that it's bad? Like there aren't women who are kept as sex slaves and repeatedly raped in every country in the world, every day, and they don't even get to go to another planet and so forth for it?

I think my reaction to his Big Terrible Awful Trauma was not supposed to be get over yourself.

And I don't know; I wonder if it might have worked if she'd gone lighter on the Oh Noes! throughout the setup and middle. Both things might have worked if done with a lighter touch. But it was just so damn heavyhanded, and then it turned out to be something that so many people live with every day, that he should have seen and coped with as a priest, that does not make you a special snowflake. And it pissed me off, and I no longer cared to finish the book.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

For me, the real problem with the rape aspect was a little different. I can kind of understand a 19 year celibate or whatever his celibacy was being pretty much broken down by ongoing rapine.

What I don't believe is that A) the aliens actually couldn't understand him communicating that he was hurting to that degree? Didn't fit with what they had understood or how they behaved to that point. And more, and worse, B) Nobody HUMAN who came in at that point, or heard the story afterwards, and definitely not the whole priesthood trying to help him get over himself actually guessed that maybe he wasn't in a brothel willingly? My impression is that the humans who found him all assumed he'd decided to turn prostitute because he liked it or was crazy. Even killing a child he'd cared for at that point shouldn't have exactly made them incapable of noticing.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Now that you bring that stuff up again, I too have a problem with it.

Okay, book called on account of stupid. *g*

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

And yet... there it sits on my shelf, and doesn't seem to be being traded in as books I won't ever reread are supposed to be. And I did pick up the sequel on the strength of the first.

However, the sequel was gladly traded in on account of even worse stupid. Skip it.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Heh. Noted, and thank you.