Your year end best books!

[Medusa]

Alright e-readers, audiophiles and you old school paper peeps...let's do this!

Let's do our list!

~Top 5 books you read this year
~Top 5 crap books you read this year


And you can do the list for each fiction and non fiction if you'd like.

Aaaand.....what's your list you wish to read next year? You know those special books that aren't out yet. Sequels, preludes, stuff like that.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Your year end best books!

Top 5 (in no particular order):

"The Son" by Philipp Meyer (http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...p-meyer-review)
"Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlander_%28novel%29)
"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land)
"The Beauty Myth" by Naomi Wolf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beauty_Myth)
"Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter%...le_%28novel%29)

Runners up (books that I enjoyed but didn't make the top 5):
"Flash Boys" by Michael Lewis (http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...l-lewis-review)
"Orlando: A Biography" by Virginia Woolf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando:_A_Biography)
"Love, Rosie/Where Rainbows End" by Celia Ahern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Rainbows_End)

Top 5 worst books (I don't know that I read anything truly terrible this year, but I have a few that I didn't end up liking as much, so I'll list those):
"Vanity Fair" by William Makepeace Thackeray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_Fair_%28novel%29) - This is a classic, but I can't get over just how much Thackeray hates people, especially women. Its subtitle is "A Novel Without a Hero", so it makes sense that everyone is pretty unsympathetic, but it's hard to read a book where all of the major characters are terrible. And it's a very long book.
"The Orchid House" by Lucinda Riley (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Orchid-Hous.../dp/1451655789) - Actually, I really did like this book and I got pretty caught up in it. The reason I put it on this list is because it wet way too far. It could have trimmed away about half of the dramatic events and it would have been a much better book for it.

Actually, no other books stand out. I'm sure I read quite a few mediocre books this year but I read so much that I can't think of what they were. No outstanding criticism or anything like that.

I still have "Gone Girl" on my reading list, and I'll probably finish it before the year is over. I'll start it tonight (JUST finished "Flash Boys"). Everyone raved so much about it that it might end up being one of my top 5 (unless I end up disagreeing with all of my writer friends about it).

I tend to read books that I acquire (given to me, find on the street, etc) so I don't stick to a really strict reading list, but a few ones I'd like to read next year:
"The Mayor of Macdougal Street" by Dave van Ronk (http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-11-...yn-davis/full/)
"The Circle" by David Eggers (http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...-eggers-review)
"Capital in the Twenty First Century" by Thomas Piketty (http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...piketty-review)
"Jessie's Journey" by Jess Smith (http://www.amazon.ca/Jessies-Journey.../dp/1841587028)
"The Blackhouse" by Peter May (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blackhouse)
"Overdressed: The Shockingly High Price of Cheap Fashion" by Elizabeth Cline (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1587413.html)

[iris]

Re: Your year end best books!

Best:
The lies of locke lamora - scott lynch
The black magician - trudi canavan (not the first time i read it, one of my favourite books)
Coriolanus - shakespeare
pride and prejudice - jane austen
A time of contempt - andrzej sapkowski
Worst:
fifty shades of grey.... I don't remember the authors name, but I've rarely read anything I thought to be that poorly written.
Broken - Marianne curley
The historian - Elizabeth kostova (pretty good story, horrid ending)
clockwork angel - Cassandra clare
Fifty shades darker. .. i never finished that one

[Medusa]

Re: Your year end best books!

Coriolanus is up there on my audiobook list. It just looks so intense. I might drift out of my comfort zone and give it a listen.

[iris]

Re: Your year end best books!

Coriolanus is up there on my audiobook list. It just looks so intense. I might drift out of my comfort zone and give it a listen.

It is quite intense. I love shakespeare, so I like it gotta get used to the language though. Audiobook might be a really good way of experiencing it.

[Medusa]

Re: Your year end best books!

Hate me all you want. I could NOT narrow 76 audiobooks down. Even by my star rating on BookShelf. I could not do it. I present to you some sort of list.

I could not put these books in order. So I just put them in category:
ZOMBIES!
~I zombie Hugh Howey
~Fall of night series (2 books) Jonathan Maberry
~Zone One by Coleson Whitehead
~Feed series(3) Mira Grant
~World war Z by Max Brooks
~Flu/fever (2) Wayne Simmons
~Rising (2) Brian Keene

OUTBREAKS!
~Cell Stephen King
~Infected series (3) Scott Sigler
~Parasite (2) Mira Grant
~Sleepless Charlie Huston
~Patient Zero series (4) Jonathan Maberry


Other genre!
~The Prestige (mystery) Christopher Priest
~Dear Run (El Cucuye) Adam Mansbach
~Hell House (classic horror) Richard Matheson
~Robogenesis series (2) Daniel H Wilson

Now if pressed I would say Mira Grant's Feed series really had me emotionally. I mean I was a pile of crying through this series. Really moved me and had me living in that world.

Also Zone One did a number on me. It was a very cerebrial listen. You had to be very present in this story. It was seemingly mundane until it wasn't. Really hit me hard.

My all time fave is not on this list because I finished the trilogy last December. But I'm throwing it in because it stands today as my all time fave.

Guillermo Del Torro/ Chuck Hogan's Strain trilogy. I know it's a tv show now. And I will never watch it. It cannot come close to the book that took my heart and ripped it over and over. If I could marry this audiobook I would. But it's all gory and full of vamps.


My worst books:
~The History of the Devil by Clive Barker
~Anne Rice's books about the angels. Boring. Synopsis: She found christ. Loves the jews. The end.
~The Colony by F.G. Gottam. I stuck with it till the end. It went nowhere. Waste of my time.