It’s been a pretty good year overall for reading. Despite being chronically exhausted then being diverted by Arkham City and Uncharted 3 at the end of the year, I managed to get a hefty amount of reading done in 2011. Here’s my list of favorites and least favorites of the year. Please note these are books I read this year. Many were released in previous years. Best Novel Spoiler The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein Other Notables: Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay The Lions of al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay The Heroes by Joe Abercromie I had heard good things about this book, but I had no idea that it would place itself among my three favorite novels. The absolute rock star of this charming, witty, and moving story is Enzo, a lab mix who’s into racing, sports, TLC, and other channels that his owner leaves on TV while away. He’s also obsessed about being reincarnated as a human, which he saw on a documentary once. This story is told first person from Enzo’s perspective, and his cheeky, whimsical, and Labrador-laced excitement carry this wonderful tale throughout. And the ending is spot on perfect. Forget Dean Koontz’s Einstein. Enzo is the best dog I have ever read in literature. If you’re a dog person. Get out and buy this book. Now! Best Author Spoiler Guy Gavriel Kay Other Notables: Joe Abercrombie Garth Stein I thought Kay was a Tolkein clone all these years. The guy did work with the Tolkein estate on The Simarillion. I had read the Fionavar trilogy and found it way too Tolkeinish for my tastes, although I thought his characters were a lot richer than LOTR. With a bit of trepidation, I read Under Heaven to discover one of the best novels I have ever read. That launched a project to tackle the rest of Kay’s novels where I unearthed a number of all-time favorites from his sizeable collection. Kay’s pattern is to take a historical time and setting and use its history, people, and events as the basis for an original tale set in a fantasy world. Magic is usually light, and his characters are very well constructed. You start to see a pattern in some of the stories (a lot like history). Empires on the brink of collapse is a common theme. Artists and doctors are typical characters. However, all are unique even if they share the same broad brush strokes. When you dive into these characters and stories, you find very different details and motives. These stories are told from a historical perspective from the future through the actions of key players. For single novels (sometimes two), the scope of these stories is epic. You’d expect to see this play out over the typical 5-10 books. Instead you get a tight story filled with memorable and exciting showdowns. Kay’s books are stuffed with scenes that set your heart racing, get your adrenaline flowing, and sear themselves into your memory. When I was thinking about my favorites scenes from books this year, I had a hard time thinking of a non-Kay moment. He is now on my short list of authors whose novels I will buy release day. If you haven’t read this wonderful author, do yourself a favor and remedy that. Worst Author Spoiler Steven Erickson Other Notables: No one else comes close I had really looked forward to reading the Malazan series, and I started it late last year with the final being release in 2011. It was massive in scope with multiple books over 1000 pages. I had also been warned on this board and review sites that Erickson throws you into the story and lets you figure things out instead of fleshing out the world and magic system. I felt forewarned and prepared as I began. The first book was good if confusing in places. Still it was a tight story, and the characters were fun. That was the high point. From then on, Erickson’s flaws as an author and storyteller really started to manifest and become worse as the series progressed. He has an overly large character set, which is fine, but he shifts between them too rapidly, often leaving one right at the point of a juicy conflict to dump you into the lap of a character slogging through something boring. The pacing was terrible. Plot points that have been hinted at for thousands of pages fizzle out or don’t even get a half page of writing, while Erickson will was poetic about the wind or an ox or something else trite for three pages. The most egregious thing he does is making stuff up and throwing around dues ex machina plot devices. This is the scariest race alive, but wait there’s another race that was extinct but is now back that is scarier. But wait, there’s another race that was alive before time in the Crippled God’s ass that is even scarier. On no, we’ll die from the scary Crippled God’s ass extinct monsters, but this bloke you’ve never met can shoot lasers from his eyes and take out the Crippled God’s ass monsters. You didn’t know this but it’s all part of the master plan by the gods that are at war. Except you don’t know all the gods. Erickson will make up new ones at a whim to get him out plot jams. Erickson should have had an editor or fired the one he used. He could have lopped off a third of this series. Then I would have only read 10,000 pages of crop instead of 15,000. I’m pissed I read Erickson, but I’m most upset that it took away so much time from other great novels. Best Scene Spoiler The Chariot Race in Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay Other Notables: Sword fight in Lions of al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay Sword fight in The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie The rescue in Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay The end of The Art of Racing in the Rain by Guy Gavriel Kay Kay wrote one of the best scenes I have ever read in Lord of Emperors in a chariot race of all things. It’s beautifully constructed, told from multiple POV’s as the scene unfolds, and had many elements foreshadowed over the previous 800 pages. Just a masterful effort by Kay here. I have picked this book up several times since completing it to just reread this passage and savor the exquisite details. This two book series is quite good. It’s not Kay’s best, but definitely worth reading just for this one scene. Best Character Spoiler Enzo in The Art of Racing in the Rain by Guy Gavriel Kay Other Notables: Too many Guy Gavriel Kay characters to list Too many Joe Abercrombie characters to list Can Durukan the Boy Detective and his BitBot snake\bird\monkey\rat in The Dervish House by Ian McDonald Enzo is not only the best dog I have read in literature. He’s also one of the best characters I have ever read. The Art of Racing in the Rain is a great book, but the subject material would probably have made for a lesser novel if not for the force of presence that Enzo brings to the table. I literally put the book down because I was laughing so hard at things Enzo said. Worst Story Element Spoiler Female circumcision This brutal practice cropped up in two different novels, including to the main character in Who Fears Death? It also cropped up in Cutting for Stone along with other detailed visceral medical procedures. That second novel is not for those who get queasy watching medical shows. Worst Author Moment Spoiler Greg Mortensen Three Cups of Deceipt pulled the curtain back on this fraud. I read both of his books and felt like a slacker when I learned what this man had done. I don’t feel like so much of a slacker now that I know his books were completely fabricated. He’s not the first author to make stuff up, but taking money from children that they had raised for his charity and using it to enrich himself is asshattery at its highest form.
After wrapping up my studying I finally got to read my own choices again... The Gospel of Mary by Marvin Meyer. Good book, but Karen L. King's book is far more insightful and much more focused on the actual text of the gospel and what it means. This one was more of a "forward" in it's more "general" feel. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Pollan. Can't believe it took me so long to read this. Fantastic book that really makes you think about how we do, and how we should relate to our food. The Gnostic Gospels by Pagels. Pagels is one of my favorite authors and it's accordingly somewhat amusing that I read this one of hers last as it is her most famous. If you've ever wanted to better understand the gnostic interpretation of Jesus and why the orthodox church fought so vehemently against it, you can find absolutely no better summary. Working on Salt by Kurlasnky and Constantines Sword by Carroll.
Got farther along through the girl with the dragon tattoo and am over half way through. Very good so far. Has anyone here read The Historian? It's next on my list
