“Top Ten” Season is upon us. Spotify Wrapped is out and soon enough social media feeds and email inboxes will be full of “Top [Number] {Entertainment Type] of the Year” lists. I, as always, will add to that number. These are my most read newletters of the year. How could I not! It’s what you gremlins, I mean, my dear sweet subscribers, want.
This year was a weird one in reading for me. I had to read a lot for school as always, but mostly articles, primary source material, and chapters of books. A switch from the full books assigned during class work. In my own reading, I probably started more books than I finished. I’m not sure where this nasty habit came from, but I found myself getting halfway through a bunch of books and then never fully finishing them. Most of them I even liked! Perhaps I’ll turn their final pages next year, or revisit them via audiobook. Though I can never really get into audiobooks as much real books. Something about not being able to see the physical words bugs me. Oh well. Enough chatter. Without further ado, here are the top ten books I read this year. In reverse order. Also, I wrote the first draft of a book. Here’s a link if you want to read it.
10. The Blade Itself – Joe Abercrombie
My girlfriend refers to this as the “goblin man” book. She does this because of way the narrator of the audiobook voices one of the characters. Her description is pretty spot on. This is the first book in a bloody, funny, and at times thoughtful, fantasy series. Mostly though, the plot moves quickly and sometimes in unexpected ways, keeping you on your toes. A nice little frothy fantasy epic adventure. Well-drawn characters, good action scenes, and great world-building all make for a fun read. Unless you’re my girlfriend and you don’t like the goblin man.
9. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing
I read this for a book club. I don’t usually read that much nonfiction in my spare time, but this was a good one. While it now most gets read as a “model for leadership,” or some shit, it’s really just a “dudes rock” story. Absolutely do not take any leadership tips from Shackleton, he was just a hard-headed asshole who got lucky. The basic outline of the story is that these guys who were trying to cross Antarctica, got stuck and had to make it back to safety. They do some wild shit to survive. Pretty gnarly.
8. Ninefox Gambit – Yoon Ha Lee
This is also the first book in a trilogy, as many of the books this year are. A space opera, it takes place in a future world where mathematical systems both provide exotic weapons, and can be changed with enough cultural willpower. It also has a dead guy who lives in the main character’s mind, a giant space fortress made of ice, and lots and lots of backstabbing. A weird amount of typos in the copy that I got though, oddly enough.
7. The Broken Kingdoms – N.K. Jemisin
The second book in N.K. Jemisin’s The Inheritance series. While not as good as the first, it still takes place in a wonderfully realized world created by Jemisin. Following a largely new cast of characters, The Broken Kingdoms tells a much more personal story than the first, while still spanning an entire universe. Jemisin, as always, is a master at crafting worlds, showing both the large scales and small personal details that make things matter.
6. A Memory Called Empire – Arkady Martine
Another sci-fi adventure, this one is written by a published history professor who eventually became a science-fiction author. Well-written, with an eye for creating cultures, this book too has a character with a dead person in their head, which is a trend I did not know existed in science-fiction. Largely a mystery novel, with the trappings of a science-fiction epic, this is a quick, very good read. There’s a sequel out that I can’t wait to get my hands on.
5. A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami
This is the first Murakami book I’ve read and it’s a banger. I guess he’s the GOAT for a reason. Great characterizations, wonderful sense of place, and excellent sentence-level construction. It’s also horny as hell, contains a possibly magic sheep, and features a lot of whiskey consumption. A real hit.
4. Dead Astronauts – Jeff VanderMeer
Don’t read this book if you want like a normal story. This is a very trippy, “jazzy,” novel, that doesn’t follow a normal novel structure format. A very psychological novel, this is a clearly very experimental. It’s loosely connected to a previous novel of Vandermeer’s Borne but you don’t need to read that one to read Dead Astronauts. It deals with his usual themes of capitalism and the destruction of nature. I recommend it in spite of the author having me blocked on Twitter.
3. Gardens of the Moon – Steven Erikson
The first book in The Malazan Book of the Fallen series, a ten-novel epic, this manages to both set the scene, tell a rich story, and put forward great characters. While the whole series takes place over a tremendous amount of time and space, this book manages to convey a grandiose sense of scale while still telling deeply personal stories. Also, there are lots of fun names, which I always love. Avoid if you don’t like reading books with maps or glossaries in them.
2. The Traitor Baru Cormorant – Seth Dickinson
I got a recommendation for this book like three years ago and finally followed up on it. Should have read it sooner. An excellent fantasy work that examines the economic aspects of colonialization, and the havoc that it wreaks upon colonized cultures. It also has one of the most devastating endings I’ve read in a recent work of fiction. This is also the first in a trilogy. I haven’t started the others yet, but I will soon.
1. The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin
A real classic of science-fiction, this examines life on an anarchist planet. Le Guin imagines a world specifically run on anarchist principles and the pain, pleasure, and pitfalls of such a world. Pulling no punches, it follows one man as he makes his way from his anarchist home world onto a far more capitalist planet. Le Guin is an all-timer and this book really shows off what she can do.