What's your favorite book you read last year? (1 Viewer)

[centen]

My goal is to read three books a week (on average) this year, so curious to see what people really loved recently.

I'm mostly into scifi/fantasy, so my top picks from last year were:

• Infinity Gate by MR Carey. Just a super cool approach on the multiverse. It takes the same basic idea of "another reality is created when different decisions are made" but instead of taking it down to the minutae of "our main character, Average Joe, affects THE UNIVERSE with his every action or inaction. There are infinite numbers of you, but only one Average Joe," Infinity Gate has major split off points like "what if a different species tree was the main lead up to what we'd consider humanity?" It's a duology and the sequel is due out in just a couple months, so I'm super excited.
• The Book that Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. It's really hard to describe, so I'll leave it as: it blends scifi and fantasy elements centered around a giant magical and unknowable library. First in a trilogy, book two is due out later this year, and book three early next year.
• Unraveller by Frances Hardinge. Standalone fantasy. In a world where people are given curse eggs that they can unleash on people who they believe "wronged" them, the main duo goes around and tries to trace the source of these curses and unravel them to set things back to rights. These curses are insane too. One member of the duo (Nettle) was a curse victim and spent part of her life as a bird after she was cursed. The other member (Kellen) has been cursed and needs to figure out who thinks he's wronged them and fix himself before it's too late. Hardinge creates these really interesting and weird worlds.

 

[Tickita]

I already gave reviews in a thread so I'm just leaving links

The Measure by Nikki Elrick
Reluctant Royals by Alyssa Cole

One sci-fi book I liked was Reset by Sarina Dahlan

 

[seungfloral]

3books a week, oh my gooodness

 

[seungfloral]

Mine was about the wifes, mistresses and girlfriends of dictators. How they met them, if they influenced them, what lured them to these men etc.

 

[centen]

I already gave reviews in a thread so I'm just leaving links

The Measure by Nikki Elrick
Reluctant Royals by Alyssa Cole

One sci-fi book I liked was Reset by Sarina Dahlan

Oh, Reset sounds really interesting! Added it to my TBR.

I've read The Measure because someone put it up at my scifi/fantasy book club, so I was disappointed by the lack of scifi/fantasy elements. I could see how it would hit differently if I didn't have that misconception going into it! Like when I read The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel -- which is a look at the people surrounding a Ponzi scheme, not the Bernie Madoff's, but the employees and spouses and victims -- a lot of the reviews are like "wtf, this isn't scifi" and no it is not, lol.

 

[centen]

Mine was about the wifes, mistresses and girlfriends of dictators. How they met them, if they influenced them, what lured them to these men etc.

That does sound really interesting! So many books focus on the central figure and kind of ignore the people around them, but it can be interesting to dive into the psyche of how people get sucked into those situations.

 

[SnowWhite]

Gray's Anatomy 🗿

 

[silverrising]

i mostly read books for my classes last year so the list is kinda all over the place, but i swear they're all really good

a doll's house by henrik ibsen
a wild sheep chase by haruki murakami
crime and punishment by fyodor dostoevsky
everyone in my family has killed someone by benjamin stevenson
one of us is lying by karen m. mcmanus
sources of japanese tradition, volume 1
the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde

sources of japanese tradition is obviously an academic book but it's really interesting, i definitely recommend it if you can get your hands on it!

 

[centen]

i mostly read books for my classes last year so the list is kinda all over the place, but i swear they're all really good

a doll's house by henrik ibsen
a wild sheep chase by haruki murakami
crime and punishment by fyodor dostoevsky
everyone in my family has killed someone by benjamin stevenson
one of us is lying by karen m. mcmanus
sources of japanese tradition, volume 1
the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde

sources of japanese tradition is obviously an academic book but it's really interesting, i definitely recommend it if you can get your hands on it!

I read "Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone" last year too and really enjoyed it! I'm bad at mysteries, so I enjoyed the explanations along the way. I still need to check out the sequel.

 

[Tickita]

Oh, Reset sounds really interesting! Added it to my TBR.

I've read The Measure because someone put it up at my scifi/fantasy book club, so I was disappointed by the lack of scifi/fantasy elements. I could see how it would hit differently if I didn't have that misconception going into it! Like when I read The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel -- which is a look at the people surrounding a Ponzi scheme, not the Bernie Madoff's, but the employees and spouses and victims -- a lot of the reviews are like "wtf, this isn't scifi" and no it is not, lol.

Lol The Measure is sci-fi? Where? It seemed more like dystopian to me.
I haven't read The Glass Hotel but even the description doesn't seem like it's sci-fi.

 

[Ahsoka]

i mostly read books for my classes last year so the list is kinda all over the place, but i swear they're all really good

a doll's house by henrik ibsen
a wild sheep chase by haruki murakami
crime and punishment by fyodor dostoevsky
everyone in my family has killed someone by benjamin stevenson
one of us is lying by karen m. mcmanus
sources of japanese tradition, volume 1
the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde

sources of japanese tradition is obviously an academic book but it's really interesting, i definitely recommend it if you can get your hands on it!

Dostoyevsky I don’t really have anything against him but I somehow haven’t gotten around to reading anything of his despite his name being a very commonplace name in my household and it also reminds me of the student my sister saw who had to read the Brothers Karamozov before the end of the semester, which was in less than a week. He was on page 10

 

[Ahsoka]

For me it’s Alive by Scott Sigler and the other books in the trilogy. It’s sci fi, but I also like that it’s not just robots and spaceships, which I feel like a lot of sci fi books are. But these I feel include more biology and so on. I also like the Wayward Children series, I haven’t finished though. I’m about halfway through. But they aren’t as good as Alive/Alight/Alone imo

 

[silverrising]

Dostoyevsky I don’t really have anything against him but I somehow haven’t gotten around to reading anything of his despite his name being a very commonplace name in my household and it also reminds me of the student my sister saw who had to read the Brothers Karamozov before the end of the semester, which was in less than a week. He was on page 10

honestly, dostoevsky is... a lot, and ngl it took me a long time to finish the book both because it's long and because it's pretty heavy content-wise, but it was really good overall. i disagree with it being a mandatory book in some schools though, i don't think this book is for everyone and definitely not most teenagers lmao.
also rip to that student, at that point i would just read a summary online

 

[centen]

Lol The Measure is sci-fi? Where? It seemed more like dystopian to me.
I haven't read The Glass Hotel but even the description doesn't seem like it's sci-fi.

Right?! I was kind of not happy with the person who made it their book club pick. Like you can read things on your own time!
The only thing I can think of is that her previous books have scifi elements, so people just made an assumption she writes scifi. I enjoyed it for what it was, but I didn't go into it thinking it was scifi either lol.

 

[centen]

For me it’s Alive by Scott Sigler and the other books in the trilogy. It’s sci fi, but I also like that it’s not just robots and spaceships, which I feel like a lot of sci fi books are. But these I feel include more biology and so on. I also like the Wayward Children series, I haven’t finished though. I’m about halfway through. But they aren’t as good as Alive/Alight/Alone imo

Re Wayward Children: I could see that. I really liked the first couple books, and I think her approach to writing them is really interesting, but because it jumps all over the place, I think the quality is kind of all over the place too.

 

[_Sammy_]

I read the mortal instruments series

 

[Ahsoka]

Re Wayward Children: I could see that. I really liked the first couple books, and I think her approach to writing them is really interesting, but because it jumps all over the place, I think the quality is kind of all over the place too.

Yeah I feel some books are better than others, and I do feel that the short nature of the books can make it feel rushed and all over the place. The idea itself is great though

 

[Magician]

In Memoriam by Alice Winn was my favourite read last year

 

[seungfloral]

That does sound really interesting! So many books focus on the central figure and kind of ignore the people around them, but it can be interesting to dive into the psyche of how people get sucked into those situations.

Yeah, the book stated also, how in most women's biographies their love life is discussed extensively, while in male biographies their partner's are marely a footnote. Some of these women like Eva Peron were even more influential than their husbands. (Altho i'm not sure about this last one. ) Some women really idolized this romantic vision of a revolutionary and some became horrible allies to the dictators.

I started several books but finished few. Altho i did read 200k fanfics last year and so on. Would wanna read more history and maybe more fantasy too. Your books seem very interesting. The first two seem a bit hard to graps from just the description but the third one i would read definitely.