Tuesday, January 24, 2012

[JD's Take] Year Review 2011

Another year, another even shorter book list. At least my trending is going down! 2009 I had 48 books, 2010 36, and this year... 36 again. Maybe I've stabilized? Still, my total pages dropped from 15,403 to 14,545 and my pages/day from 42.3 to 39.8.


My top 5 books for 2011 (drum roll please!), with the standard "order not relevant" disclaimer:
1. The Black Prism (Brent Weeks)
2. The Wise Man's Fear (Pat Rothfuss)
3. The Stranger's Woes (Max Frei)
4. Allow of law (Brandon Sanderson)
5. The Desert Spear (Peter V. Brett)

The other books I read in 2011 are a pretty big step down from those, actually. I was lucky to get 5 that really excelled. It's not that I didn't enjoy them (I did!) or that there weren't excellent and well written books in the remainder (there were!) but I just can't bring myself to set them next to those five, which were truly outstanding. Honorable mention definitely goes to Embassytown, which was excellent but wasn't "enjoyable" in the usual sense. Plus it killed my numbers for the year because it took me like 2 months to read those 300 odd pages!

Here's the full list:
The Child Thief (Brom)
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N.K. Jemisin)
The Desert Spear (Peter V. Brett)
The Name of the Wind (Pat Rothfuss)
The Wise Man's Fear (Pat Rothfuss)
Machine Of Death (North, et al)
Tiassa (Brust)
Summer knight (Jim Butcher)
Death Masks (Jim Butcher)
Blood Rites (Jim Butcher)
Thunderball (Ian Flemming)
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (ian flemming)
You only live twice (Ian flemming)
Empire in black and gold (Adrian)
The Way of Shadows (Brent Weeks)
Chasing the moon (A. Lee Martinez)
Shadow's Edge (Brent Weeks)
Beyond the Shadows (Brent Weeks)
Embassytown (China Mieville)
The princess and mr whiffle (Pat Rothfuss)
The man with the golden gun (Ian Fleming)
Casino royale (Ian Fleming)
Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (Steve McConnel)
Tooth & Claw (Jo Walton)
Nobilis (Jenna Moran)
The Black Prism (Brent Weeks)
The Stranger's Woes (Max Frei)
Broken kingdoms (N.K. Jemisin)
Snuff (Terry Pratchett)
Stations of the tide (Michael Swanwick)
Live and Let Die (Ian Fleming)
Bitters (brad thomas parsons)
The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
The osiris ritual (George Mann)
Alloy of Law (Brandon Sanderson)

3 comments:

LisaBit said...

Really? You're gonna go with The Princess & Mr. Whiffle as an entry on your official list? Pretty sure I read that one twice - my total should clearly be 53, not 51! ;P

JD said...

Hey, I take what I can get! :D

Elfy said...

I'm with JD, it's a book, it counts!