'It’s the End of the Year…'

And what an amazing year it’s been, certainly the best year for reading good books since I began the blog. I have to add a little caveat there though as the main reason the reading has been so good is that I’ve found myself deliberately gravitating towards the good stuff, rather than taking a chance, after Hope arrived. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt this year it’s that there’s only so much time in the day for reading at the moment and I’d rather make the best use of that time! This will probably be the case more often than not next year but you should still see me taking the occasional chance here and there with things that I wouldn’t normally try.

Still, a good book is a good book and there were plenty of them read this year. I listed my favourite zombie reads over Here, if you fancy a look but there were many more…

‘Surprise Find of 2010’ had to go to Guy Adams’ ‘The World House’ and considering I read this way back in February you can see that it blew the competition out of the water before the year had barely begun.  I said that ‘If there was ever a writer who could write in Technicolor it’s Guy Adams; his creations leap off the page at you and make you jump back in shock’. Never a truer word spoken I think, ‘The World House’ has lived in my head ever since and I’m eagerly anticipating the sequel ‘Restoration’.

Like I said, there were far too many good reads in 2010 for me to go and make a ‘Definitive Best of List’; there’s another reason as well but I’ll come to that in a second. Here though are a few that really stood out for me…

‘Farlander’ – Col Buchanan

February was a good month for reading! ‘Farlander’ mixed a well-conceived setting with a plot that threw up a climax that makes me go ‘what the f…’ even now.

‘The Third Bear’ – Jeff Vandermeer
Just thinking of this book sends a little shiver down my spine. Gorgeously weird and disturbing in equal measure.

‘The Body Snatchers’ – Jack Finney

A read that grew on me without my even realising it with a downbeat ‘happy’ ending that I would love to see more of in other books.

‘Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles’ – Michael Moorcock

A book that combined two of my favourite things in speculative fiction; that’s all I need to say really.

‘A Gathering of Crows’ – Brian Keene

I don’t know where Keene will be published next but what a book to (possibly) bow out on.

‘Salute the Dark’ – Adrian Tchaikovsky

I wasn’t sure where this series was going, quality wise, but this is the book that has ensured I’ll definitely be on board for the duration of the series.

‘The Bird of the River’ – Kage Baker

What a gorgeous read and a nice contrast to the grittier fantasy that’s in fashion at the moment, the fantasy genre is all the poorer for Baker’s absence.

2010 wasn’t just about the books I managed to read though… Demands on my time meant that I wasn’t able to get to all the others that I really wanted to read and it’s only fitting that some ‘photos of shame’ be included to mark the passing of a year when I didn’t read…

 

 

There are many reasons (excuses?) why I didn’t get round to reading all these books. Perhaps my first New Year’s Resolution should be to make these books priority reads for 2011…

That’s all for me this year. Have an amazing last day of 2010 and I’ll hopefully see you all again in 2011 :o)