For the third year, I present…
Books I read in 2007:
- Altered Carbon (Richard Morgan)
- Freakonomics (Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt)
- King Rat (China Mieville)
- The Lions of Al-Rassan (Guy Gavriel Kay)
- Ysabel (Guy Gavriel Kay)
- The Price of Nothing: The Darkness that Comes Before (R. Scott Bakker)
- The Warrior-Prophet (R. Scott Bakker)
- The Thousandfold Thought (R. Scott Bakker)
- Glass Soup (Jonathan Carroll)
- A Model World and Other Stories (Michael Chabon)
- What is the What (Dave Eggers)
- Memory & Dream (Charles de Lint)
- The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (Robert I. Sutton)
- Lullaby (Chuck Palahniuk)
- Lud-in-the-Mist (Hope Mirrlees)
- The Land of Laughs (Jonathan Carroll)
- Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Julia Serano)
- A Fine and Private Place (Peter S. Beagle)
- Danse Macabre (Laurell K. Hamilton)
- Peeps (Scott Westerfeld)
- Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (Chuck Pahalniuk)
- Michael Tolliver Lives (Armistead Maupin)
- Ilium (Dan Simmons)
- Olympos (Dan Simmons)
- Your Movie Sucks (Roger Ebert)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J.K. Rowling)**
- The Music of Razors (Cameron Rogers)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling)
- Grief (Andrew Holleran)
- Hyperion (Dan Simmons)
- The Fall of Hyperion (Dan Simmons)
- The Swimming Pool Library (Alan Hollinghurst)
- Endymion (Dan Simmons)
- The Rise of Endymion (Dan Simmons)
- The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghurt)
- The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (Kenneth J Harvey)*
- How to Get into the Top Law Schools (Richard Montauk)
- The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions: Straight Advice on Essays, Resumes, Interviews, and More(Anna Ivey)
- God is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
- Microtrends (Mark Penn)
- A Fistful of Charms (Kim Harrison)
- Dead Witch Walking (Kim Harrison)
- The Good, The Bad, and The Undead (Kim Harrison)
- Soon I Will Be Invincible (Austin Grossman)
- Hero (Perry Moore)
- The Phoenix Unchained: Book One of The Enduring Flame (Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory)
- InterWorld (Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves)
- The Practice of Law School: Getting In and Making the Most of Your Legal Education (Christen Civiletto Carey & Kristen David Adams)
- The God Particle (Dick Teresi)
- Mistral’s Kiss (Laurell K. Hamilton)
- Radical Careering (Sally Hogshead)
- Death of a Darklord (Laurell K. Hamilton)
- The Wooden Sea (Jonathan Carroll)
- Wicked (Gregory Maguire)**
- Son of a Witch (Gregory Maguire)**
* Started but unfinished for various reasons
** Re-read from previous year
I probably missed a couple that I forgot to record and later loaned them to friends. I also feel like I re-read the Fionavar Tapestry this year, but I’m not sure about that now. The list also fails to include the many graphic novels I read this year, LSAT workbooks, audio books, and technical manuals I read beginning-to-end. Still, the end-of-year count is 55 novels in 2007. That’s down from last year’s count of 61, but I blame that on the higher number of comic books I read this year and the number of work breaks I spent working on LSAT practice questions rather than escaping into another fantasy world.
Favorite discovery of the year: It’s a toss-up between Whipping Girl and author R. Scott Bakker. Julie Serano’s book on transgender identity and feminism certainly reshaped my attitudes and outlook, and Bakker’s intelligent Prince of Nothing trilogy sucked me deep into high fantasy early in year.
Worst book of the year: I guess I’m getting better at picking out books, because nothing really stands out as having been a waste of my time, except maybe The Town that Forgot to Breathe, which I tried several times to read but could never fully engage with.
Biggest disappointment of the year:Well, there’s a lot of Laurell K. Hamilton on this year’s list, but I think I’ve sufficiently lower my expectations so as not to be disappointed anymore. However, Interworld had the opposite problem. I have such high expectations of Neil Gaiman, I feel let down when his books don’t quite rock my world.
Biggest surprise of the year: Definitely The God Particle. I had no idea I would enjoy this book when I picked it up, but the author was such a cut-up, that despite being rather science-y, I looked forward to reading more of it every time I got to take a break.
The best book of the year: With so many great books on the list, I’m going out on a limb here. I’ll say Hero by Perry Moore. Not because it was the most literary, most intelligent, most emotionally moving, most original or most memorable - it was none of those things. I’m giving it my best-of-year pick because it was and remains exactly the kind of book that I most prefer to read. Gay teen coming-of-age + love story + sci-fi action story (specifically with comic book superheroes) + emotional reconciliation with an estranged parental figure… you get the idea. It was practically a “WWJR” book (”What Would Jere Read?”).
Posted: December 30th, 2007 under 2007-review, books.
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