A Year in Books

Hello, I'm back! Having moved house and acquired many bookshelves.

So, 2007. Is it just me or did it go by extremely quickly?

According to my list, I read 67 books last year. In case anyone's interested, that breaks down into eight non-fiction (two of which were collections of letters), three poetry collections (plus one set of philosophical dialogues, one quartet of Roman tragedies, and one late medieval saga translated into prose), four short story collections (two anthologies, two single-author collections), and a varied clutch of novels.

Of the 9 or 10 books I read this year that disappointed, bored, or downright enraged me, four came from literary award shortlists: two each for the Orange (Rachel Cusk's Arlington Park and Anne Tyler's Digging to America) and the Arthur C Clarke (Lydia Millet's Oh Pure and Radiant Heart and - yes! - Brian Stableford's Streaking). I'm sure you can fill in the pertinent snark for yourselves. Incidentally, each of these links prove, once again, that scathing reviews are much more fun to write (and, I hope, read) than glowing ones.

Nevertheless, time to glow a little. Here, sort of in order, are my top ten reads of 2007. Links are to my posts here, or at Strange Horizons.

1. Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Deliciously salacious cultural history of 1970s Hollywood in all its nutty glory.
2. James Tiptree, Jr., Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Splendidly subversive tales of sex, gender and SF.
3. Ian R. MacLeod, The Summer Isles. Stunningly-beautiful alt-history look at Britain between the Wars.
4. Geoff Ryman, Air. Near-future Central Asian village prepares to go online, led by my favourite heroine of the year, Mae.
5. Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate. My last ever Lymond, sob. No post for this, but I wrote about the previous volume here.
6. Hal Duncan, Vellum. Journeys in mythology. And pastiche. And head-scratching.
7. Jan Morris, Hav. Travel-writing from a land that never was, but really ought to have been.
8. Ellen Kushner, The Privilege of the Sword. Fun swashbuckling romp with bonus queerness and empowerment. Second favourite heroine of the year.
9. Anna Kavan, Ice. Obsessive narrator in surreal dreamscape/drugscape search for the girl he loves/kills.
10. Diane Thomas, The Year the Music Changed. Any book about Elvis that not only engages me but has me in floods of tears must be doing something right...

Honourable mentions go to Caitlin Sweet's The Silences of Home, Ian MacDonald's River of Gods (which would have been on the list had I written this two months ago), Mary Laven's Virgins of Venice, John M Ford's Heat of Fusion (post pending), and the Cicero Selected Works.

And, oh, lots more. It was a good year. Go have a look through our archives, already. :-)

~~Nic