The rest of the top books I read this year

Yesterday, I made a list of my top books of 2009, but the problem is that I read a lot of books this year that were really good, but were not actually published this year. So, here’s a list of some of my favorite books I read this year from 2008 or earlier:

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key by Kage  Baker

Startled by His Furry Shorts by Louise Rennison

The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Dead Meat by Sue Coe

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

Horses Blow Up Dog City & Other Stories by Richard Butner

Chiggers by Hope Larson

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America by David Hajdu

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life on an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Behind the Curtain by Peter Abrahams

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand

Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Robot Dreams by Sara Varon

Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond

Pig Boy’s Wicked Bird by Doug Crandell

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The January Dancer by Michael Flynn

Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm

Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men by Bryan Sykes

I guess 2009 was a pretty good reading year for me! May your 2010 be filled with happiness and great books!

The best books of 2009

It’s almost time to say goodbye to 2009, but before we do, I thought I would take the time to list some of my best books of 2009. As I went through the list of books I read this year, I found that some of the best books I read this year were actually published last year, or even years before so they technically wouldn’t qualify for a best of 2009 list.

So, I’m going to do this in two parts. Today’s list is my picks for the best books from this year. Tomorrow, I’ll be posting another list with some other really good books that I read this year, that just happened to have been published in years past.

Without further ado here are my top books for 2009 listed in the order that I read them:

The Scavenger’s Manifesto by Anneli Rufus and Kristan Lawson

Drood by Dan Simmons

Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

Nobody Move by Denis Johnson

The Eternal Kiss: 13 Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire edited by Trisha Telep

The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Hound by Vincent McCaffrey

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

How to Rob an Armored Car by Iain Levison

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

What are some of your favorite books of 2009?

A small publisher closes up shop

I learned the other day that small publisher From the Asylum Books and Press is closing up shop. They were a publisher of speculative fiction anthologies, which is a tough market even for big publishers, and must be especially tough for little publishers trying to compete in the big bad book selling world.

I had a story accepted for their anthology Things Aren’t What They Seem, which was supposed to be out this fall, and I had a feeling that there might have been some problems, when the publication was delayed, and I didn’t hear anything. I received an email the other day letting me know the sad news.

I often wondered if e-books and the internet will put an end to new fiction anthologies and short fiction magazines and zines. I’m still not taken with the idea of reading an entire novel on a digital screen, but a short story seems like the perfect medium for electronic reading. I’ve read elsewhere that short stories are not something writers should expect to make money from any longer, but instead are things they should give away for free to help build an audience.

As the publishing world continues to learn from the mistakes the music world made with the advent of MP3s and looks for ways to still get folks to buy books, can short stories be used as some sort of hook to drive book sales? Perhaps only purchasers of the physical book will have access to the bonus short story at the end of the book.

What are your thoughts on the short story market and its future?

It’s Monday, What are You Reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

Well, I read a grand total of one book last week, thanks to the holiday and all the craziness cutting into my reading time, but thankfully it was an entertaining book, though not exactly the escapist sort of fare that I really could have used last week.

Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession by Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume

I love science books. I love history books. So, when a book manages to masterfully combine science and history, I am hooked. That was the case with Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession by Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume.

Also, I am thinking that some sort of law should be passed that only the British are allowed to write science books. They do such a good job of it, managing to make complex ideas completely understandable, and they manage to get in little laugh out loud digs in a book that is ostensibly about a relatively dry subject.

Thanks to this book I now know that for whatever reason, otherwise sane men have become obsessed with the idea of trying to disprove the laws of thermodynamics by building their own perpetual motion machines. I learned that many of these machines would have worked perfectly if someone could just discovered some sort of anti-gravity material. It has also come to my attention that Philadelphia, long nicknamed The City of Brotherly Love could have also been nicknamed The City of Perpetual Motion, thanks to all the crackpots/charlatans from that city who tried their hand at mastering perpetual motion. There were here and there some science concepts that tested the brain of this laywoman, but the engaging style and interesting history of perpetual motion more than made up for the hard to understand parts. Also, there were a lot of pictures.

On a side note, writers interested in steampunk, which seems to be all the rage these days, might want to give this book a look. It seems there’s a lot of fodder for ideas that would work nicely in a steampunk tale. Perpetual motion, after all was an idea that was seemingly ahead of it’s time, in that all these machines lacked to function properly was stuff that hadn’t yet been invented.

What’s next?

I’m probably going to dive into the books I received for Christmas next, and appropriately enough now that I’ve brought up steampunk, Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.

What have you been reading?

My Christmas book haul: a short stack

This year’s Christmas gifts were more on the practical side than the flashy side. A new set of tires may not be especially exciting, but they were very much needed.

I did manage to score two of the five books I had on my Christmas list this year. The Devil’s Eye by Jack McDevitt and The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett were waiting for me under the tree.

The other books I had on my list were titles the local independent book store was unable to track down, even though I didn’t ask for anything especially obscure. Looks like I’ll have to do some post Christmas shopping.

Did Santa bring you any good books this year?

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas

Jack wants to know when he can open his present.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas but it’s funny

Because I am a million years or so behind the times, I just discovered this video, and if you haven’t yet seen it, I urge you to watch it with the volume on. It is relevant to just about nothing, but as long as you don’t blink you will catch a couple of YA literary references.

It’s Monday (and only 4 days until Christmas!) what are you reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

Despite all those last minute holiday preparations, I actually did manage to read three books last week. Of course, they were all relatively short, and one was mostly pictures, but who’s keeping score?

Timoleon Vieta, Please Come Home by Dan Rhodes

I’ve had Timoleon Vieta, Please Come Home on my books to read list, for awhile, and I don’t remember what originally made me put it on there. I think I was expecting something a bit more light-hearted. I didn’t enjoy this book. The self-absorbed characters annoyed me. Only the dog, Timoleon Vieta, was remotely likable, and at the risk of spoiling the plot, I will say that his fate is pretty lousy.

Flush by Carl Hiaasen

Flush, like Hoot is a novel by Carl Hiaasen written for a much younger audience that his adult mysteries.  This middle-grade novel or younger young adult novel is the story of a brother and sister who take it upon themselves to stop an unscrupulous casino boat operator from polluting the ocean with the human waste from the boat’s restrooms. There’s some mystery and action in this enjoyable tale that’s tame enough to be enjoyed by elementary school readers. It reminds me of the Echo Falls Mystery Series by Peter Abrahams.

Same Difference and Other Stories by Derek Kirk Kim

Same Difference and Other Stories is a graphic novel collection, or I guess in this case graphic short story collection. The title story is the longest in the collection and revolves around a 20-something Korean American reflecting on mistakes made in his youth, and coming to terms with the man he is now. I enjoyed this story. Some of the others, which were all much shorter, were hit or miss. Overall, though a well-drawn graphic novel with some depth to it.

What’s next

I’m reading a short story collection Dr. King’s Refrigerator by Charles Johnson, which was chosen based on the fact that it was a) a collection of short stories and b) a short collection of short stories. I don’t anticipate getting a lot of reading in over the next several days.

What about you? Have you read anything good lately?

Inspiration

So, OPWFT, which stands for Old People Writing For Teens (don’t you just love their name by the way? It solves a dilemma I have with describing myself as a young adult writer – as in a writer who writes for young adults and not a young adult who writes, but anyway, I digress) has a sort of group blog thing going, asking writers to describe their inspirations be they book movie or other for their own writing or just giving a general shout-out to the writers who have been influential in their lives. You can join in the conversation by clicking here, and for extra incentive there is a coffee-filled prize at stake. How’s that for inspiration?

Anyway, if I were to list every book, movie and author that has inspired me, I would be here a very long time, and quite frankly, Christmas is a week away and I am not even remotely close to ready so I really can’t spare the time, instead I am going to write about a recent inspiration for a work in progress which is no more than a sketchy idea in my book of ideas at the moment.

A few weeks ago I watched Adventureland on DVD, and enjoyed it even if it did make me wonder if Kristen Stewart is capable of playing anything other than weak-willed girls who do nothing but run their fingers through their hair a lot. Almost immediately upon ejecting the DVD, I thought to myself, too bad I didn’t work at a cheesy amusement park when I was younger, or I could write a book about it.

Then in the space of time it took me to remove the DVD from the player and replace it in the case I thought, oh wait, I did have a cheesy job when I was in college that has provided me with an almost endless amount of anecdotes, some of which involve maggots and there was that novel I was going to write about that place that was going to be totally different, but now I realize that I need to tell that story from a completely different perspective. Well, this is a dramatic reenactment, but the thing was I had always had this idea for a novel, but I wasn’t completely crazy about it, and watching Adventureland gave me an epiphany about just how to tell that story that would be absolutely perfect.

So, just as soon as I finish the book I am working on, and the one I have planned after that, it’s on to my summer job from hell novel.

Oh, and in case you haven’t seen it, here’s the trailer for Adventureland:

What am I reading? Not much

Even Amber enjoyed Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

It’s time once again for It’s Monday, What Are You Reading, the group blog sponsored by J. Kaye’s Book Blog.

My reading has completely slacked off of late. I’ve been spending too much time doing other things like wrapping presents, buying presents, preparing for the coming holiday and even, occasionally, working.

I read one whole book over the past week, though it was a good one, and am presently taking forever to get through a short novel. This week I read Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow and am about halfway through Timoelon Vieta, Please Come Home by Dan Rhodes.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

It’s hard to say what sort of book this is exactly. Magic realism is probably the best description for it, but even for a magic realism novel, it is pretty different. The main character, who is mostly called Alan, has a washing machine for a mother and a mountain for a father, and yet somehow he is a more or less normal human being minus a belly button. As the novel opens he is a grown man restoring an older home and settling down to a sort of semi-retirement, but then a host of different things occur to guarantee he will spend very little time retiring. Through flashbacks we learn more about his curious childhood. I’ve always enjoyed Cory Doctorow’s books before, and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town was no exception, though it certainly was the strangest of his books I have read to date.

I kind of doubt I am going to get a whole lot of reading done this week, as it looks like it is going to be another busy week. So, I will hold off on listing what I plan to get to next.

What about you? What are you reading this week?