Sunday, September 16, 2012
The Books of 2012 in Covers, Second Iteration (with comments by Liviu Suciu)
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Comments:
- lists and positions are subject to change but the top 24 will make my top 25 (top 25 list could have up to 30 books and is positional while I see 6 more strong candidates and a couple outside ones)
- the top 3 may change order but it is very unlikely they will drop below any of the rest from the current list, while of course Hydrogen Sonata is a very strong contender for #1 as IM Banks took that position in sff in 2 out of past 3 years, once overall, once 3rd overall and I really do not see any non-sff to blow me away till the end of the year, though one never knows...
- top 24 - quick statistics: 9 sf (including The Sacrifice Game), 6 fantasy, 9 mainstream (including The Teleportation Accident), 9 review copies, 15 got by myself
- the 29 highly recommended books, 9 sf (including Railsea), 4 fantasy (including The Architect), 14 mainstream fiction (including Gods Without Men and The Map and the Territory, 2 non-fiction - one fantasy, one mainstream related, 15 review copies, 14 got by myself
- major upcoming candidates for top 25: Hydrogen Sonata, Luminous Chaos, The Twelve, The Night of the Swarm, Red Country and The Rise of Ransom City with The Fractal Prince and Empty Space the outside ones
- other major books of interest - The Lighthouse by Alison Moore, The Uninvited by Liz Jensen, The Black Mausoleum and The King's Assassin by Stephen Deas, The Falcons of Fire and Ice by Karen Maitland, The Black Isle by Sandi Tan, Merivel by Rose Tremain, Celebrant by Michael Cisco and of course ???, ???, ???
- major surprises for 2012 - The Secret Keeper (expected to be excellent and a top 25 but not the blow me away current #1 novel it turned out to be), Blood Song and The Teleportation Accident, while of course new books from Brian D'Amato, Tan Twan Eng and Lawrence Norfolk were a surprise in themselves while being excellent and top 25's as expected
- disappointments - minor ones, Great North Road, Caliban's War and The Black Opera (all expected top 25's but not quite there), then quite a few fantasy series ending novels (C. Berg, M. Sullivan, M. Newton, P. Brandon, M. Stover, P. Kearney, A Huso, G. Beckett, S/C Griffith) or sometimes continuations (B. Bernobich, I. Tregilis) but that was me feeling that I exhausted the genre to a large extent, more than the books themselves, a few somewhat hyped debuts like Blood's Pride or Irenicon, while from established names, David Brin's Existence which annoyed me to no end...
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2 comments:
The amount that you are able to read blows my mind!
I wish had time to read like you do.