Books in 2005

[peteryoung]

A total of 87 books this year, with SF accounting for slightly less than half. Highlighted in bold are the 10 most memorable reads; also marked with an * are those read for review in Vector.

Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, 2003
Brian Aldiss, Sanity and the Lady, 2005
Bryan Appleyard, Aliens: Why They Are Here, 2005
Tom Baker, The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, 1999
Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist, 2004 * [brief review]
Stephen Baxter, Voyage, 1996
Alessandro Baricco, Silk, 1996
Alessandro Baricco, Without Blood, 2002
Dennis Bock, The Ash Garden, 2001 [review]
Jorge Luis Borges, Doctor Brodie's Report, 1972
Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1959 [review]
Peter Carey, Wrong About Japan, 2005
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, 1964
Jack Chalker, The Web of the Chozen, 1978
Bandula Chandraratna, Mirage, 1998 [review]
Simon Clark, The Dalek Factor, 2004
Jennifer Clement, A True Story Based on Lies, 2001 [review]
Eleanor Coerr, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, 1977
Louise Cooper, Rip Tide, 2003
Francis Cottam, Hamer's War, 2003 [brief review]
Dai Sijie, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, 2000 [brief review]
Maxence Fermine, Snow, 1999
Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1954 [brief review]
Simon A. Forward, Shell Shock, 2003
Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl, 2003 [brief review]
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923
Jack C. Haldeman II & Jack Dann, High Steel, 1993
John Hersey, Hiroshima, 1946
Hermann Hesse, Wandering, 1920
Jack Higgins, Toll for the Brave, 1971
J. Hunter Holly, The Dark Planet, 1971
Jack Kerouac, Big Sur, 1963
Jack Kerouac, Satori in Paris, 1966
Margot Lanagan, Black Juice, 2004
Tim Lees, The Life to Come, 2005
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams, 1993 [brief review]
Jack London, Before Adam, 1907 [brief review]
James Lovegrove, Imagined Slights, 2002
James Lovegrove, Provender Gleed, 2005 *
Ian MacLeod, Breathmoss and other Exhalations, 2004
Steve Martin, Pure Drivel, 1998
Paul McAuley, White Devils, 2004
Paul McAuley, Mind's Eye, 2005 *
Iain McLaughlin, Blood and Hope, 2004 [very brief review]
Augusto Monterroso, The Black Sheep, 1969
Patrick Moore & David A. Hardy, Futures: 50 Years in Space, 2004 [review]
Richard Morgan, Broken Angels, 2003
Kim Newman, Time and Relative, 2002
William F. Nolan, Wild Galaxy, 2005
André Norton, Lord of Thunder, 1962
Daniel O’Mahony, The Cabinet of Light, 2003
Kate Orman, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, 2001
Franck Pavloff, Brown, 2001 [review]
Robert Perry & Mike Tucker, Companion Piece, 2002 [brief review]
Frederik Pohl, ed., The SFWA Grand Masters Vol. 2, 2000
Mike Resnick, The Soul Eater, 1981 [brief review]
Alastair Reynolds, Diamond Dogs, 2001
Alastair Reynolds, Century Rain, 2004
Mack Reynolds, Space Visitor, 1977
Yasmina Reza, Hammerklavier, 1997 [brief review]
Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace, 2005
Tara Samms, Frayed, 2003
José Saramago, The Tale of the Unknown Island, 1997
George Saunders, Pastoralia, 2000
Alexei Sayle, Great Bus Journeys of the World, 1988
Charles Sheffield, The Compleat McAndrew, 2000
Robert Silverberg, Tom O'Bedlam, 1985
Brian Stableford, The Florians, 1976
Brian Stableford, The City of the Sun, 1978
Brian Stableford, Balance of Power, 1979
Brian Stableford, The Paradox of the Sets, 1979
Patrick Süskind, Three Stories and a Reflection, 1996
William F. Temple, 88 Gray's Inn Road: A Living Space Odyssey, 2000 [brief review]
Karen Traviss, The World Before, 2005
Keith Topping, Ghost Ship, 2002
Louis Trimble, The Bodelan Way, 1974
Jack Vance, Big Planet, 1952 [brief review]
Jack Vance, The Blue World, 1966
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier, 1918
Jack Womack, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, 1993
Binjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments, 1995 [review]
Liz Williams, The Ghost Sister, 2001
Liz Williams, Nine Layers of Sky, 2003 *
Jack Williamson, Bright New Universe, 1967
Luis Fernando Verissimo, Borges and the Eternal Orang-Utans, 2000
Xiaolu Guo, Village of Stone, 2004 [review]
Eva Zeller, The Manuscript, 1998

Other books regularly dipped into though not finished:
Jonathan Safran Foer & Dave Eggers, eds., The Future Dictionary of America 2004 [review]
Cleolinda Jones, Movies in Fifteen Minutes, 2005 *
Steve Lowe & Alan McArthur, Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?, 2005
Jeff VanderMeer & Mark Roberts, eds., The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, 2004

My top three recommendations of all the above would have to be James Lovegrove's awesomely clever Provender Gleed, Jennifer Clement's sharply observant A True Story Based on Lies and George Saunders' masterful short story collection Pastoralia.

Comments

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

awesomely clever Provender Gleed

Huh. I liked it, but not that much. :)

On the other hand, I'm with you on Breathmoss and A Thread of Grace. Good books.

Spoiler Alert

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

It's how the wordplay intersects with the plot, each shaping the other, that impressed me most, making it the most inspiringly-constructed SF novel I've read in ages. Or maybe I don't read enough SF books centred around wordplay.

I agree with your point about Provender already being rather too aware of the world compared to the rest of his Family such that calling it a 'bildungsroman' is overstating it a bit, but as the whole thing turns out to be a retelling of Hamlet it was probably inevitable. But the whole book – complete with its Olivier-as-Hamlet cover (I hope I'm not the only one to have spotted that) – strikes me as a rather well-told shaggy dog story with a very long ending (something else I couldn't really mention in my Vector review either).

PS. I'm with you entirely on Ian MacLeod's New Light on the Drake Equation. Definitely one the most praiseworthy SF stories of recent years.