Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Guest Blogging and Favorites of 2009

Thea and Ana of The Book Smugglers were kind enough to invite me to write a Smugglivus post again this year. So today I am over there talking about my top 10 books read this year and what books I'm looking forward to in 2010.

6 comments:

orannia said...

I will try and stop by. I've been very remiss at visiting the Smugglers of late :( This will change in 2010 as I will be more organized!

Merry Christmas Kristen!

Kristen said...

Merry Christmas Orannia! I hope you had a wonderful holiday!

Anastasia said...

I'm really pleased that so many of my recs (at least two) made your top list! So I'm moving Lips Touch: Three Times to my firmly to-buy list for my next Amazon shopping spree. I'm looking forward to reading By Mountain Bound.

Books I'm looking forward to in 2010:

The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee - due out in March 2010. It's a new standalone.

Spirit and Lens by Carol Berg - definitely!

For the next ones, I'm not sure when they are out, I can only hope sooner rather than later:

Resurrection Code by Lyda Morehouse - sequel to the LINK series. She said it started out as a prequel about Mouse, but then morphed into a sequel.

The conclusion of the Magister Trilogy by C.S. Friedman.

Now, if I had to do my top 10 list of 2009 (not ordered):

1. Palimpsest - Catherynne M. Valente. (And also A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects, her second poetry collection.)

2. The Living Blood - Tananarive Due

3. The Maerlander Chronicles - Elisabeth Vonarburg

4. Fire - Krisin Cashore

5. Dread Empire's Fall: Convention of War - Walter Jon Williams (also Metropolitan)

6. Wings of Wrath - C.S. Friedman (also The Wilding)

7. Night's Master - Tanith Lee (and everything else I've read by her this year: Vivia, Elephantasm, Herione of the World, reread of The Birth Grave

8. The City and the City - China Mieville

9. Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness - Mike Allen, ed. (collecion of short stories)

(now it gets difficult)

10. Air, or Have Not Have - Geoff Ryman
Pandemonium - Daryl Gregory
All the Windwracked Stars - Elizabeth Bear

I read about 72 books so far this year, and not-finished (due to attention-deficit disorder, mainly) another 15.

Kristen said...

Anastasia - I'd never heard of Tananarive Due before you mentioned her so I'm very glad you did. :) And I'm pleased to see Fire made it to your top 10 list.

The Gaslight Dogs did sound good. Lowachee is still an author I haven't read yet so that may be a good place to start since all her other books are hard to find.

I didn't know Resurrection Code ended up turning into a sequel instead of the prequel. That's interesting.

Wow, I should have some good reading ahead of me since I have a lot of the books on your top 10 list that I still need to read (Palimpsest, The Living Blood, the first Dread Empire's Fall book, and Night's Master). I want to get Wings of Wrath when it comes out in paperback and I'd really like to read the Vonarburg book as well.

Anastasia said...

Ok, I just bought Lips Touch! So I'll get to read it before the end of the year.

Kristen said...

Anastasia - I hope you like Lips Touch!