Here’s a list of some of my favourite books I read this year, put together very unscientifically by glancing at my book shelves and picking through the pile (wall, really, I have enough books to make a wall) next to my bed.
No doubt I have missed out on a bunch of brilliant ones and will be kicking myself later, but these were the ones that leapt out, sometimes literally when I made the mistake of trying to move the wall.
Lexicon by Max Barry
Claire de Witt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
Gun Machine by Warren Ellis
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan
The Explorer by James Smythe
Annihilation by Jeff vanderMeer (out 2014)
The Heart Broke In by James Meek
The Three by Sarah Lotz (out 2014)
Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human
The Space Race by Alex Latimer
Gone Girl and Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Nineveh by Henrietta Rose-Innes
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh (out 2014)
US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man, Work and Other Sins by Charlie leDuff
Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie leDuff
Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips
Fatale by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips
Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross
Coffin Hill by Caitlin Kitt and Inaki Miranda
Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman (reviewed by me and my four year old).
Oliver & The Sea Wigs by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre
Joyland by Stephen King
And here’s just some of my to-read pile collected this year – that started falling over when I tried to add more books (not including the ones on my Kindle, nor books bought in previous years of which I have four shelves worth nor Life After Life nor the new Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens, that I’ve loaned out in the meantime, nor ones I’m intending to buy, but haven’t yet, like Night Film or Doctor Sleep) all of which I hope to get round to if someone can just put the world on pause for, oh, say about a year or so?)
