Best books of 2011

[hawkwing_lb]

I hear on the interwebs that Hugo nominations have opened. I'm not a voter, but I guess this is as good a time as any to recap the books I found best in 2011?*

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Fiction:


1. Jo Walton, Among Others.

2. Elizabeth Bear, The Sea Thy Mistress.

3. Delia Sherman, The Freedom Maze.

4. Chris Wooding, The Iron Jackal - Reviewed at Tor.

5. Elizabeth Bear, Grail - Reviwed at Tor.

6. Daniel Fox, Hidden Cities - Reviewed at Ideo.

7. Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho - Reviewed at Ideo.

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Nonfiction:

While the fiction was all published in 2011, the nonfiction - well, wasn't.


1. Tim Macintosh-Smith, Travels With A Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah.

2. Tim Macintosh-Smith, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land.

3. David Brewer, The Greek War of Independence.

4. Jean Froissart, Chronicles. Translated by Geoffrey Brereton.

5. Ciarán Carson, The Táin: A New Translation of the Táin Bó Cuailgne.

6. Usama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades.

7. Tim Macintosh-Smith, Landfalls.

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Today I have written much of a Funding Application of DOOM. And a review. Eleven or twelve hours of consistent work, with only a couple of short breaks. My brain, it is scraped quite clean.

And tomorrow, I must finish the FAoD. Onwards! Death or glory!

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*I meant to do it before the New Year. But I got... distracted.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Best wishes with the application.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thank you (she said, with rather grim gratitude). I have only the Methodology section and the Dissemination & Research Trips sections left to go. And then my supervisor is getting the draft and an email in which I womanfully restrain myself from wailing that Oh Noes I Suck Forever and Will Starve.

(On the plus side, though, it's a good thing I didn't try to do this particular application last year. I would never have been able to write it half as well as I am now - which still isn't brilliantly, but hurrah for being able to see one's progress?)

Er. I will stop rabbitting on now.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I don't think any of us ever get to like or to feel good enough for funds proposals. Grim indeed.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether I find that reassuring or dispiriting. *g*

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I don't know, first you convince me I do want to see Game of Shadows after all, then your recommendation added to mrissa's tips the Aaronovitch over from "get soon" to "probably this weekend"; I'm really kind of scrabbling to keep up here. (As urban fantasy goes, remind me whether you have read either Mike Carey's Felix Castor, or MLN Hanover's Black Sun's Daughter ?)

Also on the plan for this weekend is catching up on at least two months of my own book log, which was last updated as far as May; I am really hoping to finish 2011's books by the end of the month.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

2011 was pretty much a banner year for books, for me. 201 is probably some kind of record.

(I've read the first four of Carey's, and bounced off the fifth. It's still on my TBR shelf, for whenever I feel my life to have an overdose of shiny happy bunnies that needs DOOM and PAIN. I have yet to read Hanover.)

A Game of Shadows is ridiculously entertaining. I may have to go see it again just for the ridiculous amounts of banter and hectic chase-y-ness.

I will wish you luck with your booklog. :)