It’s another giveaway in our Eight Crazy Nights of fun here at Smart Bitches.
Today’s prize: a totebag with three novels from the Harper Perennial Olive Editions. They’re cute and little and a fabulous repackaging, in my opinion, of some hefty good books.
The prize bag includes a copy of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kindera.
Want to heft a bag of books? Just leave a comment with your answer to the following question: what was the best book you read this year that wasn’t a romance? Comments close in 24 hours, so share your recommendations and keep your fingers crossed.
A terrific memoir: Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson Wright, formerly of the Two Fat Ladies cooking show. On the fiction front: One Hundred Years of Solitude….oh to be able to write like that.
Just to say Milan Kundera
The best book is often the book I’ve just finished. However, I have to say the best book of this year was probably actually a trilogy, Anne Bishop’s Black Jewel trilogy.
I also liked Flanders by Patricia Anthony, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, Odd Hours by Dean Koontz.
And I like the fact that I know I am going to go through all the above (and below) posts and find new books to put on my wish list.
Thanks.
The Fourth Bear
& Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
Both books are nursery crimes and are heavy on literary references and humor. I always feel smarter yet my brain feels lighter after reading him.
I really enjoyed Spectre by Phaedra Weldon. http://booklover07202.blogspot.com/2008/09/spectre-review.html
Great giveaway! I’ve read Michael Chabon before and he is fabulous. I read Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. I’ve heard of Everything is Illuminated but haven’t read it. Also that last book, I never heard of but I’m sure I’d enjoy. I like just about anything.
I have two:
The Green Glass Sea – Ellen Klages
A children’s book telling the history of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project through the eyes of two junior high school girls. Gets the history right and captures the feel of what it must have been like.
The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama
The stump speeches and the book follow each other. Extremely well-written, and a window into the mind of our next President.
Joanne
Recently read Caliban’s Hour by Tad Williams. Also loved Naomi Novek’s series, Sara Douglass’s Crippled Angel, Pulman’s the golden compass and Christopher paolini’s eldest (second to eragon). Alas, not much non fiction for me tho I really enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel which was a reread for me.
p.s spam word other67: I need to get to the other 67 books in my pile!!!
It’s a tie between SEVERANCE PACKAGE and THE BLONDE, both written by Duane Swierczynski. Each book is wickedly funny, thriller-paced, and centers around premises that are so outlandish they actually seem plausible.
SEVERANCE PACKAGE is a tale of a super secret spy wing of the US operating out of Philadelphia and the eye-popping, jaw-dropping craziness that ensues when the operatives and their civilian copywriter are locked on their floor (stairwells and elevators rigged with sarin gas) and end up fighting for their lives as one of their own (sort of) tries to off them in increasingly creative ways. Seriously, you’ll never look at office supplies the same way again.
THE BLONDE centers around a kick ass woman infected with nanobots. She can’t be more than 10 feet away from another human being without risking her head going kablooey. She drugs a reporter she meets in the Philadelphia airport, promising him the antidote if he’ll just spend the night with her and then publish her tale. She unknowingly sets off a chain of totally whacked out events spread out over one unforgettable night in Philly. Oh, and they’re running from a government assassin toting around a head in a bag. Shit magnet? Oh, yeah…
The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. It’s this amazing combination of narrative, love story and a culture I could connect to – a half-Chinese chef and his relationship with the elders in his family.
I love winter break. Means I actually have time to read.
The Watchman by Robert Crais.
“Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think”—Brian Wansink.
THE NIGHT GARDENER by George Pelecanos. It was like reading an episode of The Wire, which makes sense since he wrote for the show.
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
I’ve read so many this year, but some of my favorites include:
The Singing by Alison Croggon (final book of the YA series),
A Great and Terrible Beauty (and sequels) by Libba Bray,
Temeraire series by Naomi Novik,
Hero by Perry Moore,
Melusine (and sequels) by Sarah Monette
My Wicked Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn.
The man had every bad job in the whole world before the age of 25. And gave me my new measure of job badness: any day my job does not involve castrating sheep with my teeth, is a good day.
I have 2-one YA and one adult
Nation by Terry Pratchett. I hate Discworld, but really loved this. It’s a coming-of-age story with a twist.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson-Not to everyone’s taste, but I liked this. If you liked Sophie’s World by Jostein Garrder, you will like this.
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.
I reread The Aeneid this year, which is by far my favorite of the epics.
The best new non-Romance I read this year was probably The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss, a mystery/thriller set a bit before the Whiskey Rebellion. David Liss’ books are always at least as much historical fiction as they are whatever other genre they fit in, and this was his first late eighteenth-century book and his first book set before the twentieth century in America.
Stardust, by Neil Gaimon. Incredible.
Watching the English by Kate Fox. It’s a marvelous study of English behavior, which made me laugh on many occaisions and also gave me several a-ha moments about what motivates my English friends. : )
Hmm…. so hard to pick, really.
(and, wow, I am picking up fantastic rec’s from this list, which is just as awesome as the chance to win more books!)
Best book: I think I’m going to have to put Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” up at the top of the list. Yes, finally got around to reading it. Am now eagerly anticipating the movie version, to see what they do with it.
Other recommendations: “Ouran High School Host Club” (not all of which is out in English yet—great comic manga about a high school student attending an elite private school who gets mixed up with the “host club,” a group of male students dedicated to bringing romantic happiness to women), Donna Leon’s fantastic Comissario Brunetti mysteries (contemporary Venetian setting, great characterizations), Jonathan Spence’s “The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci” (non-fiction account of a 16th-century Italian Jesuit in China who writes a treatise introducing the Chinese to a classical Greek system of mnemonic learning)… rats; I’m sure there are other examples, but I’m blanking on them. Ah, well; was technically supposed to only have one anyway.
JD
Reported88: So, if I reported 88 book recommendations, would I get 88 chances at the 8 Crazy Nights giveaway?
“The Likeness” by Tana French—amazing mystery set in modern Ireland.
I read a few Christopher Moore books earlier this year. He has an interesting combination of humor/supernatural/suspense. I liked “Island of the Sequined Love Nun” and “A Dirty Job”.
Terrier (Legends of Beka Cooper Book 1) by Tamora Pierce
It’s a teen book written in first-person journal style. I enjoyed it.
I know I’m too late to win, but I really wanted to answer this question!
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
🙂
Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons”. I had resisted for so long the whole hype about “The DiVinci Code”, but my brother recommended a different DB title and I really enjoyed it. So I bit the bullet and read A&D;. Excellent book. Much better than TDC – just not nearly as controversial.
The characters are well written, the plot and dialogue is fast paced and well done. I would highly recommend it to anyone.
Don’t Hex with Texas by Shanna Swendson
Faefever [Fever Series #3] by Karen Marie Moning
re-reading (listening to audio version) of David Weber’s…
On Basilisk Station,
The Honor of the Queen,
The Short, Victorious War,
and Field of Dishonor
re-reading (listening to audio version) of Anne McCaffery’s
Crystal Singer
Killashandra
and Crystal Line
I fell in love with Maria Snyder’s Study-series. Poison Study, Magic Study and Fire Study
Ack! I can’t pick just one favorite, either. So here are my picks in several categories:
Professional: A Mind At A Time by Mel Levine – great take on working with students who need something other than the mainstream.
Hobby: The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener by Anne Halpin – I’m growing leeks, cauliflower and lettuce now and have my tomato and pepper seeds ready for spring.
Mystery: Still Life by Louise Penny – like an old-fashioned English village mystery but set in Canada
Humor: A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore – Kitty!
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, hands down. (It was released years ago, but I only got to it now…)
That being said, I absolutely inhaled the Temeraire series this summer. INHALED. LIKE BOOK COCAINE.
I’d also like to say that “Big Red Son” out of Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace is an absolutely brilliant essay. What a voice he had.
But I also did read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and Everything is Illuminated this year. They are all awesome in totally different ways. (JSF’s second book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close should also get a shout out.) It was a good book year for me!
i know its been around for ages but i discovered and devoured
Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene
The Steerswoman’s Road by Rosemary Kirstein. Sci-Fi masquerading as Fantasy with a ton of twists and turns.
It’s a toss-up between The Warrior Women of Television: A Feminist Cultural Analysis of the New Female Body in Popular Media, by Dawn Heinecken, and Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama (the latter I listened to as an audiobook, but I think that still counts, right?).
It’s difficult to pick just one—of course—so I’m going to be total dunderhead and pick two. I loved them both, but for different reasons.
1. Un-Lun-Dun by China Mieville
A wonderful YA by an author who loves language and what fun can be had with it. I mean, black window spiders? Lurve.
2. Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
Recommended by two poets and an independent bookstore owner in Portland—a reader-y town if ever I’ve experienced one. Again with the nigh magical command of language and its power. Lurve, cubed.