Reviews
| 2009 Books |
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I only spent half the year having to drive to work, so managed to get through 45 books this year, half as many again as last year. However I don't really feel that I've read much of note. By the Numbers
I read 7 books published in 2009 and absolutely none of them are worthy of the label ‘best of the year’. To name the top three would be to list three books that were ok but nothing remarkable. Pratchet's Unseen Academicals was badly structured, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a brilliant idea, but got boring and The Osiris Ritual, which was fun but not exactly startlingly brilliant. If I expand the range to cover books from the last few years (excusable because some books take a long time to work through to bookshops) I’d rate The Book Thief as the best book, a book that should be depressing but through beautiful writing is surprisingly enjoyable. I only read 9 non-fiction books, but they were mostly pretty good. The best was Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which was both fascinating and enjoyable. Starbucked is now a bit dated, but was interesting and quite well balanced. There are a few classics I finally got round to reading and really appreciated. I’ve always loved the film Rebecca and the book was equally great. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed McCaffrey’s The White Dragon, expecting cheesy dragon-fic and finding a beautifully crafted world and story. Dune started extremely well but gradually lost me, The Once and Future King did the opposite starting off slowly but gradually drawing me in. Worst books is a bit tricky, I don’t read much that’s actually bad and most of those that I rate that way are actually due to bad marketing, such as The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher which I thought was going to be an interesting work of historical fact meets murder mystery and turned out to be stunningly dull and un-mysterious. There were a lot of mediocre books which were either instantly forgettable, unnecessarily full of themselves or containing good characters but poor plots or vice-versa. I can’t really write this without acknowledging my slightly embarrassing summer obsession with Stephenie Meyer and Twilight. I know I’m not the only ‘non target age group’ person to become addicted to these books which makes me feel a little better. My abiding memory of summer 2009 may well be sitting in the garden with a glass of Pimms, ploughing my way through these enjoyable, relatively well written, cheesy teen vampire books. I was even more impressed with The Host, which proved she has more than one story inside her (take note Ms Rowling) and I enjoyed maybe even more than Twilight.
Fiction The Behaviour of Moths - Poppy Adams Non-fiction Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce and Culture - Taylor Clark
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