Best books of 2007
Jan. 1st, 2008 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_schrapnellThis is essentially what I posted on the DWJ list, so doubly behind a cut: for length and potential repetition. Though most on my friends' list here will have seen most of these books raved about at far greater length already. Not all though!
I can never pick just one, no matter how 'creative' I get with the categories, though possibly, if I *had* to pick just one favourite, it might be Hilary McKay's Forever Rose. I certainly loved it wholeheartedly, and no less so for reading in an interview that Hilary McKay herself felt that Caddy Ever After had been the weakest of the Casson family books. Forever Rose had a stretch in the middle which was so poignant it was barely funny (though the end returns to the comic admirably), but that's not a criticism at all. One of the two scenes which struck me hardest over the year's reading was that in which Rose lit a fire by herself, thinking how nice it would be to show her family what she could do, only to struggle desperately to put it out again, it having occurred to her that then Indigo wouldn't come home to light one for her when she was alone in the house. The ending - not only cheerful but downright celebratory - wasn't achieved by forcing us to accept that characters hadn't really been that selfish/whatever - or that the adults had really known what they were doing all along - but rather by everyone's filling the nice parts of their selves more fully. I'd love there to have been more books planned, but this was a perfect ending to the series, so it's probably better. And I can't wait to see what McKay does next.
Historical Fiction:
Read quite a few of these, including several of my bests, and a few which were not so good at all - though none achieved anything like the low of last year's I, Coriander.
Three of my favourites were Gatty's Tale, by Kevin Crossley-Holland, Hattie Big Sky, by Kirby Larson, and The Green Glass Sea, by Ellen Klages. I think you'd have to have read the previous three Arthur books to appreciate Gatty's Tale fully, and there are a lot of interesting arguments to be had around the representation of religious intolerance (or lack thereof) in the 13th century, but I enjoyed this with complete abandon. Hattie Big Sky, about a girl home-steading in Montana during World War I, was a very different kind of historical fiction reading experience, obviously - also very well done, I thought. And finally, very different again, The Green Glass Sea would be another strong contender for best read of 2007, were my back against the wall to choose just one. Beautifully written and a really fascinating angle for a story, as it was told from the perspective of girls whose parents were scientists working in Los Alamos in 1943.
Also - I guess - in this category is the stunning Here Lies Arthur, by Philip Reeve. I still haven't decided if this is one of my favourites, precisely, but it is definitely one of my 'best' books. Another that's beautifully written, it shows Arthur as the product of a very skilled spin doctor, with obvious modern-day resonance. Stripping the myth from one of Britain's seminal mythic characters isn't something every writer could do well, but I can't imagine it being done much better than this.
Fantasy:
For sheer gothic over-the-top energy, Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau S. Wilce would take a lot of prizes - I can't think of anything remotely like it, and loved it despite being sometimes almost overwhelmed by the wealth of weirdness there. If for nothing else other than the House it'd have been worth it for me. Very much looking forward to the sequel.
Undine by Penni Russon was in a very different mode: specifically the Margaret Mahy one (with Charlie - Charles Butler - resonances as well, asemmaco mentioned in her LJ). It really didn't feel derivative to me overall, but Charlie and I had a few discussions about that, and I'm not at all sure he was equally convinced! I thought there were plenty of twists to keep it fresh, and felt clever for guessing one that I really liked, so was all good. I also liked the sequel, Breathe, but haven't yet managed to get hold of the third of the trilogy.
Devilish was my introduction to Maureen Johnson (sartorias's rec) and I'd have enjoyed it had it been 'just' a very intelligent, funny fantasy about the hell that is high school, and the understandable impulse to sell your soul to avoid the misery, but it was that and then some, so I was well happy.
Finally, Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr is one I haven't even got around to writing about here yet. I was thinking about it this morning, and finally realised that the book that comes closest to it - in my mind only - is Emma Bull's War for the Oaks. Not in style at all but in the way the Faerie-human interaction is presented. Faerie - here, the Summer King - isn't just all, "OMG, he's so gorgeous." ::swoons::, nor is it only cold, heartless and cruel. Things are far more complex, and the 'games' which are 'played' for century after century may be horrifying and lead to great suffering, and yet there are options other than submit or attempt to destroy. There seemed to be a few too many/too long sequences in which Aislinn (the human protagonist) went around dreading the faeries and what they might do to her, but I still thought it was great. And her fighting her attraction to a human guy, one with eyebrow and tongue piercings, while being essentially uninterested in the beautiful faerie king pleased me a lot.
Other ('realist'? not 'non-genre' but whatever!):
Aside from Forever Rose the other top three are Criss Cross, by Lynne Rae Perkins, The Off-Season, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock and Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. I guess Criss Cross could be properly put in the historical fiction batch, but the 70s - not highlighted as a setting - nah. I loved it for the lightness of touch, the characters, and the simple writing style, and found on setting about doing the LJ write-up that a *Midsummer Night's Dream* thread running through it was another delight. This without having even noticed it on the first read either.
The Off-Season was an entirely satisfying follow-up to last year's Best First Novel - my last year's BFN, of course - Dairy Queen. Grimmer than Dairy Queen for a stretch, but wonderful. (Dairy Queen was also my best recommendation of the year - I was sending Eat Pray Love to my sister, and decided to send DQ too, and it, even more than Eat Pray Love was THE perfect book for her at the time. The Off-Season wouldn't have been, and she didn't find it when she went looking for it, but read it last month and loved it as well.)
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac took what could be a very lame plot-device (doesn't need spelling out, given the title!) and did it so well that I was absolutely won over - both as a reader fully engrossed in the story and as a slightly critical one occasionally becoming aware of how cleverly the narrative was being handled. And it's funny with it.
Worst? Don't really have one this year, though I have found a few things about which to snark from time to time, of course. But the book which would probably put me in my severely out-of-step place if more people had read it is The Hollow Kingdom, by Clare B. Dunkle. Maybe the I-shouldn't-really-mention-this-AGAIN-but-Beauty kind of out-of-step place, at that. I didn't think it was that great - or at least found it quite uneven - but the goblin king's changing from the terrifying figure who'd take a human bride against her will, understanding the horror of being forced to spend the rest of her life underground, prevented from even seeing a glimpse of the sky until the day she dies, to a concerned hubby whom Kate loves and will strive to save, was -- disturbing. Very disturbing. And the fact that her life in the outside world had been kind of rocky does not make it all fine and dandy.
Sherwood Smith's The Fox is not on my 2007 list, not because I didn't love it, but because I was lucky enough to read it as a WIP before it was published. And I'm loving the third of the Inda trilogy (The King's Shield) as much now. </enthusiasm-rather-than-swank>
It was a good reading year, if an unusual and slower-than-normal one, as I found a bunch of new or new-to-me writers such as Maureen Johnson, Robin Brande and Mark Peter Hughes, as well as reading great new works from already-loved authors. As always, it's impossible to fit all the fantastic books in my list-of-sorts, even with the looseness of list-making conventions I allow myself.
And I couldn't omit my appreciation of the wonderful discussion provided by my flist on many topics over the year, but especially on the 19th century children's lit. You guys rock.
I can never pick just one, no matter how 'creative' I get with the categories, though possibly, if I *had* to pick just one favourite, it might be Hilary McKay's Forever Rose. I certainly loved it wholeheartedly, and no less so for reading in an interview that Hilary McKay herself felt that Caddy Ever After had been the weakest of the Casson family books. Forever Rose had a stretch in the middle which was so poignant it was barely funny (though the end returns to the comic admirably), but that's not a criticism at all. One of the two scenes which struck me hardest over the year's reading was that in which Rose lit a fire by herself, thinking how nice it would be to show her family what she could do, only to struggle desperately to put it out again, it having occurred to her that then Indigo wouldn't come home to light one for her when she was alone in the house. The ending - not only cheerful but downright celebratory - wasn't achieved by forcing us to accept that characters hadn't really been that selfish/whatever - or that the adults had really known what they were doing all along - but rather by everyone's filling the nice parts of their selves more fully. I'd love there to have been more books planned, but this was a perfect ending to the series, so it's probably better. And I can't wait to see what McKay does next.
Historical Fiction:
Read quite a few of these, including several of my bests, and a few which were not so good at all - though none achieved anything like the low of last year's I, Coriander.
Three of my favourites were Gatty's Tale, by Kevin Crossley-Holland, Hattie Big Sky, by Kirby Larson, and The Green Glass Sea, by Ellen Klages. I think you'd have to have read the previous three Arthur books to appreciate Gatty's Tale fully, and there are a lot of interesting arguments to be had around the representation of religious intolerance (or lack thereof) in the 13th century, but I enjoyed this with complete abandon. Hattie Big Sky, about a girl home-steading in Montana during World War I, was a very different kind of historical fiction reading experience, obviously - also very well done, I thought. And finally, very different again, The Green Glass Sea would be another strong contender for best read of 2007, were my back against the wall to choose just one. Beautifully written and a really fascinating angle for a story, as it was told from the perspective of girls whose parents were scientists working in Los Alamos in 1943.
Also - I guess - in this category is the stunning Here Lies Arthur, by Philip Reeve. I still haven't decided if this is one of my favourites, precisely, but it is definitely one of my 'best' books. Another that's beautifully written, it shows Arthur as the product of a very skilled spin doctor, with obvious modern-day resonance. Stripping the myth from one of Britain's seminal mythic characters isn't something every writer could do well, but I can't imagine it being done much better than this.
Fantasy:
For sheer gothic over-the-top energy, Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau S. Wilce would take a lot of prizes - I can't think of anything remotely like it, and loved it despite being sometimes almost overwhelmed by the wealth of weirdness there. If for nothing else other than the House it'd have been worth it for me. Very much looking forward to the sequel.
Undine by Penni Russon was in a very different mode: specifically the Margaret Mahy one (with Charlie - Charles Butler - resonances as well, as
emmaco mentioned in her LJ). It really didn't feel derivative to me overall, but Charlie and I had a few discussions about that, and I'm not at all sure he was equally convinced! I thought there were plenty of twists to keep it fresh, and felt clever for guessing one that I really liked, so was all good. I also liked the sequel, Breathe, but haven't yet managed to get hold of the third of the trilogy.Devilish was my introduction to Maureen Johnson (
sartorias's rec) and I'd have enjoyed it had it been 'just' a very intelligent, funny fantasy about the hell that is high school, and the understandable impulse to sell your soul to avoid the misery, but it was that and then some, so I was well happy. Finally, Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr is one I haven't even got around to writing about here yet. I was thinking about it this morning, and finally realised that the book that comes closest to it - in my mind only - is Emma Bull's War for the Oaks. Not in style at all but in the way the Faerie-human interaction is presented. Faerie - here, the Summer King - isn't just all, "OMG, he's so gorgeous." ::swoons::, nor is it only cold, heartless and cruel. Things are far more complex, and the 'games' which are 'played' for century after century may be horrifying and lead to great suffering, and yet there are options other than submit or attempt to destroy. There seemed to be a few too many/too long sequences in which Aislinn (the human protagonist) went around dreading the faeries and what they might do to her, but I still thought it was great. And her fighting her attraction to a human guy, one with eyebrow and tongue piercings, while being essentially uninterested in the beautiful faerie king pleased me a lot.
Other ('realist'? not 'non-genre' but whatever!):
Aside from Forever Rose the other top three are Criss Cross, by Lynne Rae Perkins, The Off-Season, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock and Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. I guess Criss Cross could be properly put in the historical fiction batch, but the 70s - not highlighted as a setting - nah. I loved it for the lightness of touch, the characters, and the simple writing style, and found on setting about doing the LJ write-up that a *Midsummer Night's Dream* thread running through it was another delight. This without having even noticed it on the first read either.
The Off-Season was an entirely satisfying follow-up to last year's Best First Novel - my last year's BFN, of course - Dairy Queen. Grimmer than Dairy Queen for a stretch, but wonderful. (Dairy Queen was also my best recommendation of the year - I was sending Eat Pray Love to my sister, and decided to send DQ too, and it, even more than Eat Pray Love was THE perfect book for her at the time. The Off-Season wouldn't have been, and she didn't find it when she went looking for it, but read it last month and loved it as well.)
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac took what could be a very lame plot-device (doesn't need spelling out, given the title!) and did it so well that I was absolutely won over - both as a reader fully engrossed in the story and as a slightly critical one occasionally becoming aware of how cleverly the narrative was being handled. And it's funny with it.
Worst? Don't really have one this year, though I have found a few things about which to snark from time to time, of course. But the book which would probably put me in my severely out-of-step place if more people had read it is The Hollow Kingdom, by Clare B. Dunkle. Maybe the I-shouldn't-really-mention-this-AGAIN-but-Beauty kind of out-of-step place, at that. I didn't think it was that great - or at least found it quite uneven - but the goblin king's changing from the terrifying figure who'd take a human bride against her will, understanding the horror of being forced to spend the rest of her life underground, prevented from even seeing a glimpse of the sky until the day she dies, to a concerned hubby whom Kate loves and will strive to save, was -- disturbing. Very disturbing. And the fact that her life in the outside world had been kind of rocky does not make it all fine and dandy.
Sherwood Smith's The Fox is not on my 2007 list, not because I didn't love it, but because I was lucky enough to read it as a WIP before it was published. And I'm loving the third of the Inda trilogy (The King's Shield) as much now. </enthusiasm-rather-than-swank>
It was a good reading year, if an unusual and slower-than-normal one, as I found a bunch of new or new-to-me writers such as Maureen Johnson, Robin Brande and Mark Peter Hughes, as well as reading great new works from already-loved authors. As always, it's impossible to fit all the fantastic books in my list-of-sorts, even with the looseness of list-making conventions I allow myself.
And I couldn't omit my appreciation of the wonderful discussion provided by my flist on many topics over the year, but especially on the 19th century children's lit. You guys rock.
