r/books • u/vincoug • Jan 14 '17
mod post Best Books of 2016 Results!
After numerous nominations and votes here are the best books of 2016 as voted on by you!
Best Debut of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Homegoing | Yaa Gyasi | The story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. Written with tremendous sweep and power, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history, each life indeliably drawn, as the legacy of slavery is fully revealed in light of the present day. | /u/pearloz |
| 1st Runner-up | The Nix | Nathan Hill | It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paint Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help. | /u/laurz |
| 2nd Runner-up | The Ferryman Institute | Colin Gigli | Ferryman Charlie Dawson saves dead people—somebody has to convince them to move on to the afterlife, after all. Having never failed a single assignment, he's acquired a reputation for success that’s as legendary as it is unwanted. It turns out that serving as a Ferryman is causing Charlie to slowly lose his mind. Deemed too valuable by the Ferryman Institute to be let go and too stubborn to just give up in his own right, Charlie’s pretty much abandoned all hope of escaping his grim existence. Or he had, anyway, until he saved Alice Spiegel. To be fair, Charlie never planned on stopping Alice from taking her own life—that sort of thing is strictly forbidden by the Institute—but he never planned on the President secretly giving him the choice to, either. Charlie’s not quite sure what to make of it, but Alice is alive, and it’s the first time he’s felt right in more than two hundred years. | /u/HaxRyter |
Best Graphic Novel of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening | Marjorie M. Liu (Author), Sana Takeda (Artist), Rus Wooten (Letterer, Designer) | Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900's Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steam punk, MONSTRESS tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both and make them the target of both human and otherworldly powers. | /u/leowr |
Best Poetry Collection of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Night Sky with Exit Wounds | Ocean Vuong | Ocean Vuong's first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial "big"—and very human—subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers. | /u/woodencactus |
Best Short Story Collection of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Beasts and Children | Amy Parker | From the tense territory of a sagging, grand porch in Texas to a gated community in steamy Thailand to a lonely apartment in nondescript suburbia, these linked stories unwind the lives of three families as they navigate ever-shifting landscapes. Wry and sharp, dark and subversive, they keep watch as these characters make the choices that will change the course of their lives and run into each other in surprising, unforgettable ways. | /u/brownspectacledbear |
Best SciFi of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Morning Star | Pierce Brown | Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within. Finally, the time has come. | /u/DeathFlowers |
| 1st Runner-up | Dark Matter | Blake Crouch | In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible. Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe. | /u/dubsbritt |
| 2nd Runner-up | The Obelisk Gate | N.K. Jemisin | The season of endings grows darker as civilization fades into the long cold night. Alabaster Tenring – madman, world-crusher, savior – has returned with a mission: to train his successor, Essun, and thus seal the fate of the Stillness forever. | /u/Homidia |
Best Fantasy of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | The Bands of Mourning | Brandon Sanderson | The Bands of Mourning are the mythical metalminds owned by the Lord Ruler, said to grant anyone who wears them the powers that the Lord Ruler had at his command. Hardly anyone thinks they really exist. A kandra researcher has returned to Elendel with images that seem to depict the Bands, as well as writings in a language that no one can read. Waxillium Ladrian is recruited to travel south to the city of New Seran to investigate. Along the way he discovers hints that point to the true goals of his uncle Edwarn and the shadowy organization known as The Set. | /u/Ft_Worth_Swingers |
| 1st Runner-up | A Gathering of Shadows | V.E. Schwab | In many ways, things have almost returned to normal, though Rhy is more sober, and Kell is now plagued by his guilt. Restless, and having given up smuggling, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks like she always meant to do. As Red London finalizes preparations for the Element Games-an extravagant international competition of magic, meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighboring countries-a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port. But while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Games, another London is coming back to life, and those who were thought to be forever gone have returned | /u/HaxRyter |
| 2nd Runner-up | Stiletto | Daniel O'Malley | When secret organizations are forced to merge after years of enmity and bloodshed, only one person has the fearsome powers—and the bureaucratic finesse—to get the job done. Facing her greatest challenge yet, Rook Myfanwy Thomas must broker a deal between two bitter adversaries: the Checquy—the centuries-old covert British organization that protects society from supernatural threats, and the Grafters—a centuries-old supernatural threat. | /u/Dommeister |
Best Literary Fiction of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | The Nix | Nathan Hill | It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paint Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help. | /u/Absurdistand |
| 1st Runner-up Tie | Zero K | Don DeLillo | Death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body. “We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?” These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible. Jeff, the book’s narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing “the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth.” | /u/HaxRyter |
| 2nd Runner-up Tie | The Girls | Emma Cline | Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence, and to that moment in a girl’s life when everything can go horribly wrong. | /u/MamaduCookie |
| 2nd Runner-up Tie | Moonglow | Michael Chabon | Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at mid-century and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies. | /u/enfieldstudios |
| 2nd Runner-up Tie | The North Water | Ian McGuire | Behold the man: stinking, drunk, and brutal. Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaler bound for the rich hunting waters of the arctic circle. Also aboard for the first time is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money, and no better option than to sail as the ship's medic on this violent, filthy, and ill-fated voyage. | /u/WeDoNotSow |
Best Nonfiction of 2016
| Place | Title | Author | Description | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis | J.D. Vance | From a former Marine and Yale Law School Graduate, a poignant account of growing up in a poor Appalachian town, that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream. | /u/leowr |
| 1st Runner-up | When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese | At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor making a living treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air, which features a Foreword by Dr. Abraham Verghese and an Epilogue by Kalanithi’s wife, Lucy, chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a young neurosurgeon at Stanford, guiding patients toward a deeper understanding of death and illness, and finally into a patient and a new father to a baby girl, confronting his own mortality. | /u/hydrospaceman15 |
| 2nd Runner-up | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City | Matthew Desmond | Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America’s vast inequality—and to people’s determination and intelligence in the face of hardship. | /u/Insomnia_Spider |
Thank you to everyone who nominated and voted! Below, you can find links to the individual voting threads.
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u/Cocaiinee00 Jan 15 '17
Does every book subreddit have a thing against romance/pnr/uf?
RomanceGenre'sMatter
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u/vincoug Jan 15 '17
There have been a few users asking about romance. We'll make sure to make it a category next year. What are pnr (as a basketball fan all I can think of pick and roll) and uf?
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Jan 15 '17
PNR = ParaNormal Romance UF = Urban Fantasy
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u/vincoug Jan 15 '17
Ah, we didn't want to get that granular with the categories. Urban fantasy falls under fantasy and, at least this year, paranormal romance could fall under scifi or fantasy.
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Jan 15 '17
Under no circumstances should you get that granular with the categories. It would devolve to silliness. Sci-fi could be broken down into like 25 by itself.
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u/Cocaiinee00 Jan 15 '17
Not really. PNR is nothing like SciFi or Fantasy. I can see where Urban Fantasy could fall under fantasy, but its really hard to put UF in with classic/epic fantasy. UF and Epic Fantasy are just too far apart on the spectrum. I would personally lump PNR and UF together in one category.
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Jan 15 '17
Someone else mentioned this. What would your top romance novel (or novels) of 2016 be? I'm willing to read any genre if a book is well written.
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u/Cocaiinee00 Jan 15 '17
Well, I don't read straight romance. I read Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy.
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Feb 06 '17
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Feb 06 '17
Thanks for your recommendations. I'll add them to my "to read" list. It's been a long time since I've read a romance novel--last one must have been at least 15 years ago.
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u/emkay99 Jan 14 '17
There needs to be a category for mystery/crime/thriller. It's an even more broadly popular genre than SF or fantasy.
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u/weeeee_plonk Jan 15 '17
Romance as well - isn't it the most popular genre of all?
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u/ohmyohmaggie Jan 14 '17
I nominate Night Film and The Hypnotist!
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u/yourmomsbitch Jan 15 '17
The Hypnotist was and still is one of the best books I've ever read. Definitely recommend.
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Jan 15 '17
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u/princeofropes Jan 15 '17
Its true, it is curious that there is not a good subreddit for crime fiction, while fantasy and scifi have great subs.
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u/Bovvy Jan 14 '17
Morning Star had to be one of my favourites. Pretty happy it won! 😁
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u/PorkRindSalad Jan 14 '17
I honestly found myself the least engaged with this final book of the trilogy. I still enjoyed it, but I cranked through the first couple books in 3 days, and felt content to read the third one over the space of a week. With less emphasis on Darrow, it just felt like a series of short stories with an overall story arc tying them together.
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Jan 14 '17
How was Golden Son? I loved Red Rising but haven't pick the second one up yet.
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u/PorkRindSalad Jan 14 '17
Very much a continuation of the first book in spirit and story. Lots of fun.
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u/PimpinPandas Jan 15 '17
GS was a great book and you should definitely pick it up! but it really made me not like Darrow. He seemed a lot less complex and thoughtful of a character. So I really thought that MS was a perfect continuation because it allowed some other characters to shine, while also fixing some of my issues with Darrow.
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u/mewmewkitty Jan 14 '17
Really? I thought it was the strongest of the series. Maybe that's because I really didn't care for Darrow.
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u/PorkRindSalad Jan 14 '17
How did you MAKE it to book 3 if you didn't like the Darrow-centric first 2 books? I guess I like books where you can root for the hero, like Enders Game, like Mistborne, like most scifi and fantasy, really.
I'm a simple man. Give me an interesting protagonist, and generally show them winning in interesting ways, and I'm happy. I read during my commute for a bit of fun escapism.
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u/AlphaSlays Jan 15 '17
I'm the same way though I will say the series overall had a lot of great characters, can't blame people for maybe liking someone like Sevro more.
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Jan 15 '17
You should try the audiobook for Red Rising; Tim Gerard Reynolds is an incredible narrator and makes the series all the better.
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Jan 15 '17
I feel like the last book was more about Sevro, Mustang, Casius, and Roque than it was about Darrow - which is why I think it's just as good as the first two that were about Darrow's rise.
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Jan 15 '17
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u/The_Bruccolac Jan 15 '17
Agreed, I starting thinking of Darrow as Bugs Bunny saying "Ain't I a stinker?"
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Jan 15 '17
There is loss, though, of main characters in each book. You're not so much worried about Darrow as you are your favorite characters.
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Jan 15 '17
The popularity of this series made me deliberate taking it up but the synopsis and reviews are making me unsure - it seems like a less cerebral, more action sci-fi which is something I want to avoid. I am thinking it is closer to Hunger Games than something like Dune. Is my assessment correct ?
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Jan 15 '17
The first book has Hunger Games meets Ender's Game connotations, but the series overall is like Dune.
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Jan 15 '17
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Jan 15 '17
Thanks, thats what I anticipated reading the reviews.
This book series is, for me, books about teenagers for teenagers. I get why they are popular, but I left that phase behind me a long time ago.
That's exactly my problem with the most popular recommendations from the 'Best Books of the Year' lists - they cater to a reader with different taste, and why I want to be sure before reading 100-odd pages and realizing this is definitely not 4.2 star worthy that Goodreads says it is.
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u/youre_real_uriel Jan 15 '17
Didn't make it to book 2. Usually it doesn't bother me much when stories are derivative but Red Rising was so blatantly hunger games. I didn't like hunger games in the first place so it was not an pleasant read, to say the least. Actually, the first handful of chapters before it went full hunger games were great, but in retrospect, those parallel the introductory chapters of hunger games too, so even that leaves a bitter aftertaste.
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u/currypotnoodle Jan 15 '17
Red Rising was so bad. I had to force myself to finish it. Then I sat and wondered how anyone could think that book was good. Oh well, not for me.
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Jan 14 '17
I'm confused. Death's End by Ciuxin Liu has more upvotes than Obelisk Gate in the scifi thread.
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u/Paddlesons Jan 14 '17
Honestly, how that didn't win is beyond me.
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Jan 15 '17
Agreed. In the running for best scifi of the decade, let alone the year.
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u/Duderino732 Jan 15 '17
Does the series pick up after the first book?
Maybe it was translation but I felt little connection with any character. It was a cool book and a novel idea but not one I'd think people would read more than once.
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u/awildwoodsmanappears Jan 15 '17
Same I enjoyed the first but didn't love it. Struggled with the second and gave up. Been scratching my head at the adoration ever since.
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u/pithyretort Jan 14 '17
The upvotes could have changed after the threads were locked/winners finalized.
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u/Capers0 Jan 14 '17
Obelisk gate isn't really sci-fi it's more fantasy.
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u/hamhead Jan 15 '17
Yeah I mean there's signs the series may turn a little more sci fi but so far there's only hints of that.
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Jan 15 '17
I had trouble finishing Three Body Problem because it was slow. Are the next two any better?
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u/SamSzmith Jan 15 '17
The Dark Forest is amazing, I think Death's End was bad though, but probably better than most sci-fi in 2016. Read The Dark Forest though.
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u/Profition Jan 15 '17
I also bailed on The Three Body Problem. Can Death's End be read as a stand-alone novel?
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u/Colonize_The_Moon Jan 16 '17
I made it through Death's End and absolutely loathed the protagonist by the end. If there was a critical decision to be made, she would screw it up in the worst way possible. And yet things always worked out for her personally, every. single. time.
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u/GregSays Jan 15 '17
OG appears to be the second in a series. Is it a direct sequel? Do I need to read the first book first?
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u/fisk42 Jan 15 '17
I haven't read OG yet but I read the first book. You most likely will absolutely need to read it as it's more of a single story trilogy.
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u/Colonize_The_Moon Jan 16 '17 edited Jan 16 '17
To my very great lack of surprise, another Sanderson novel picked up best Fantasy. It was the same in 2015 too.
I have nothing against the man - I like his work and he's an absolute machine in terms of turning out quality material rapidly - but I do wish that we had a prohibition on submitting Sanderson novels. His massive fan base upvotes them to the point that they crush the competition regardless of how good other works are.
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u/thebankdick Jan 14 '17
Has anyone read Jerusalem by Alan Moore?
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u/A_vision_of_Yuria Jan 15 '17
I have and I think it's better than The Nix, Zero K, and The Girls, the only other books from that category I've read.
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u/QTheMuse Jan 15 '17
I came here to see if it made the cut. I feel like it should have been released as a 3 part series rather than a magnum opus. It's actually a very good book, and I think people are a bit too afraid of the page number. The horrid cover art on the hardcover edition didn't help. This is one of those important novels that come every few years or so. Not only is it an essential to the folk history of England, but it is also a study on the human condition. Alan Moore's Jerusalem is not a book to sit and collect dust on your shelf. Rather, it is a work you must revisit throughout your entire life. Which is exactly what I plan on doing for this short time I inhabit this earth.
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u/patrick_kenzie Jan 15 '17
Honestly, the reason I haven't tackled it besides the page count is I just don't trust a graphic novelist to write a novel. I have much different expectations for a book and a graphic novel. Hopefully I find the time for this some day.
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u/AlphaSlays Jan 15 '17
I'm so happy Morning Star got Sci-fi of the year. Really good book and heavily recommend the series overall.
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u/everything_is_holy Jan 15 '17
I was really disappointed with The Girls. Emma Cline is a good writer, but the story's characters had no depth, there was so much "telling" instead of "showing", and it felt like a YA coming-of-age novel with some cursing and a few graphic scenes.
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u/rglo820 Jan 15 '17
I agree - I thought some of the prose was very nice, but the book as a whole was extremely mediocre.
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u/SamSzmith Jan 15 '17
Yep, it was bad. It was also lifted heavily from a true story and didn't deviate or add anything of value to it.
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u/la-oceane Jan 15 '17
I found it was just...fine. As I read it, I kept wishing I'd picked up Helter Skelter instead. The Manson inspiration was far too heavy-handed. I felt like the author originally wanted to just make a novelization of the true story from the pov of a fictional participant but decided that wasn't "literary" enough.
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Jan 15 '17
I definitely didn't like it, and came here to say essentially this. I literally cannot understand how it is on so many top lists of the year. It was... bad...
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u/theswanoftuonela Jan 15 '17
Oh dear not the whole showing over telling again
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u/everything_is_holy Jan 15 '17
Have you read the novel? Its okay if you liked it, but the premise is Evie is "famous" for being part of this "Manson-like" cult...told in flashbacks. She is mesmerized by Suzanne and Russell, tells us, but gives us no scenes to back it up. Its unclear how she's famous for being in the cult in the first place since nobody knew she was seeing these people and she wasn't involved in any of the crimes. Telling instead of showing can be effective for characters with descriptive depth, but this book lacked that...again, in my opinion.
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u/FutilityInfielder Jan 15 '17 edited Jan 15 '17
Maybe I'm wrong, but from what remember, Evie is explicitly not famous. Almost no one knows about her, albeit brief, presence on the ranch. The two kids in the house do because the male one is the son of an old friend of Evie, whom Evie had told.
I might be wrong, but this review implies the same:
The friend’s teenage son and his girlfriend turn up unexpectedly for a couple of nights and express the usual morbid interest at meeting someone connected to a notorious crime, even if that connection is tangential. As a girl, Evie never actually lived at Russell’s decrepit ranch in the hills outside the dairy town of Petaluma, and she didn’t participate in the slaughter at a famous musician’s house in Marin. Her name doesn’t appear on the Wikipedia page or in any of the lurid books about the murders.
Edit: fixed the link. Scrolled down too far at first and the url had changed.
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u/theswanoftuonela Jan 16 '17
It's unimaginative criticism.
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u/everything_is_holy Jan 16 '17
Unimaginative criticism is using a total 12 words to dispute me. Go back to your reality shows.
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Jan 15 '17
Care to elaborate? I haven't read the book. I'm however fairly used to this being a commonly accepted critique of writing.
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u/Nezmins Jan 14 '17
2016 had positive parts.
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Jan 15 '17
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Jan 15 '17
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u/Moosechops Jan 15 '17
No spoiler, it throws itself right to the issue of mortality right from the beginning. It's short, but that's what made it powerful for me. It's more of a ecocentric journey, nothing hidden.
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Jan 15 '17
The whole book is about a neurosurgeon dying and facing his mortality. How is this a spoiler? Of course he's going to have thoughts to leave with his family.
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u/khutulan Jan 15 '17
Yes!!! Monstress is the shit. Definitely my favorite graphic novel of the year.
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u/mecha-robzilla Jan 14 '17
I don't understand how Homegoing is 2016's best debut with The Nix in second, but The Nix is 2016's best literary fiction.
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u/happysushi Jan 15 '17
I just finished The Nix today, and I was blown away. So good, definitely went on my favorites shelf.
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u/Arrivaderchie Jan 15 '17
I liked it too. That first half felt fairly underwhelming (a lot of his satirical stuff just grates on me) but the latter parts almost totally redeemed it, in my opinion. The entire section describing the Chicago Riots, and the characters being swept up in it, was some of the best writing I'd read all year.
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u/Gezimd Jan 14 '17
So Morning Star is the third part of a trilogy?
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Jan 14 '17
Yes. 10/10 would recommend.
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u/Gezimd Jan 14 '17
Cool. I finished Kafka on the Shore couple of nights ago and was looking for something to read next. Well, this just might be it!
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u/CinnamonSwisher Jan 15 '17
I read Kafka on the shore recently too. And quickly. I loved it personally, it was my first mirakumi and I want more
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Jan 14 '17
Yes, starts with Red Rising which I found quite good.
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u/Gezimd Jan 14 '17
Good to know! Is Morning Star the final part of the trilogy btw, I mean is it finished? Dont want to 'Kingkiller' myself again.
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u/killing1sbadong Jan 14 '17
It is the third book in the trilogy. There is an indication at the end of the book that he will add to the story, turning it into a saga, but the trilogy's story arc completes with Morning Star.
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u/AlphaSlays Jan 15 '17
The first trilogy ended with Morning Star, the next trilogy will start later this year with Iron Gold.
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u/d4rl Jan 15 '17
What the hell. Rothfuss was all like - how can people do this. And then he did that.
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u/AmericanMustache Jan 14 '17 edited Jan 15 '17
[POSSIBLE DARK MATTER SPOILER] But not really
I really can't believe Dark Matter is anywhere on this list.
Reading that book was like watching somebody look for a key in a shoe-box. Only, there is just one key and an almost infinite number of shoe-boxes they must search through. And you, as the observer, know that the key that they're looking for is in the very last box they're going to look in; and you find this torturous fact out the very moment the person starts looking in the very first box. So there you are, sitting there know you have to watch this person go through every single box. Also, you know there is nothing that will prevent them from looking into every single box before they get to the last one. On top of that, the person that is looking for the key suddenly starts playing around with each box for too long before deciding to try the next one. But then, they also start spending more and more time at each successive box, so that it not only appears to be taking longer each time, it actually is. This is what it was like for me to progress through the chapters of this book. I figured out very early on what was going to happen with the character (I'm pretty sure many people do) - and then I spent the rest of the book just wanting to get there - hoping I was somehow wrong, like there was some surprise that was going to throw me off course - but very slowly and tediously confirming that I knew exactly where the book was going the entire time.
Also, the writing sucked.
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u/quarrystone Jan 15 '17
I get this-- totally.
But the thing is, it's like a Dan Brown sci-fi book. This is the type of book you hand to somebody who doesn't read and say 'You know what? Try this. You might like it.'
It's not super-complex, or particularly intellectual, but it's an easy recommendation (as a bookseller) and the concept is one that wouldn't be out of place on a Netflix show or blockbuster movie.
I'm not surprised by its high ratings on here or on Goodreads-- it's an immediately accessible Sci-Fi novel that doesn't need to be broken down or analyzed. It's just a swift read. And most people-- most who don't read-- only need that. This is fine entry-level-sci-fi.
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Jan 15 '17
Shhh... you're supposed to bash this book here. C'mon, dude, it's in the FAQ.
Dark Matter was brain candy: it was a light, fun read. I liked it, too.
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u/Paperandslag Jan 15 '17
the concept is one that wouldn't be out of place on a Netflix show or blockbuster movie.
I think this gets close to my issue with the book. It didn't read like a novel for me. It's basically a screenplay where the writer replaced the sluglines with first person self-doubt and did a cursory format change for the dialogue. Everything reads in the present-tense minimalism of a screen play. There's very little reliance on scent or touch, it's all looks and that's fine but that's also boring when I can just cut the foreplay and watch SyFy. It ended up feeling like a good premise that never really dug into itself because there's an expectation of it to be filmed later. Too much Broccoli not enough beef. "The beef will be added in film production."
I didn't hate it or feel scifi needs to be broken down or analyzed, but I'd have liked the writing to be more fully-formed and given me a stronger impression that I'm in the thick of things.
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Jan 15 '17
Completely agree. The book felt too much like it was a side episode of Sliders, and the long columns of single sentence paragraphs just became annoying - it tries so hard to feel fast-paced, but the overall plot just isn't that compelling. The whole thing turns on action movie plot cliches.
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u/The_Real_JS Jan 15 '17
I honestly thought it was one of the better books I read last year. I liked the writing,I liked the characterisation, and I found the plot rather gripping. Different strokes for different folks as they say.
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u/currypotnoodle Jan 15 '17
I still want to know how #2 was able to send the original DIRECTLY back to his own world. When the original soends all his vials trying desperately to get to a certain world. Also we then find out the box only works because of thought, but who was doing the thinking when the original was sent back through the box by #2?
These blatant holes killed the fun story for me.
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Jan 15 '17
Blake Crouch also wrote the Wayward Pines series, which was pretty much devoid of literary value (though somewhat enjoyable to read, even if it mostly consisted of people being chased through the woods and homages to Twin Peaks).
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u/quarrystone Jan 15 '17
I agree entirely-- I read the trilogy because it was interesting and easy. It's book candy-- you can read it like nothing, and at the end, who cares? You got through three books in only a small amount of time because they were easy and baseless. There's nothing wrong with that.
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Jan 15 '17
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u/AmericanMustache Jan 15 '17 edited Jan 15 '17
I read it in a day was like wow, can't wait to give that one away.
That is perfect.
I spent the whole book waiting for it to get better for one stupid reason; because it was on so many must-read list. Oddly enough, though, I did learn something positive from it that I put into practice: That was the last book that I put so much trust in ratings on. In part because of that, I have drastically improved my enjoyment of the books I end up choosing and finishing.
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u/TheOneArya Jan 15 '17
It's ok in my opinion. It had a decent premise, but the execution was a little sloppy. Worth the read eventually IMO, but not a must-read.
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u/Relax_Redditors Jan 15 '17
Thank you r/books for not choosing "the underground railroad" like all the critics out there. That book was god awful.
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u/acogs53 Jan 15 '17
That book made me SO angry! The characters are never developed, so you don't feel any emotion for any of them. The story that gets told is "meh". I told my friends to just watch 12 Years a Slave and Django Unchained for a better, more accurate portrayal of that time in history. I hate that book.
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u/microload Jan 15 '17
Honestly why do people like that book? I'm confused how so many critics can love such a pile of trash.
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u/SomePplHaveRealProbs Jan 15 '17
I wonder if people actually read Hillbilly Elegy. The topic is fascinating and seemed such a promising memoir from a unique perspective but it was just a rambly story about a guy who grew up with a family that wasn't that different from 80% of all working class families in America.
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u/Yosafbrige Jan 15 '17
Yeah. I'm like halfway through and it's kinda underwhelming.
I read Trevor Noah's book right before and thought it was better and similar as an autobiography of a unusual family life led by a Matriarch.
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u/Linzabee Jan 15 '17
I agree. I read it. It wasn't mind-blowing, and I thought it was going to go somewhere really big, but I felt like the end just fizzled out.
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u/trigun500 Jan 15 '17
I couldn't agree more. I read it just because of all the praise it got (and I lived in the Midwest and viewed this type of poverty so I was generally interested) but I was very underwhelmed. I genuinely wouldn't recommend it to anyone..
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u/currypotnoodle Jan 15 '17
Totally agree. I think this is another case of people voting for it bc they saw articles about it in magazines but have never read the book themselves.
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Jan 28 '17
Just finished it, I was very disappointed after all the praise. While the family history was compelling, by the time J.D. Vance gets serious about school it turns into a brag fest, and by the end he's really on a high horse about the white lower-middle class. The first 1/3rd of the book is interesting and intriguing, the final 1/3rd is a boring mess about how awesome J.D Vance is.
I expect Vance will be a name to know in politics within 10 years.
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u/EpicCakes Jan 15 '17
When I saw the author for Homecoming was Yaa Gaasi at first I thought you were just really excited that it won.
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u/Sihnar Jan 15 '17
Morning star winning is just proof that reddit is mostly made up of teenagers. It's a fun series, but it's more young adult than sci fi.
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u/KappaccinoNation Jan 15 '17
I'm a simple man. I see Sanderson getting more praise, I upvote.
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u/PM_ME_UR_VAGINA_PLZZ Jan 15 '17
Sanderson is on human. He's a damn machine. This year we will see the third book of Stormlight Archives series. He churns out novels like milk from a cow's teat.
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u/Beecakeband Jan 14 '17
I've been meaning to read Homegoing for ages this makes me even more excited to try it
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Jan 14 '17
I just finished it and it was quite good. I found it less interesting once it reached the twentieth century later in the book, but I think that has more to do with my lack of interest in twentieth-century America than the quality of the story or writing.
Most interestingly (and excitingly) I think you will have a solid basic understanding of slavery in Africa and America during the period it discusses after reading this book (if you don't already). It is incredibly well-researched. She even includes some of her sources in the back of the book.
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u/kovixen Jan 15 '17
It was my favorite book of 2016 out of the 69 that I read. I wasn't interested in it at all, picked it up from the library on a lark, and once I started I couldn't stop reading it.
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u/twosnapsup Jan 15 '17
It really got to me. At times (especially towards the end), you lose track of the thread of the characters a little, but I actually think that makes her larger point about interconnectedness and the generational impact of systemic oppression. I felt so invested in each and every character and it was sad to leave them at the end of every chapter.
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u/RomanovaRoulette Jan 15 '17
Same! It's been on my TBR for quite some time so I'm thrilled to see that it's so highly reviewed.
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Jan 14 '17
I loved The Nix, Homegoing, and Evicted! Really enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy as well. I wasn't a big fan of When Breath Becomes Air but can appreciate why it resonated with a lot of people.
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Jan 15 '17
Glad to see evicted on here. Working in Milwaukee i thought it was a fantastic piece depicting the housing issues many people face.
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u/Cambro88 Jan 15 '17
I'm late to the party, but Max Ritvo's book of poetry "Four Incarnations" is excellent. It is not always the most accessible, but it is dreadfully original and by the 4th movement I was captured. Ritvo, for those who do not know, is a man in his early 20s who passed of terminal cancer the month before his book was released. Mortality touches the book, but it does not color or dominate it. Gluck described it best, "...[Ritvo] has done things never before done with the language."
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u/synester302 Mar 14 '17
Have these been done for prior years? If so, is there an archive?
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u/vincoug Mar 15 '17
Yes, this is the 4th year we've done this. You can find previous threads in our wiki here.
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u/TheAngelofSouls Jan 15 '17
Morningstar was a brillant finish to one of my favorite Sci-fi trilogies, I'm glad to see its number 1.
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u/RuinEX Jan 15 '17
I didn't even know this was going on but I'm really happy that Brandon Sandersons 'The Bands of Mourning' won Best Fantasy! :)
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Jan 15 '17
The third Stormlight book will definitely win next year when it releases in November.
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u/DoubtfulChagrin Jan 15 '17
I enjoyed it, I just finished re-reading it today (and finally made the connection to Secret History). But I'm surprised Steven Erikson's Fall of Light wasn't even nominated. Bands of Mourning was fun but Fall of Light was deeply moving, thoughtful, and in all, a better book. Now, I suspect Stormlight 3 will be a different story...
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Jan 15 '17
How many of these are not US writers? This sub needs to broaden its horizons.
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u/brownspectacledbear Jan 16 '17
To be fair, I personally very rarely read books that came out in the same year. I don't know about the fiction nominations, but the short story nomination was pretty much only me. And while i had read a couple collections from Mexico. They weren't published in 2016. I agree with you, but it's not unexplainable
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u/mdRAW Jan 15 '17
I'm so happy that Morning Star won best sci-fi. I love his entire series and couldn't recommend it enough !
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u/vivashan Jan 15 '17
I'm surprised that a book about white poverty would win, wherein the author blames a group's own culture for their despair, and not structural issues.
Nancy Issenberg's White Trash was a phenomenally better book about the subject, and adequately points out how the settler elites destroyed both poor whites and blacks at the same time, and how besides a few moments (i.e. LBJ), that demographic was never properly helped by government. It is about structure, not about culture.
Vance isn't wrong in portraying life as it was, I have no issue with that, but he's a staunch conservative and the argument he develops is problematic.
This review has more: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/books/review-in-hillbilly-elegy-a-compassionate-analysis-of-the-poor-who-love-trump.html
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u/g0aliegUy Jan 16 '17
I liked Hillbilly Elegy because the characters were interesting and the story was engaging. It was a really quick and enjoyable read. But I completely disagree with the conclusions that Vance draws from his experiences. I've even watched some interviews with him where he's challenged on his opinions, and he doesn't seem to be well-informed about the systematic (both in government and in business) problems that disproportionately affect the poor. He's very quick to write those factors off in favor of this idea that the poor white underclass is poor because of some moral failing.
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u/REkTeR Jan 15 '17
I'm surprised to see Stiletto make it so far. I enjoyed it but I didn't feel like it was anything that special, especially compared to how much I liked The Rook.
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u/SkodaSucks Jan 14 '17
This is great, thanks! One thing though, why not just rank them 1st to Xth, instead of the runner up thing?
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u/quarrystone Jan 15 '17
Dark Matter-- 1st runner-up in Sci-fi, I can't recommend more. It's excellent easy-reading, even if you're not a sci-fi fan, because Blake Crouch writes it in a way that makes it so easily-digestible that it goes by like nothing. It's the equivalent of book candy.
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u/margybee Jan 28 '17
Thank you for this list -- I've been out of the loop for the last year and am very glad to have a reading list for the coming months.
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u/Jaxtol Feb 02 '17
The Red Rising Series (golden son) really deserves more exposure.
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u/bsabiston Jan 14 '17
The Nix was extremely disappointing IMO
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Jan 14 '17
Huh, it was one of my favorite books I read last year! What didn't you like about it?
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u/NoNeed2RGue Jan 14 '17
ITT: Readers can't agree on anything.
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u/Cudizonedefense Jan 15 '17
Are we supposed to? It's not like there's only one possible taste in books to have...
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u/SaintBrutus Jan 15 '17
I'm going to try to read a lot of this. I want to see what wild notions Reddit has about books ;)
Thank you for this!
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u/Air-Bo Jan 15 '17
Happy to see Pierce Brown here. That red rising trilogy was hands down the funniest rollercoaster ride I can remember reading.
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u/iiWolf Jan 15 '17
Brandon Sanderson is incredible. The Stormlight Archives and the Mistborn series are the best books I have ever read.
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u/musicsexnotions Jan 15 '17
This is the coolest post I have read on reddit since a very long time. Thank you, I look forward to reading many of these shortly.
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u/RealChris_is_crazy Jan 15 '17
Morning star ❤.I remember waiting what felt like forever for it to come out. 10/10 book. (3rd and final book in red rising book series)
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u/SkaterSmurf Jan 15 '17
Awesome books to catch up on, thanks! Just one suggestion, could you add the Author names next to the book titles next time? Thanks!
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u/GaZzErZz Jan 15 '17
For Morning Star, should we read the earlier books in the Trilogy first?
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u/Duderino732 Jan 15 '17
Yes definitely. Would ruin the series to start off on the last book.
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u/MiltenTheNewb Jan 15 '17
For me the best book was the new Cody Mcfadyen, but there isnt even a topic for thrillers..
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u/dante_falconari Jan 15 '17
I would have liked to see "99" by Wayne Gretzky. I know it's really a book for hockey fans by a hockey fan, but damn was it good.
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u/sylvergrey_ Jan 15 '17
This should have the ff: Romance Dystopian Children's Horror Thriller Auto/Biography Comics Non Fiction Historical
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Jan 15 '17
So I just read the description of Morning Star and then afterwards found out it's book 3 of a series. How much did I just spoil on myself?
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u/benjiprice Jan 15 '17
If I hated V.E. Schwab's Vicious, will I like Gathering of Shadows. I know they're not part of the same story but just wondering if I should just never read anything from that author, despite tons of people loving her work.
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u/patrick_kenzie Jan 15 '17
I got about half way through the nix before I couldn't go any further. Not terrible, and I certainly see why people enjoy it, but I some of the praise it has gotten is a bit overboard in my opinion. Some of the Goodreads reviews made my eyes roll in the back of my head, including a comparison to david foster wallace based on the writing.
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u/lowry4president Jan 14 '17
Is there past threads anywhere for the best books of 20xx for r/books and if so where can i find them