Wednesday 11 January 2012

Books that I have read so far this year.


I am off to a good start with book reading this year, partially because I’ve been feeling ill I have just been doing as little as possible, so curling up reading books has been it for me this year so far.

I’ve been watching a lot of people on twitter saying they are trying to read 50 or 100 books or however many.  I don’t set myself a target; sometimes I can go a few weeks without reading a book if I’m tired.  But, I have already read 9 books so far this year, not bad in 11 days.

So what have I read this year, 2 Fantasy, 5 Crime, and 2 Sci-Fi novels. At least these are the categories according to Amazon. 5 of these I read as paperbacks and the other 4 on my kindle.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson
Birdman by Mo Hayder
The Treatment by Mo Hayder
Ritual by Mo Hayder
Skin by Mo Hayder
Gone by Mo Hayder
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Leviathan Wakes by James S A Corey

I somehow think that I will not keep up reading at this rate for the rest of the year.  The good news is that I liked all of 9 books that I’ve read. 
My favourite of the 9 has to be Leviathan Wakes.  It’s a fun space opera, yes things are looking grim for our group of heroes and maybe for humanity, but it’s fast and entertaining.  It’s Space Opera at its best.  It’s a while since I’ve read a full blown space opera like this.  It had sensible science, but it didn’t try to overwhelm you with it.  The action kept coming thick and fast.  It could have been a perfectly good stand alone novel, but like most books these days it’s a series, but the book did finish on a sensible ending, and yes I did want to know what happened next, but I wasn’t left on a cliff hanger, which was nice. I’ve written a slightly longer review for fantastybookreview as I don’t think they have one on their website.  I’ll put a link to it when the review is live.

Followed in order by Elantris, Warbreaker, Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World by Haruki Murakami, followed by the Mo Hayder books.  I really enjoyed all of them though. 

Elantris and Warbreaker are two stand-alone novels by Brandon Sanderson, and I think it’s a nice change, because everything in fantasy just seems to be one long series these days.  You seem to have to wait 4 years to find out what’s going on in a series; I enjoy stand-alone stories set in the same realm as well.  But these are nice, just two easy to read fantasy novels, almost grown up David Eddings, they are just good fun.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World is an interesting novel.  It’s slightly dry which I think, and I found the middle of the book slightly to clinical, it just felt to neat, but then I guess that’s what the hero’s life was.  I really got into it by the end and end ending had a real emotional impact, which shows how I got into it by then.  Great Start, Great ending, but it just wandered a bit in the middle for my taste.

The Mo Hayder books I enjoyed because the characters had a bit more bite to them then the average characters in Crime series, although I do have to admit some of the trouble they got into was a bit ridiculous and I’m not really sure how they did not get stuck in front of a disciplinary board, or put behind bars… but, hey they were entertaining.

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