Everybody and their third cousin is coming up with their lists for best books of the year. (And everybody thinks the NYT’s list was stupid.) Here’s what I loved in 2005, tell the world what you loved!

Kipling’s Choice by Geert Spillebeen - it’s a YA novel about Rudyard Kipling’s son and WWI but more than that it is the story of every young man from upper class England who went off to die in the trenches in France. It’s such a small, elegant, gorgeous anti-war novel that manages to oppose war merely by telling it like it is. It’s a beauty and I wish everyone would read it.

The Charles Fort With Love by Caitlin Kiernan - an excellent collection of urban fantasy short stories that is gothic, weird and utterly enthralling. She sucks you in with all the dark possibilities in the world at the very beginning and never lets you go. Kiernan, quite frankly, could give Bradbury a run for his money (and I worship at the altar of Ray Bradbury, so that says alot).

Bradbury Speaks by Ray Bradbury - If you are a fan, this essay/interview collection is crack in a dustjacket. If you aren’t then this is the book to read to understand what it takes to be a better writer and also, a better human.

The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch - A lyrical coming of age story about a boy who finds a giant squid in Puget Sound and finds himself in the ensuing chaos. I bought six copies of this book for Christmas gifts because I know my whole family will love it as well.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow - This book should not work. It is an insane story based on a young man who is the child of a washing machine and a mountain. Right now you are shaking your head and thinking I’m crazy but I swear - I promise you - it is fantastic and proof that some writers really are just born with an amazing gift.

The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman - It’s not The Da Vinci Code, it’s better. This mix of history and fiction combines into a modern mystery about alchemy and murder. It surprised me, made me think and impressed the hell out of me. If you want an intelligent adventure ride, this is your ticket (and E Ticket, no less!)

Okay, my short list (which will probably include The Big Why by Michael Winter very soon!) Now, tell us what yours is!

I’m still thinking about this—I know that Jeff Ford’s The Girl in the Glass will be on my list and Paul Park’s A Princess of Roumania. Oh, and Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners too.

I’m reading Princess for Roumania now, and loving it.  If it doesn’t somehow self-destruct in the last third, it will be one of my favorites.  And Magic for Beginners, which is definitely my favorite collection of the year. 

Other faves include Mister Boots by Carol Emshwiller, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, the new edition of Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings. 

Those are the ones that come immediately to mind because I’ve written about them all relatively recently.  Need to go through old notes and posts and such to dig up others.  I sort of forget what was this year, what was last year, and what’s next year.  Oh, Natives and Exotics by Jane Allison, a book I felt was okay enough while reading it, but that I simply haven’t been able to get out of my mind since.  And Our Napoleon in Rags by Kirby Gann, my LitBlog Co-op nominee.  (Speaking of which, I think my favorite novel of the year is one that was just nominated for the LBC, so I can’t really talk about it yet.  Grrr.  I think we’ll make the announcement in January, though, and then I’ll be singing its praises to everyone who comes anywhere near me.)

--Matt

Matthew - I second that on Natives and Exotics. I reviewed it for Moorish Girl and thought it was pretty good, certainly one to recommend but the longer I think about it the more I like it. I also have to mention a chapbook by Joe Hill - Voluntary Committal - the dark side of the Alice in Wonderland idea. Man - did that ever blow my mind!

Matthew Cheney - 05 December 2005 01:03 PM

I’m reading Princess for Roumania now, and loving it.  If it doesn’t somehow self-destruct in the last third, it will be one of my favorites.

I will warn you that the book just sort of stops, since it was a victim of one of Tor’s infamous splits. So the ending is sort of a tease for The Tourmaline. But it’s still fabulous.

I read “Voluntary Committal” in 20th Century Ghosts, and liked it a lot, although my favorites of the stories are “My Father’s Masks” and “Pop Art”.  I’m going to post an interview with Joe soon at The Mumpsimus—he talks a lot about skirting between mainstream and genre writing, between fantasy and realism, etc.

And I finished Princess of Roumania last night—I’d been warned about the ending, since when I began I didn’t realize it was a series book, and I’m glad I didn’t, because it would have slipped to the bottom of the pile if I had.  (I’ve vowed not to buy any of Tor’s split books, but Kelly gave me this one, so technically...) But it stops at a point that still feels resolved, and the pacing in the book is just so brilliant that I was really entranced the whole way.  I’ve rarely read a book that so perfectly balances character and action, allowing both to be complex and engaging.

--Matt

Although not all of these were published in 2005, they are the best books I’ve read so far this year (in no particular order):

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The History of Love by Nichole Krauss
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Waiting by Ha Jin

I have a feeling that by the end of this month at least two other books will be added to this list.  Of the list above, The History of Love by Nichole Krauss has been my favorite.

I just finished Mister Boots and will second Matt’s recommendation. This is definitely one of the books of the year, along with her latest collection I LIVE WITH YOU. Colleen, I think you’d really love MB.

I also thought Rupert Thomson’s Divided Kingdom was pretty wonderful.

I am currently swimming in a ton of end of year/beginning of next year reading. Just started Kevin Brockmeier’s new one—lovely so far. I suppose at some point I’ll try to put together an Actual List for 2005. And for short stories too.

Bummer.  I’m about twenty years behind in my reading.  Suttree, 100 Years of Solitude, Alias Grace, and soon, Cannery Row are my most recents.  Oh yes, and Aristotle’s Poetics. The few current books I’ve read aren’t really outstanding.

Today, I’m not remembering all I’ve read, but since Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas really came out in 2004, I’d like to add in Liam Callanan’s Cloud Atlas for my Best Reads this year, too.  I believe they marketed it YA, but if adult fiction is more layered and the telling more sophisticated than this, I don’t know I’m ready to read it.  I loved his descriptions of the wildness of Alaska where a young soldier is sent to anticipate a Japanese invasion by bombs floating across the ocean from delicate paper balloons.

The narrator is one of three characters in a charged love triangle during WWII, and the story shimmers between what happened then and the soldier’s present-day life as an old priest who is serving as deathbed companion and religious adversary to a native shaman.  For bearing so much action around explosives and the ugly realities of war and death, the book’s events have the nebulous reality of an arctic fever dream.  The narrator and language are wonderfully poetic and the images and ideas become meditations on a theme.  I still haven’t decided how I think it ended, which usually I don’t forgive.  But as they say, if it works…

The one book that I really loved this year was A.S. Byatt’s Possession.

I also liked Shannon Bramer’s collection of Poetry, The Refrigerator Memory, and am enjoying Savyon Liebrecht’s “A Good Place for the Night” short story collection (haven’t finished it yet, though).