# Top ten books I read in 2011



## yogini2 (Oct 27, 2008)

It's time to list the ten best for the year.  I really enjoy seeing what other people read and get some great ideas for next year.  Here is my top ten:
1.  Perdido Street Station.  China Mieville.  I read it once a year now.
2.  Zoo City.  Lauren Beukes
3.  The Ask and the Answer.  Patrick Ness
4.  Count of Monte Cristo, the 2011 edition.  
5.  Moxyland. Lauren Beukes
6.  The City and The City. China Mieville
7.  The Story of my Boyhood and Youth.  John Muir
8.  Inside Scientology.  Janet Reitman
9.  Lock Artist.  Steve Hamilton
10.  The Warlock.  Michael Scott


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## mscottwriter (Nov 5, 2010)

Wow...I haven't heard of any of those books!

I'm not sure I can do top ten, but I can do top three:

- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
- 11/22/63 by Stephen King


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## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

Here's my list:

1. The Cranberry Hush - Ben Monopoli
2. The Painting - Fiona K. Wallace
3. Knight Errant - K.D. Sarge
4. Bob the Book - David Pratt
5. What They Always Tell Us - Martin Wilson
6. Farseer Trilogy (three books) - Robin Hobb (tie)
6. The Tawny Man Trilogy (three books) Robin Hobb (tie)
8. I am Not Myself These Days - Josh Kilmer-Purcell (tie)
8. The Bucolic Plague - Josh Kilmer-Purcell (tie)
10. I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth The Trip - John Donovan
10. Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand

Honorable mention: Come Unto These Yellow Sands - Josh Lanyon

Read in Paperback Best Book: Wingmen - Ensan Case (long out of print, will be republished as an ebook in February 2012. Watch for it!)

A few of these came from the Quasi-Official Game: no. 10; no. 8 which lead me to read the second no. 8; and the first book in the Farseer Trilogy, which turned into 6 weeks of non-stop reading...6 books of many thousands of locations and pages. I couldn't put them down. Now my son is hooked on the series and has started reading a third trilogy by the same author, The Liveship Traders.

L


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## ZiKehimkar (Dec 10, 2011)

I don't have a top ten, but my favorite reads this year were:

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (saw the trailer and told myself I had to check out the book. Very quick read, but it was a great children's book. I have not seen the movie, at least not yet)


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## flipside (Dec 7, 2011)

Teeth edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Above/Below by Stephanie Campisi/Ben Peek
Jack o' the Hills by C.S.E. Cooney
Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere
Brave New Worlds edited by John Joseph Adams
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine
Heartbreak & Magic by Ian Rosales Casocot
A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz


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## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

here are my top 10.  numbers 6-10 are not necessarily in that specific order and its entirely possible that 11/22/63 will be on the list before all is said and done.

1. Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons-Lorna Landvik
2. Night Road- Kristin Hannah
3. The First Day of The Rest of my Life-Cathy Lamb
4. The flipside of Here(charybdis,#5)-KA Thompson
5. Saving Ceecee Honeycutt-Beth Hoffman
6. Water for Elephants-Sara Gruen
7. The Detective Wade Jackson series(excluding the latest one out this week)- LJ Sellers
8. Its Not about the Cookies-KA Thompson
9. The Love Goddess' Cooking School-Melissa Senate
10.The Thirteenth Tale-Diane Setterfield


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## djgross (May 24, 2011)

1 - 5 (in no particular order)

Daughter of Smoke and Bone Laini Taylor 
The Affair: A Reacher Novel (Jack Reacher) Lee Child
Magic Slays (Kate Daniels) Ilona Andrews 
Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson 
The Dovekeepers Alice Hoffman

5 - 10 (in no particular order)

Rules of Civility: A Novel Amor Towles
The Language of Flowers: A Novel Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World Michael Lewis
One Was a Soldier: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson / Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) Julia Spencer-Fleming
The Night Circus Erin Morgenstern


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## busy91 (Feb 27, 2009)

Let me see if I can think of 10.

1.  The Help -  Kathryn Stockett
2.  The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
3.  Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
4.  The Talk-Funny Girl - Roland Merullo
5.  The Shunning - Beverly Lewis
6.  Imaginary Jesus - Matt Mikalatos
7.  Room - Emma Donoghue
8.  The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
9.  A Year Without Autumn - Liz Kessler
10. The Paper Bag Christmas - Kevin Alan Milne

Well that wasn't hard at all.


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## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

My top 5:

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
The Night Circus
The Help
The Thirteenth Tale
The Inheritance Trilogy (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms,The Broken Kingdoms,The Kingdom of Gods)

My 6-10 in no particular order:

A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five
Ghost Story: A Novel of the Dresden Files
The Android's Dream
In Her Name: First Contact
The Art of Racing in the Rain

I read a lot of science books too. These were my top science reads of the year:

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture


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## yogini2 (Oct 27, 2008)

So many books, so little time.  Many books I've never heard of.  I forgot about The Help.  It should have been in my top ten books.


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## cagnes (Oct 13, 2009)

In no particular order...

11/22/63 by Stephen King
Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning 
A Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel
I Do, I Do, I Do by Maggie Osborne 
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 
The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley 
Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin 
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon


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## CharlieLange (Nov 22, 2010)

1. Starship Troopers, Heinlein (reread)
2. Battle Royale, Koushun Takami
3. Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein
4. A Game of Thrones, R. R. Martin
5. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
6. The Hobbit, Tolkien (reread)
7. Galaxy Unknown, Thomas De Prima
8. Space Prison, Tom Godwin
9. Damned, Chuck Pahlaniuck (sp?)
10. Purging of Kadillus, Gav Thorpe


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## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

CharlieLange said:


> 1. Starship Troopers, Heinlein (reread)


I read Starship Troopers for the first time this year and thought it was a fabulous book. I gave it 5 stars on goodreads. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting.


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

A few bests:
Moneyball, Michael Lewis
The Bin Ladens, Steve Coll
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
A Bright Shining Lie, Neil Sheehan
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

Mixed emotions:
A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore.

Most disappointing: 
The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam


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## Casey W (Oct 10, 2011)

I'll have to say "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" trilogy.



Best indie read--zombie fest "The Gathering Dead" by Stephen Knight.


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## CharlieLange (Nov 22, 2010)

drenfrow said:


> I read Starship Troopers for the first time this year and thought it was a fabulous book. I gave it 5 stars on goodreads. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting.


I saw the movie when I was in high school and instantly fell in love with it despite the campiness. Even still, I did not read the book until a friend of mine kept asking, have you read it yet, have you read it yet? I've probably read it 4-5 times now. My only issue with it is it is too short. Just when you think you have reached the calm before the big ending, it just sort of stops. I respect the ending, but wish there was more.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Here are my Top 10 for the year. I re-read alot of books this year that I absolutely adore but I dropped all of the from the list first ... so these are all ones I read for the first time in 2011 and are no particular order ......

1. *The Cranberry Hush* by Ben Monopoli
2. *For the Win* by Cory Doctorow
3. *A Land of Ash* by David Dalglish
4. *The Mote in God's Eye* by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
5. *Wearing the Cape* by Marion G. Harmon
6. *Feed* by Mira Grant
7. *The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms* by N. K. Jemisin
8. *Quarter Share* by Nathan Lowell
9. *Starship Troopers* by Robert A. Heinlein
10. *Greyhound* by Steffan Piper


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## Andre Jute (Dec 18, 2010)

So many real readers in here, and I had so little time for discretionary reading this year, I'm almost embarrassed by my little offering.

I read one piece of truly great literature this year:

Truth: A Novel by Peter Temple

It's a book about the corruption of a good man, a policeman in Melbourne, a city I once lived in, considered by many the greatest city in the world. The city, and the parched landscape of the outback, are tangible characters in the story.

If you're looking for a cozy tale of redemption, or even a hard edged PI tale like Temple's earlier Jack Irish novels, which hid the anger under the wit, look elsewhere. This novel can stand up with anything Dostoievsky wrote, but the bumps just under the smoothly engaging style is the grit of corruption and the destruction of the man's family by his job.

I'm reminded of two great favourites, Ross Thomas and Richard Condon, the former for the smile hovering over the abyss, the latter for that deep vein of anger hardly papered over by fashionable faux cynicism.

As an aside, I remember walking down a street in another Australian city, Adelaide, with Condon, who in the oppressive heat was dressed in a three piece woollen suit, complete with bowler hat and tightly rolled umbrella, passing for an English gentleman, only the alert eyes giving away the writer taking notes as I stopped by a man in shirtsleeves talking to pavement artists and introduced him as the Governor of the State, the Queen's Representative on Earth, at least in South Australia. I imagine Temple is the same; Temple and I, not quite incidentally, are both expatriate South Africans, from the same sort of background, so I can probably approximate what goes on in his head.


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## Colin Taber (Apr 4, 2011)

I haven't had nearly enough time to read this year as I would have liked, so I don't think I can get to 10, but here's my notable:

Treespeaker by Katie Stewart
The Black God's War by Moses
Land of Ash - a shorts collection which I think lists under the name of David Dalglish
Collapse  by Jared Diamond

...and that's probably it. The above are not in any particular order.


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## yogini2 (Oct 27, 2008)

Now that the year is over, everyone that wants to can list their top ten books for 2011!  I usually find some that will make it on my 2012 list.


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## talleylynn (Apr 24, 2009)

1.  The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
2.  A Forest of Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (#2 in the Saga of the Seven Suns Series - #1 was good also)
3.  One Hit Wonder by Charlie Carillo
4.  One Day by David Nichols
5.  The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart
6.  The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachnman
7.  The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
8.  Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku
9.  To Heaven by Water by Justin Cartwright
10. Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (#2 in the Mars trilogy - #1 was good also)
11. Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude by Neal Pollack
12. The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux

Oops! I have a top twelve list from 2011


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## Alan Simon (Jul 2, 2010)

My reading level was the lowest it's been in 20 years since I'm no longer traveling for business, which is where I did most of my reading (solo lunches and dinners, airplane flights, etc.). Of the three or four books I did read, only one would make my list in any other year:
*
11/22/63 *by Stephen King

So as I'm typing this I realize I need to get back to reading in 2012...lot of good suggestions on the lists below, thanks. I did get Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs as well as *Good to Great* for holiday gifts so this year will be a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.


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## joanne29 (Jun 30, 2009)

Here is my list

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2.  102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer
3. Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford
4. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson 
5. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
6. Tears of Rage by John Walsh
7. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
8. The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart
9. Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning 
10. The Girl Who Played With Fire


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## Lisa_Follett (Oct 22, 2011)

The following are my favorite reads of 2011 (in no particular order):

Revolutions by Jennifer Donnelly
The Wild Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn
Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley (began in 2011, finished in 2012)


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

1. Divergent by Veronica Roth
2. The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer
3. Cane River by Lalita Tademy
4. The  Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
5. Night Circus
6. Language of Flowers


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## ElisabethGFoley (Nov 20, 2011)

Here's my ten favorite reads of 2011, in the order I read them:

*The Magnificent Ambersons* by Booth Tarkington
*Mrs. Miniver * by Jan Struther
*Once On a Time * by A.A. Milne
*Land of the Burnt Thigh * by Edith Eudora Kohl
*Points West * by B.M. Bower
*Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town * by Stephen Leacock
*Laddie * by Gene Stratton-Porter
*Green For Danger * by Christianna Brand
*Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West* by Dorothy Wickenden
*Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries * by Melville Davisson Post


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

I don't keep track of the books I read, so a top ten would be tough. 
But here are the top few, in the order they come into my mind, that I remember without straining   :

The Bible 
The Sense of an Ending
Never Let Me Go
People of the Book
True Grit.


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