It’s another top ten list to round out the year, this time highlighting my favourite books read this year. This time I’m doing my best to only select one book per author or series. It’s a little early, but the books I’m reading now aren’t likely to make it into my top ten this time (if they surprise me I’ll fit them into the next year’s list!)
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Top Ten Books Read This Year (2023)
It’s that time of year again! Where I go through all the books I’ve read this year and dig out my very best favourites, then relentlessly compliment those same books for making this year’s reading so great. This year was a particularly difficult one to narrow down, with five books being no brainers at the top of the list, and probably about fifteen or so more being really good.
What’s interesting this year is how many sci-fi books have made the list – I think it speaks to my shifting tastes that sci-fi is getting more and more priority as I’m finding a lot of fantasy failing to excite me quite as much. There are exceptions to this rule, as you’ll see further down the list. I’ve also found myself more interested in books that play around with narrative, with three mosaic-style novels making the list. I usually try not to include more than one book from a series, although this has not been necessary this year.
With that out of the way, let’s begin!
Continue readingTop Twenty Favourite Series (2023)
It’s that time of year again, where I rank my top favourite series, trilogies and duologies by the nebulous qualities of ‘what I like’.
These series will be exclusively speculative fiction in nature, and I must have read at least two books in the series before it can make the list.
Like last time, this list is in order of least to most favourite, but really I love all these series, and any could move above the others if my feelings change. And there are so many other series and books that I really enjoy too! These are, for me, the best and most enjoyable.
Not too many changes this year as I haven’t progressed many series, but hindsight is shifting some entries in the list around, especially lower down the list, and one new entry has beaten the odds to get a top ten spot.
You can find last year’s list here: Top Twenty Favourite Series
Continue readingTop Ten Books Read This Year (2022)
It’s that time of year again! Where I go through all the books I’ve read this year and dig out my very best favourites, then relentlessly compliment those same books for making this year’s reading so great. I was tempted to extend the list this year because of my decreased amount of full reviews, but this felt more right, especially with certain limitations I decided to give myself.
Only a couple of hard and fast rules for this list. Fiction only, because of the nature of this blog. More importantly, I’ve been reading several standout series this year, so I’ve decided to limit the list to one book per series. Otherwise my list would probably have to be a fair bit longer!
With that in mind, let’s begin!
Continue readingTop Twenty Favourite Series (2022)
It’s that time of year again, where I rank my top favourite series, trilogies and duologies by the nebulous qualities of ‘what I like’.
This time, the list is expanding! Last year there were a couple of series that didn’t quite make the list that I kind of wish did. This year there’s relatively little movement in the top ten, and I’m finding it less palatable to cut things off at ten. There’s too many great series that I want to highlight!
These series will be exclusively speculative fiction in nature, and I must have read at least two books in the series before it can make the list.
Like last time, this list is in order of least to most favourite, but really I love all these series, and any could move above the others if my feelings change. And there are so many other series and books that I really enjoy too! These are, for me, the best and most enjoyable.
You can find last year’s list here: Top Ten Favourite Series
Continue readingTop Ten Favourite Standalone Books (2022)
Here’s a top ten list I’ve been planning to do for a while, but I’ve been waiting until I read enough standalone speculative fiction to make a list that only featured books I truly loved. As it happens, I’ve probably had enough books to go on this list for several months now, but it’s never a bad thing to make the books fight for your love!
For my purposes, standalone books generally means books that aren’t part of a series, although in this list I stretch it a little to a book that’s a standalone spin-off to an unfinished series I don’t intend to read, and another book that stands alone but will have other books written in the same world. It’s all a bit fuzzy, as there are plenty of great books in wider series that do stand alone, but for the most part those would be captured in my Top Ten Favourite Series lists. At some point I might do a ‘Top Ten books in series that aren’t in my Top Ten Favourite Series list’, but that’s a list for another time! Onwards to great books.
Continue readingTop Ten Books Read This Year (2021)
It’s been a pretty great year for me reading wise, even taking into account a couple of reading slumps. I’ve discovered a lot of great new-to-me authors, read some excellent follow-ups and some really great quality debuts. So read on below for my top ten favourite books read this year.
Continue readingTop Ten Favourite Series (2021)
Since a year has passed since I did the last one, and I’ve read over a hundred books in that time, I thought I’d take a new look at my top ten series list, to see how time and new books have changed what series makes the cut.
These series will be exclusively speculative fiction in nature, and I must have read at least two books in the series before it can make the list.
Like last time, this list is in order of least to most favourite, but really I love all these series, and any could move above the others if my feelings change. And there are so many other series and books that I really enjoy too! These are, for me, the best and most enjoyable.
You can find last year’s list here: Top Ten Favourite Series
Continue readingTop Anticipated Books of 2021
It’s January and that means a whole new year of book releases to look forward to. Here are the books that I’m most looking forward to this year:
Continue reading2021 Reading Goals
After seeing others come up with goals for the next year, I thought I’d come up with some of my own. Now, I have two young children, and am a flightful mood reader, so any goals I set are more guidelines than anything I’ll beat myself up over. With that out of the way, let’s get started.
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Writings of a Doomscribe 