What was the best book you read this year?

I thought it was an unproductive read almost 1/3 of the way in, though I love Chabon's writing. As a lapsed Yid with Eastern European roots (though my family arrived in the US pre-WWI) I had an understanding of the characters even if I couldn't relate to them. I couldn't put the second half of the book down.

I'm now reading Kavalier and Clay and almost 1/4 of the way through I love it .

I read Ellroy's American Tabloid by the pool this summer, a great read and I look forward to reading the other 2 books of the trilogy.

I read Follett's Fall of Giants and Winter of the World. Easy reading, mostly predictable plot lines and characters but I enjoyed them and look forward to the 3rd book in the series.

Dan Brown's Inferno was ehh.

Books 2 & 3 of the Hunger Games were a fun read.

Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer is in the on-deck circle, but I have no idea who's in the hole, though I've been reading David Kennedy's Freedom From Fear for 3 years, part of the Oxford History of the United States series. Every now and then I pick it up and read a chapter. One of the great unbiased looks at FDR.

 

Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge

I also liked Hilton Als' White Girls

Non-fiction, I'll be the 10,000th person to hail The Unwinding by George Packer. It's mesmerizing.

 

Another vote for Billy Lynn. Best new book I read.

Also I finally got around to reading some older books that I loved: Truman by David McCullough, Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and Shaman by Noah Gordon.

 

Just finished "Doctor Sleep" and it's in my top 3 for this year. "Billy Lynn" is on request at the library ...

 

I gave The Monuments Men about 100 pages and was still pretty bored. Maybe I'll give it another try.

 

Have you been reading "The Fall" books? I just finished "The Poisoned Chalice," which is the fourth of five books. I agree that I would not recommend them to anybody but Trek fans, but I'm enjoying the series. The fifth book, "Peaceable Kingdoms," is due out Dec. 31.

I've you've ever read "Articles of the Federation," the key event in this series has a particularly large impact.

 

I'm surprised by that, because I was blown away by it. A rare WWII story I'd never heard of before. And the fact that we're still finding Nazi-stolen art today? Timely, too.

 

Well, I started "The Fall" series, getting about to the middle of the first book, but then I stopped because I had also started in on the "Deep Space Nine: Mission Gamma" books. I'm on the last one of those now and will be getting back to "The Fall" books as soon as I finish that.

I try to keep up with the various series, but for a long time I was more into the TV shows and didn't read, so I'm somewhat behind in getting to the books. Now that there are no newer TV series going on, I spend more time on all the books. And there are very, very few that I have not enjoyed, and only one or two that I can think of among the many, many Star Trek books I have read that I thought were a little too slow or just kind of a dud.

The "Destiny," "Dominion War," "A Time To..." and "Mission Gamma" books are excellent and I've liked most of the "Titan" and "Typhon Pact" books, too. And all the stand-alones are usually good, easy reads, as well, if you're a Trek fan. I haven't read the older "Vanguard" series at all yet but have heard good things about it and will get to that when I have a chance.

"Articles of the Federation" is in my Kindle library, waiting to be read. Maybe I should read that first, before starting in again on "The Fall"?

(I try to read things in order as much as I know or can tell from the year of publish dates, but a lot of the books don't necessarily have to be read chronologically, particularly if you're a fan and kind of know or can figure out what's been going on).

 

This link: http://www.thetrekcollective.com/p/trek-lit-reading-order.html

explain everything about the correct order to read everything in a simple (!) format.

I had kept up with almost all the books until about five years ago, but have just recently jumped back in a with the Destiny and Typhon Pact series. Also picked up Christopher L. Bennett's Temporal Investigations series and post-Enterprise book, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

 

I really enjoyed Phil Plait's "Death From the Skies". Maybe it says a little too much about me, but I found the last three chapters (death of the sun, galactic doom, heat death of the universe) compelling, and oddly uplifting, reading. I'm also about two-thirds of the way through "Virgin" by Hanne Blank -- a good, in-depth discussion on an ultimately inconsequential subject.

"Inverting the Pyramid" by Jonathan Wilson was fun, too, but the evolution of soccer tactics is a fairly esoteric topic. I'm looking forward to his other works being available on the US Kindle store.

 

Might wait til it comes out in paperback, but I'm hearing great things about "League of Denial."

One review I saw compared it to "And the Band Played On," which is pretty high praise indeed.

 

Read League of Denial (still have the PBS special on the DVR), book is great. Tough to watch football the same way after reading it.