Of the 71 books I read this year, the one I enjoyed most was John C. Wright’s The Golden Age, followed by his Awake in the Night Land and Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. The
worst book I read this year was, without question, Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory,
which was so repulsive that it made me feel that it would serve very well as Exhibit A in any argument being made for book-burning and the licensing and registration of authors. The
most disappointing book was William Gibson’s The Peripheral. It was all right, but it was disappointing to see the normally astute Gibson relying upon tired cliches and conventional tropes.
On the non-fiction side, I read three excellent books this year, starting with An Essay on Economic Theory by Richard Cantillon. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami is a very interesting read for any writer and The Transformation of War by Martin van Creveld is fully worthy of its place in the 4GW Canon. On the downside, regulars will recall that I took apart Peter Boghossian’s inept A Manual for Creating Atheists in no little detail, while the shamefully deceitful Fourth-Generation Warfare and Other Myths by Antulio Echevarria left me embarrassed for the writer’s assault on his own integrity and reputation.
Keep in mind these ratings are not necessarily statements about a book’s
significance or its literary quality, they are merely casual observations of my personal tastes and how much I
happened to enjoy reading the book at the time. A five-star book is one that I recommend without reservations.
FIVE STARS
An Essay on Economic Theory, Richard Cantillon
The Golden Age, John C. Wright
The Golden Transcendence, John C. Wright
Awake in the Night Land, John C. Wright
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
Narcissus and Goldmund, Hermann Hesse
The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe
The Transformation of War, Martin van Creveld
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
One Bright Star to Guide Them, John C. Wright
Transhuman and Subhuman, John C. Wright
FOUR STARS
The Programmed Man, Jeff and Jean Sutton
The Phoenix Exultant, John C. Wright
The Business, Iain Banks
Monster Hunter Nemesis, Larry Correia
The Claw of the Conciliator, Gene Wolfe
His Master’s Voice, Stanislau Lem
The Elephant Vanishes and Other Stories, Haruki Murakami
Sci Phi Journal 1, Jason Rennie
Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami
The Land of Blood and Honey, Martin van Creveld
First on the Moon, Jeff Sutton
City Beyond Time, John C. Wright
A Sword Into Darkness, Thomas Mays
World Order, Henry Kissinger
THREE STARS
A Troublesome Inheritance, Nicholas Wade
Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin
Catastrophe 1914, Max Hastings
The Crusades, Thomas Asbridge
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami
Confessions of Felix Krull, Thomas Mann
Strong Poison, Dorothy Sayers
On Basilisk Station, David Weber
Count to a Trillion, John C. Wright
The Hermetic Millennia, John C. Wright
The Uplift War, David Brin
Startide Rising, David Brin
The Crow Road, Iain Banks
By Its Cover, Donna Leon
Apollo at Go, Jeff Sutton
The Peripheral, William Gibson
Sci Phi Journal 2, Jason Rennie
Sci Phi Journal 3, Jason Rennie
Skin Game, Jim Butcher
The Citadel of the Autarch, Gene Wolfe
The Sword of the Lictor, Gene Wolfe
Scotland’s Jesus, Frankie Boyle
TWO STARS
Whose Body?, Dorothy Sayers
A Short, Victorious War, David Weber
Prospero Lost, L. Jagi Lamplighter
The Starship Titanic, Douglas Adams and Terry Jones
The World at War, Richard Holmes
Walking on Glass, Iain Banks
Espedair Street, Iain Banks
Space Viking, H. Beam Piper
Winner Take All, Simon Green
The Man with the Golden Torc, Simon Green
Demons are Forever, Simon Green
The God Killer, Simon Green
Wolf in the Fold, Simon Green
The Rhesus Chart, Charles Stross
The Battle of Salamis, Barry Strauss
ONE STAR
A Manual for Creating Atheists, Peter Boghossian
Raising Steam, Terry Pratchett
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
Darwin’s Radio, Greg Bear
Fourth-Generation Warfare and Other Myths, Antulio Echevarria