Picking up in the latter part of the year (see Parts One, Two, and Three) and I was moving away from the sci-fi mood that I’d been in. What really drove this portion of the year was one great bookstore trip around my birthday, some efforts to work down my existing pile of to-read books (that was where Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Broken Kingdoms came in — both had been on that pile for years), and a few trips to my local library, which got some really interesting books into its non-fiction section recently.

What Was Amazing And You Need To Read It Now, NOW I Tell You:

• Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

What Was Good, And Should Go On Your Giant, Teetering To-Read Tower:

• Broken Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin
• Starless, by Jacqueline Carey
• Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America, by Catherine Kerrison

Pretty Decent, Worth Reading One Of These Days:

• The Lost Child of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
• The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, by Simon Baatz

This Was, Indeed, A Book. And One That You Will Likely Complete:

• The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende
• Searching for the Amazons: The Real Warrior Women of the Ancient World, by John Man

I Mean, It Filled Some Time And It’s Not Like It Was Awful

• Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual (for a sexist workplace), by Jessica Bennett

Oh My God, It Was Awful

(nothing this time — yay!)

Honorable Mention:

Good God There Are No Words to Describe The Experience Of Reading This Book, Which Had The Most Amazing And Unbelievable Footnotes Ever, So Many Dropped And Forgotten Plotlines That It Drove Me Crazy, Totally Captures The Feel Of A Book From The Era It Was Set In, Both In Good And Bad Ways, And Left Me With A Decidedly ‘What The Fuck Was That’ Feeling, In Both A Positive And Negative Sense. I Feel Like This Is A Book That Everyone Should Read Once.

• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke