I’ve read plenty of books this year, some of them have been utterly forgettable, some have moved me to tears, and others have moved me to contemplate chewing off my own arm.
So in celebration of the books we’ve read this year, good and bad, I want to know the following from you guys:
1. The Book That Everybody Else Loved That You Thought Was Wank (A.K.A the most over-rated book you’ve read this year)
Mine was Anne Stuart’s Cold As Ice.
2. The Book that Made You Cry So Hard That You Had Big Gobs of Snot Running Attractively Down Your Chin (A.K.A, the biggest tear jerker)
Mine was Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife
3. The Book That Nearly Made You Pee Yourself With Mirth (A.K.A the funniest book you read this year)
Mine was Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s Match Me If You Can
4. The Book That Made You Realise That Some Writers Should Never Get Published (A.K.A the worst book you read this year)
Mine was Karin Tabke’s Good Girl Turned Into a Big Old Ho Gone Bad
5. The Book That Made You Realise That Your Fave Auto-Buy Author Wasn’t On The Same Planet Anymore (A.K.A, Auto-buy authors that you finally binned after years of abuse)
Mine was Patricia Cornwell’s Predator
6. The Book That Lead To A Humongous Glom
Mine was JD Robb’s Judgement In Death
7. The Book That Made You Realise That Not All Paranormals Are Crap (A.K.A the best paranormal you’ve read this year)
Mine was Nalini Singh’s Slave To Sensation
8. The Book Cover That Made You Want To Shoot The Artist (A.K.A as the suckiest book cover of the year, please provide links)
Mine are most of the Changeling Press book covers (g) come on, did you really expect me to say anything else?
9. The Book That Made You Realise That Romance Isn’t The Same Old Same Old All The Time (A.KA the most original romance book read this year)
Mine was Bonnie Dee’s Bone Deep
Ok, that’s enough from me, now it’s your turn!
Sotheara
December 19
3:11 am
1. Cold As Ice by Anne Stuart – I started skimming by the middle of the book. The heroines she writes sets my teeth on edge.
2. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – After reading your blog about this book I finally picked it out of the TBR pile and read it. I cried the whole week afterward. I’d re-read a passage or think about the book and I’d start bawling. I made my sister and friends read it. It’s officially my favorite book of all time.
3. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris – It was laugh out loud funny. Don’t read this while you’re at work answering phones. LOL.
4. I usually try to read all the books I pick up but there were a couple this year that were DNF. I just couldn’t get into them: The Devil You Know by Liz Carlyle, Sleeping with an Agent by Gennita Low, Speel of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning, The Widow by Anne Stuart, and The Dare by Susan Kearney.
5. Chill Factor by Sandra Brown – Thank God I still own some of her old stuff.
6. Blood of the Damned by Anya Bast – My first e-book and a whole new door opened for me. I started reading Rhyannon Byrd, Jaid Black, Sarah McCarty, Joey W. Hill, Lora Leigh, etc.
7. Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh – Loved this book and very excited to read the next in her series.
8. N/A
Anonymous
December 19
3:51 am
I’ll post them on my blog. check it out if you can be arsed. *G*
http://annescomments.blogspot.com
Nancy
December 19
10:56 am
Delurking for this one. Hi Karen!
1 Lisa Valdez Passion, Just didn’t get it.
2 Cry No More, Linda Howard, got after reading your review, blew me away.
3 Can’t think of a funny book read this year, but I think I’ll try the Susan E Phillips rec.
4 Joanna’s Challenge, AQ Fredrichs, the worst book I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some stinkers over the years.
5 When Someone Loves You, Susan Johnson, The Twilight Before Christmas, Christine Feehan I finally gave these two up, after reading their books for years.
6 Beast, Judith Ivory, spent a small fortune hunting up her older stuff.
7 Lover Awakened, J.R. Ward, those vampires are sexy as hell!
8 I have to agree with Karen, most Changeling Press covers are truly beyond sucky.
9 Lover Awakened, J.R. Ward, I don’t usually read paranormals, but this book was outstanding.
fiveandfour
December 19
5:20 pm
I’m struggling to think of all of these right now.
2. At the moment, I think it’s Marian Keyes Anybody Out There?. Sooooo good and definitely superior to Good Grief.
3. All that comes to mind at this moment is Stupid and Contagious by Caprice Crane. If I think harder there’d probably be something else, but then again, “they” always say to go with what first pops into your brain.
6. Either something by JR Ward or Mary Balogh – I can’t recall now which one I read first by either of them. But in both cases, it lead to me heading back out to search for more again and again.
P.S. I read Me Talk Pretty One Day some time ago and agree that it’s hilarious – I recommend it.
P.P.S. This and this got me laughing so hard on the subject of Anne Stuart. (I also recommend Rachel’s memoir about growing up in India.)
sallahdog
December 19
5:43 pm
1. cant think of any off the top of my head… There were a lot of books that I seemed to lose interest in halfway through, maybe it was just me this year.. I was pretty dissapointed in the Jennifer Crusie/ Bob Mayer contribution… it just didnt satisfy the way past books did for me.
2. I try not to read tear jerkers because I read for pleasure, not pain.. plus my sinuses take days to recover.. I will go with the Cry no more title though, because that book wouldnt let me put it down, but I was a Mess when it was over…
3. Ditto on the Match me if you can… I have this book on CD also (I bought two copies and listen to it all the time while working)… Its good for a lift…
4. hmmm, I was thinking this when reading the last Laurell K Hamilton book I could bring myself to buy… This one also works for number 5… She was never the greatest technical writer before, but her books used to be great fun… Now they are boring repetitive and frankly have gone terribly wrong… I skimmed Danse Macabre at the bookstore, hoping something would lure me to buy it, but no dice… I havent even tried reading her latest Merry book… Other writers who lost me are Christine Feehan and Sherrilyn Kenyon (first because she has gotten repetitive, second because she cant keep her world building rules straight and she keeps pulling new “rules” out of her ass as she goes)
6.Linda Howards Mr Perfect (found it in the library and ended up reading her whole backlist… only really disliked 2 of her earliest books, the corporate raider one, and her earliest work, which was a billionaire/sweet virgin story)…
7. I actually love paranormals, so I will just name a few I liked… Moon Called , by Patricia Briggs.. Slave to sensation was good, and I liked the first JR Ward books (I am having some reservations about the direction the series is going in now, though, I am praying she doesnt go LKH on me)
8. I just laugh at yours and Bams cover snark…
9.Wow, I am going to have to buy that Bone Deep… honestly I havent read too much original fiction this year.. Unfortunately it seems that too many authors are caving to pressure to write the next big thing rather than what they are good at…
Sancre
December 19
6:23 pm
1.The same, Cold as Ice by Anne Stuart left me cold
2. Since this poll does not mean just books published this year, my biggest tearjerker is an old book. Parting Gifts by Lorraine Heath. I cried great big sobby tears in this book. The last time I did this was reading the last few chapters of Cry No More by Linda Howard.
3. Drop Dead Gorgeous. Okay, I admit it… this channeled ex-cheerleader is just hilarious to me. How she lives her life and how she see’s and interacts with her man is just hilarious to me.
4. This category is really hard for me. If a book did not keep me interested in just a couple of chapters, I didn’t waste my time and put it down. It was the same last year.
5. The Adventures of Wildcat Arrows by Dara Joy. Heck, I am not even sure this author actually wrote this book, it is that bad and that different from her normal style. Heck, if she did write, I know she isn’t living on the same planet as I am.
6. “Mother Road” by Dorothy Garlock. I totally bypassed this writer over the last 25 years and when I read it, I was overjoyed by the deep characterizations and the wonderful love story. Garlock has written over 50 books and I went on the mother of all gloms this summer and read almost every one of them.
7. Nalini Singh’s Slave To Sensation was the same for me also.
8. The adventures of Wildcat Arrows. How Dara Joy felt that guy was hunky and would sell books I do not know.
9. 2006 was for me a terrible year in new books. Books published this year offered little originality. Instead it was more formula after formula. If it had not been for Singh’s new book, I would say I am on the border of almost hating fantasy/paranormal because it has been so overpublished. There were a few good books by autobuy authors but nothing really original.
FerfeLaBat
December 19
10:06 pm
For FiveAndFour
David Sedaris on explaining Easter to a class of foreign students.
The French teacher sadly shook her head, as if this explained everything that was wrong with my country. “No, no,” she said. “Here in France the chocolate is brought by the big bell that flies in from Rome.”
I called for a time-out. “But how do the bell know where you live?”
“Well,” she said, “how does a rabbit?”
It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes. That’s a start. Rabbits move from place to place, while most bells can only go back and forth–and they can’t even do that on their own power. On top of that, the Easter Bunny has character; he’s someone you’d like to meet and shake hands with. A bell has all the personality of a cast-iron skillet. It’s like saying that come Christmas, a magic dustpan flies in from the North Pole, led by eight flying cinder blocks. Who wants to stay up all night so they can see a bell? And why fly one in from Rome when they’ve got more bells than they know what to do with right here in Paris? That’s the most implausible aspect of the whole story, as there’s no way the bells of France would allow a foreign worker to fly in and take their jobs. That Roman bell would be lucky to get work cleaning up after a French bell’s dog -and even then he’d need papers. It just didn’t add up.
Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate. Confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention back to the comic book she kept hidden beneath her binder. I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that sounds pretty far-fetched to begin with.
In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the grammar lessons of a six-year-old if each of us didn’t believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? If I could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes. So why stop there? If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I accepted the idea that an omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me from one place to the next. The virgin birth, the resurrection, and the countless miracles -my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe.
A bell, though, that’s f*ed up.
~ http://chrisuggen.blogspot.com/2006/04/me-talk-easter-one-day.html
fiveandfour
December 19
11:14 pm
So much to love…
I called for a time-out. “But how do the bell know where you live?”
“Well,” she said, “how does a rabbit?”
And here’s something a little more seasonal: Six to Eight Black Men – no Christmas is complete without them.
paz
December 20
1:48 am
Have to agree with #2.
Glad I wasn’t listed in #4. Yeah, yeah, I know… You could still put me on the list. 😉
Paz
Desiree Erotique
December 20
4:17 am
Eh, like I’d touch this with a ten foot pole… no death wish from this author LOL!
But if the following books existed, they might be on my list:
1. The Book That Everybody Else Loved That You Thought Was Wank (A.K.A the most over-rated book you’ve read this year):
Why God Adores Me and You Should, Too by Donald Trump
2. The Book that Made You Cry So Hard That You Had Big Gobs of Snot Running Attractively Down Your Chin (A.K.A, the biggest tear jerker):
Karen S.’s Comparative Studies of Outrageous Pen Names From Victorian Ages Down Through Modern Times, alternatively titled: Why I like Desiree Erotique Anyway
3. The Book That Nearly Made You Pee Yourself With Mirth (A.K.A the funniest book you read this year)
The Big Book of Best Bulging Crotch Anime-Style-Quasi-Yaoi Covers EVER!
4. The Book That Made You Realise That Some Writers Should Never Get Published (A.K.A the worst book you read this year)
Mike Tyson’s Alfabet Book For Illeteerete Teeans
5. The Book That Made You Realise That Your Fave Auto-Buy Author Wasn’t On The Same Planet Anymore (A.K.A, Auto-buy authors that you finally binned after years of abuse)
Anne Rice’s The Christ Chronicles
6. The Book That Lead To A Humongous Glom
The Idiot’s Guide to Understanding War
7. The Book That Made You Realise That Not All Paranormals Are Crap (A.K.A the best paranormal you’ve read this year):
Karen’s S.’s Life Amongst The Stars (Sorry, couldn’t think of anything else!)
8. The Book Cover That Made You Want To Shoot The Artist (A.K.A as the suckiest book cover of the year):
Danny Devito’s Bare and Breathless- An Intimate and Photogenic Memoir
9. The Book That Made You Realise That Romance Isn’t The Same Old Same Old All The Time (A.KA the most original romance book read this year):
The Defrocked Priest’s Love Stable
SarahT
December 20
4:43 pm
1. The Book That Everybody Else Loved That You Thought Was Wank (A.K.A the most over-rated book you’ve read this year)
‘Mr Impossible’ by Loretta Chase.
2. The Book that Made You Cry So Hard That You Had Big Gobs of Snot Running Attractively Down Your Chin (A.K.A, the biggest tear jerker)
Mine was Dorothy Koomson’s ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’. I LOVED this book! A close second in the tear-jerker category was Marian Keyes’ ‘Anybody Out There?’.
3. The Book That Nearly Made You Pee Yourself With Mirth (A.K.A the funniest book you read this year)
Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s ‘Match Me If You Can’ and Janet Evanovich’s ‘Metro Girl’.
4. The Book That Made You Realise That Some Writers Should Never Get Published (A.K.A the worst book you read this year)
‘In The Dark’ by Marliss Melton. This book was sooo bad.
5. The Book That Made You Realise That Your Fave Auto-Buy Author Wasn’t On The Same Planet Anymore (A.K.A, Auto-buy authors that you finally binned after years of abuse)
Julia Quinn’s ‘On the Way to the Wedding’.
6. The Book That Lead To A Humongous Glom
No gloms this year, unfortunately!
7. The Book That Made You Realise That Not All Paranormals Are Crap (A.K.A the best paranormal you’ve read this year)
LOL! I have yet to discover one, so I might give Karen’s recommendation a shot.
8. The Book Cover That Made You Want To Shoot The Artist (A.K.A as the suckiest book cover of the year, please provide links)
Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ new covers, especially the one with the Wonderbra for ‘It Had to Be You’.
9. The Book That Made You Realise That Romance Isn’t The Same Old Same Old All The Time (A.KA the most original romance book read this year)
All in all, I had a pretty crappy romance reading year, so I can’t think of a book to fit this category.
Karen Scott
December 20
6:31 pm
Sotheara, wasn’t The Time Traveler’s Wife a tremendous book! I still remember being sat at the top of our stairs reading it and crying my eyes out (don’t ask me why I was sat on the stairs, cuz I don’t know!) It was such a sad and moving book!
Nancy you’re a heathen! (g) How could you not love Valdez’ Passion? Also, I keep wanting to try Judith Ivory, but I think I need recs from people who have enjoyed her books.
Fievandfour, it seems that that Sedaris book is very popular, I’m gonna put it on my wishlist!
Sallahdog, I know exactly what you mean, there’s been loads of books that I’ve started reading and abandoned half-way through. And how freaking sad was Cry No More? I shed buckets of tears, and that was just within the first few pages!
A lot of people have recced Patricia Briggs, but I’m just not a paranormal fan,
As for Bam’s cover snark, fucking hilarious they are.
Please try Bone Deep, I really don’t think you’ll be sorry if you do, it was such ban outrageously fantastic book!
Sancre, it pleases me to know that I’m not alone in my opinion of Cold As Ice, that heroine ruined the whole book for me.
and Drop Dead Gorgeous was hilarious!
I haven’t read that many books that were published this year, not romance anyway, I’ve read more newly pubbed books outside the romance genre.
Sancre, I am so with you on the paranormal/fantasy/wolfies/vamps issue. I’ve got to an pointv where if a book is paranormal, it will take a small miracle for me to read it.
Hi Paz, the Time Traveler’s Wife was wonderful wasn’t it?
Des, Laughing. My. Arse. Off. Hilarious, I especially like the Mike Tyson book, I nearly spat out my coke when I reads that one!
SarahT, I’ve got My Best Friend’s Girl in my TBR pile, but I haven’t read it yet, and I’ve also got Evanovich’s Metro Girl on there.
And how strange is this, I’ve also got Marlis Melton’s In The Dark, although admittedly, it will probably be a while before I read it anyway.
As for Julia Quinn’s book, you must be the first person to not like it!
Nalini Singh
December 20
10:15 pm
Hey, thanks!!
Bonnie Dee
December 21
5:15 pm
And thanks from me, too! Someone gave me a heads up that Bone Deep had made your end-of-year list. Of course I was thrilled it didn’t make the Pile of Complete Dogshit category.
Check out my first Samhain release with co-author Lauren Baker on January 2. Finding Home is about a reporter who falls for a hustler she’s interviewing for an expose. I love me a good male ‘ho story.
Karen Scott
December 22
10:34 am
Hey Nalini, you’re welcomed!
Bonnie, Bone Deep was a fab book, and one that I’d be comfortbale recommending to anyone! Finding home sounds good too, I’ll have to add that to my wishlist I think!
Sarah McCarty
December 22
3:05 pm
Now you would have to go make me look back on my reading year. *sigh* It was a pretty Meh year for me. The shining moment was finding Majroie Liu. I am gloming her. So I think that covers a few questions.
Pretty much, though, the year was very disappointing. My goal was to try as many new to me authors as I could. I made a point of buying every book anyone recommended or got excited about even if they were in *shudder* first person, but pretty much, with the exception of one Kresley Cole and all of Marjorie Liu’s, I didn’t finish any of them. They just didn’t have the spark for me that they did for others. I also removed three authors from my autobuy list. Their styles have just changed too much for me to hang in there anymore. So, *frowning*, I’m in the hole. Added one author, cut three. Now, that’s depressing!
I think I need to go back to writing and ignore all future year in review posts. And there’s hope. I still have two books from this year that I haven’t read and hope to read Christmas day. Both are suppsoed to be really good so maybe my happy number will go up.