2017 Wrap Up: Fiction

I'm writing this holed up in my room with tea and shortbread.

There's a weird cold/flu thing going around, and it's taken out my whole family, so I'm doing my best not to catch it.

My avoiding sickness techniques include holing myself away with tea and shortbread, so what better time to write my end of year reading wrap up?

Yes, I'm battling sickness by pretending to be sick. But maybe if I put my sick time in, and stay in bed the flu spirits will pass over me.

I'm optimistic.


Anyway, I thought that now would be a good time to do a sort of reading wrap up for 2017.

I read 92 books, so there's definitely a surplus of books to talk about. I've got my 'Year In Books' (Courtesy of Goodreads) open, so that I can have a shot at remembering what exactly I read this year.

I've decided to do a top five(ish. Picking favourite books is hard, ok?) in several categories.
I'm not doing them in any particular order, just in what order I feel like doing.


Today we're doing category 1:

Fiction:

And in no particular order we have:

The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber.

Do you ever open a book, and the author's voice and style is exactly in the language of your soul, and you wish that you could write half as well and like this?

That was what reading this was for me.

The plot is generic fairytale, but it acknowledges this, and adds such a dose of humour and poking fun at itself that it works.

Perfect dose of sarcasm, whimsy and humour, with a fairytale happily ever after vibe.
I gave it 5 stars.

Hexwood/ The Game By Diana Wynne Jones. 

I read both this year, but couldn't choose which one to talk about. So I'll talk about both!

Diana Wynne Jones is my spirit animal. Ever since I first got my hands on a copy of Howl's Moving Castle, I've loved her blend of whimsy and overall tone and sense of humour.

She's one of those authors that put out a crazy amount of books in her lifetime, and with the exception of only a couple, they're all fantastic.

Hexwood has a fun seemingly straightforward plot at first, but then you keep reading and it's all convoluted and you're putting pieces together in amazement, and then at the end it all makes sense (Which is a DWJ staple. She pulls it off so well).
Also the main villain was motivated by a desire to see Hobbits, so that's a plus. #relatable

The Game is more of a novella, and shorter, but I loved every page.

I read it in early January of 2017, so I don't remember specifics, but here's the short Goodreads review I jotted down right after I read it:

"Very short, but that doesn't make this any less of an enjoying ride. Diana Wynne Jones really portrays the absolute chaos but indescribable joy that comes from having dozens of kids around, playing and getting into trouble. Fun myths entwined, and featuring the best Lord Of The Rings quote/reference."

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

Oh boy. This novel is a blend of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, by which I mean that it has the exhausting detail of a Dickens novel, and the wit of Jane Austen.

I don't want to cheapen Susanna Clarke's talent, however, by only comparing her writing to other authors, because she has a talent and style all of her own, that is hard to describe without trying to grasp at what other things I've read that are similar, because I have no words on my own for what she writes like.

The prose is rich and amazing, and I am so glad there was 800 pages of it.

It's written as a history book, with footnotes and allusions to future characters and happenings that don't become relevant for several hundred pages, and yet it's engrossing and I couldn't put it down, despite my edition being over 800 pages.

It opens on a parallel universe Victorian England, where magicians are 'theoretical' only, and don't do magic, because the act of doing magic is 'ungentlemanly'. 

The history and fiction is blended so well that I actually thought that the Raven King/John Usglass was a real historical character, and tried to reference him in a project. That worked about as well as you might think.

And the story. My goodness it's worth every word, and every page. It takes its' time opening (as you would expect, what with the footnotes and referencing future events that don't make sense for several chapters), but that makes it worth it, because you have time to get immersed in the story, and feel horror as you start to piece together just what awful things the characters did and have to resolve by the end.

The characters are all pretty well fleshed out, and you can't help but love all of them. Even Norrell. Especially Childermass and Arabella.

Also the Gentleman with the Thistledown hair can stuff it.

At one point I almost threw it across my room, but since I purchased the flimsy paperback version and that would probably ruin in, I settled for placing it in a corner and publicly shaming it on Instagram.

#bookshaming

So you have been warned. And yes I still recommend it. Highly. Just know that your heart will be torn out of your chest and it hurts. A lot.

But it's worth every word.

This is now one of my favourite books (besides the fact that I have like 20 favourites but shhh), and the TV mini series is very well done, too!

Thrawn by Timothy Zahn.

I actually don't remember much of this book, besides the joy of having Thrawn finally accepted back into canon in the Star Wars Universe, and how Thrawn is awesome. That pretty much overshadowed everything else.

It wasn't perfect, but it was nice to have Thrawn back in the canon Star Wars universe (thanks Disney! *shakes fist*), and Timothy Zahn did his best to remain within the limits of what he'd previously written, or at least as close as he could.

Each chapter starts with a paragraph or so of Thrawn's own writing, and it's highly reminiscent of Sun Tzu's Art Of War. I would read Thrawn's Art Of War in a heartbeat.

Of course, Thrawn is still my favourite Star Wars EU character. Not even Disney can take that from me.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Technically, this was a reread, but I'm still counting it. I reread it in preparation for seeing the movie in theatres, and wow. 

It was just as good the second time around.

Most of the novel is centered around who slept in which train compartment, and verifying whether or not someone looked out in the hallway at 1:20 or 1:21 AM, but it still somehow is a riveting read.

Also the movie is really good, and is now one of my favourites.