Given the sporadic and brief periods I’ve had to actually dedicate to reading in 2007 (almost exclusively lunch hours and a few pages right before crashing in bed), I feel pretty lucky to have finished several terrific books. I quit many more than I started, for the first year in recent memory; my time is just to scarce these days to read books that don’t captivate me in one way or another.
And so, this isn’t a “Best of 2007” list, though a few of the titles were, in fact, published this year. Instead, let’s call it a personal best list, or:
Fictions That Utterly Stole My Attention From The Many Other More Important Things Happening In 2007
- Tree of Smoke (Denis Johnson) – This year’s National Book Award winner, and without a doubt the best book I read all year. There’s a good summary of the conversation around the Cloud at The Millions.
- The Solitudes (John Crowley) – Previously published as Aegypt, this is the first volume in the (now complete) Aegypt cycle. I’ve read this before, and loved it even more the second time through. Oddly, I haven’t read the other three…yet.
- The Terror (Dan Simmons) – Big. Cold. Awesome.
- A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) – A genre classic, but this is the one hard scifi novel that completely blew me away this year. I was knocked out by Rainbows End last year (full text here), which inspired me to go back and find Vinge’s name-maker.
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz) – Not much to say about this one that hasn’t already been said elsewhere, but this tale gripped me completely.
- “The House Beyond Your Sky” (Ben Rosenbaum) – Okay, not a book per se, but likely the single piece of fiction that did the most to rearrange my brainpan this year. Audio here. Text here.
Enjoy!
(Cross-posted at mikemorrow.info)
