Group Reads - Highlights

[Anna]

(New page, new plug. Also yay, lots of ratings since yesterday!)

[YouKneeK]

I just remembered to come back and add in my rating for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars after finishing it yesterday.

Also I’ve now realized that the new audiobook I started, Fate of the Fallen, was one of the 2021 group reads. I’ll have to come back and add my rating for that too if I finish in time. If I finish it in the next week (it will be a close call), that will be my 50th book from the group shelf in 2021. A big jump from previous years. I wasn’t aiming for 50, but once I realized I was at 49 I wanted to try to make it, so I picked the shortest audiobook I had in my library. :) I definitely won’t get there on print books because I’m halfway through a trilogy right now and I’m not going to break the immersion to read something from our shelf.

[Anna]

Anyone read more books? :)

[Liane]

I submitted my ratings. I missed this request in the hubbub of December. And I'm only halfway through To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, so can't include that yet. sigh.

[Anna]

36 people rated our 2021 group reads. Here are the average ratings!

Agree? Disagree? Any surprises?

4.41 The Steerswoman
4.32 Piranesi
4.04 The House in the Cerulean Sea

3.94 The Best of All Possible Worlds
3.94 The Book of Koli
3.92 She Who Became the Sun
3.88 A Master of Djinn
3.76 Deeplight
3.75 Black Sun
3.65 We Are Satellites
3.33 Cage of Souls
3.26 We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
3.08 More Than Human
3.08 The City of Dreaming Books
3.06 Fate of the Fallen
3.00 Velocity Weapon

2.94 The Quantum Magician
2.93 Blindsight
2.89 Everfair
2.86 Dragonbone Chair
2.62 Hench
2.50 To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
2.25 The Library of the Unwritten
2.17 Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

[Gabi]

You can hardly disagree with an average rating.

But it shows well what my feeling is telling me for some time now - that my taste and that of the active part of the group seldom align in the books I treasure the most.

[Anna]

But there are also books you love and the group loves, and some people think how is that possible! For anyone to agree 100% with any group, it would have to be a group of one :)

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like we had some polarizing ones in 2021! For example, the mode (highest number of ratings) for City of Dreaming Books was 5 stars, but only one rating less was 1 star. And then an almost equal divide between 2-4 stars. This is probably due to people having read this one in different languages, but it's still a wild spread :D

Contrast with Piranesi which didn't have a single rating below 4 stars until the very end.

[Beth]

I was curious about how the ratings would sift out. The top 3 are unsurprising for two different reasons, which is fun.

As mentioned on the previous page, I had four 4-stars and 5 DNFs. I didn't send in ratings on the DNFs. Since there aren't that many books I'll put in a tiny recap for each one.

4 stars:
The House in the Cerulean Sea - the right book at the right time. at a different time prob would have gotten a 3
The Best of All Possible Worlds - a fun story with a great audio narrator. Had a DNF the first time.
Black Sun - I liked the outsider MCs and the crows.
The Steerswoman - the ongoing mystery and revelations were a lot of fun.

DNFs - willing to try again? (yes/no)
Fate of the Fallen - it was supposed to be funny and I wasn't laughing. (no)
Hench - content warning: body horror. (no)
Cage of Souls - the MC was hard to tolerate. (yes)
The Quantum Magician - ugh, not a heist story. (yes)
She Who Became the Sun and A Master of Djinn - oops i guess it was six. I didn't get far enough with either of these to make any kind of judgment call (yes)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Time for new thoughts! What were the best books you read off the shelf this year (new reads as well as the backlog)? What disappointed?

[CBRetriever]

Did not like:

The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
Sabriel by Garth Nix
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

I did like:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

[Kaia]

The Gate to Women's Country was definitely my favorite, and I loved the BOTM discussion for it. (I then went on to read Tepper's Grass, a past year's BOTM, and I really liked that too.)

Other favorites are Nettle & Bone and Light from Uncommon Stars.

The other BOTM books that I read had their good points, and I mostly enjoyed them, but they weren't stand-outs for me:
Klara and the Sun
Winter's Orbit
The Book Eaters
Persephone Station

[Beth]

I don't think I had any "worsts" this year.

Piranesi - wonderfully evocative and moving book.
Children of Time - this one took three tries to stick, but in the long run I finally got what it was trying to do and enjoyed it a lot.

I'm currently reading a BOTM from a couple years ago and if it ends up being a favorite I'll edit this post.

[Gabi]

This year I didn't participate in group activities most of the time. I've read some of the BotMs but mainly before the group read it.
Out of those my favourites are:

- Book Eaters
- Moon Daughter
- Terra Nullius

I didn't care much for:

- Ariadne
- Persephone Station

[Gabi]

sorry, the title is of course "Daughter of the Moon Goddess" ^^'. I'm on the app in the cold at a train station and not exactly awake yet ^^'.

[Eva]

This year, my favorite BOTMs were:

Howl’s Moving Castle
Daughter of the Moon Goddess
Winter's Orbit

[Meredith]

I had a bunch of 4-star reads this year, my favorites were probably
The Girl with All the Gifts
The Actual Star
Nimona
The Raven Tower (read in 2020)

Disappointments,
Compass Rose, such a cool premise
Persephone Station, didn't live up to the cover art (read in 2021)

[Stephen]

Howl’s Moving Castle, The Songs of Distant Earth, and Gun, With Occasional Music were all fine. The Poppy War is powerful but an odd mix of the wizarding school with horrors of war. Not a disappointment, but I don’t expect to read any of the sequels. The Goblin Emperor, The Hobbit, and The Fellowship of the Ring were rereads of books I like very much.

[Jen]

Standouts:
Across the Nightingale Floor
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (periodic re-read, as amusing as ever)
The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes (periodic re-read of the whole series, LOVE as much as ever)
Daughter of the Forest
Little, Big
Elantris

Disappointments:
The Well of Ascension
Gods of Jade and Shadow

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I resurrect this thread! What stood out in a good way? What let you down?

[Cheryl L]

Children of Time intrigued me in so many ways, from travel of the Gilgamesh to the ecosystem on the terraformed world. I also thought Ancillary Justice was mind-bending with the protagonist previously being a starship and then having to live within the confines of a human body.

I was pretty disappointed in The Windup Girl. The abuse of women was at the same time cliche and disturbing. I was intrigued by the premise as a whole though–the bioengineering and collapse of food systems.

[a.g.e. montagner]

This group really has a thread for anything! Or three.
Is this a year round-up or something more general?

The Spear Cuts Through Water was mindblowing, my favourite read of the year. I've been speaking about it to anybody who would listen and even some who wouldn't. Reportedly it is going to be published in Italy in 2024.

Brown Girl in the Ring was partly disappointing, although many of the premises were very interesting. Quite brutal, which seems to be common in afrojujuism, but superficial in other respects.

I can guess why The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress has endured for so long. I'm still chewing even on the ideas I don't agree with...

[Stephen]

The Summer Tree didn’t work for me and I didn’t finish it. I much prefer the author’s recent “historical” fantasy novels.

I found the half dozen stories I read from Spirits Abroad interesting enough, but I returned the book to the library unfinished and didn’t attempt to borrow it again.

I’ve started Oryx and Crake again (abandoned it years ago). The material about the character’s parents at the beginning is a bit of a slog but I will persevere.

All of the following were at least 4-star reads:

The Terraformers
Amatka
Mexican Gothic
Neom
Sunshine
Dreamsnake
Hyperion
A Night in the Lonesome October
Doomsday Book
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore

Amatka was a reread and I’ll probably read it again at some point. Dreamsnake and Sunshine were pleasant surprises by authors new to me.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

yay for some wins!

Alessandro, you can do it for the year or in general, either goes!

[Beth]

My goal was very modest--seven books--and two of the ones I finished were rereads. No complaints, though!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Ancillary Justice - I used to not be a rereader, but it's also true I wasn't much of a reader at all before joining GR. I read both in audio, AJ for the first time in that format. 5 stars for both.

Neom - I didn't write much of a review of this one, but it seems I appreciated its vibe. 4 stars

Spirits Abroad - I really enjoyed this short story collection, and feel a little sad that its thread was not "well-attended." 4 stars

[Sarah]

My goal was also modest, only 12 (though I read 13, maybe i'll even hit 14 before the end of the year).

Highlights:

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez - it didn't end up being a full five star read for me (it was too long/dense), but it was hard not to be impressed by something so ambitious that mostly succeeded. The relationship between the two main characters was so, so well done.

(Shout out to the re-reads The Mere Wife and Red Rising

I think the only real disappointment for me was The Children of Gods and Fighting Men, I just felt like it could have been better.

[Sarah]

I missed some group reads that I really wanted to get to - so hoping for a re-read at some point!

These books blew my mind --- I keep suggesting them to people left and right but haven't had anyone say the same yet >.>
Amatka
The Mere Wife


The only one I can think of that really didn't gel was Remarkably Bright Creatures. It wasn't enough fantasy for me and I didn't connect with any of the characters.

[Meredith]

I've read 19 this year, though I am still reading Remarkably Bright Creatures and have Djinn City on deck.

This year I gave 5 stars to
Light from Uncommon Stars
Spirits Abroad
The Spear Cuts through Water
and The Terraformers

Strong 4 star ratings to
Mexican Gothic
Space Between Worlds
and Bone Shard Daughter

I was disappointed by Foreigner. I gave it 3 stars, but it was a real slog for me. I think Cherryh is just not my cup of tea. That was the second of her books I have read.

[Kaia]

I've read 29 books from the group shelf this year so far. (My goal was 30, and I'm reading The Princess Bride now, so I'm pretty sure I'll meet it.)

Really, most of the books were 4-5 star reads, and the others were all 3 stars, which for me is "liked it okay but probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone," so still okay.

Standouts were:
The Vanished Birds and The Spear Cuts Through Water - I eagerly await Simon Jimenez's next book!
Remnant Population
The Lathe of Heaven
Ninefox Gambit

Ones that were the most meh for me:
Contact and Foreigner - there were definitely things I liked about both, but I found myself skimming quite a bit at times to get through them
Remarkably Bright Creatures - it just wasn't for me

[Anna]

Any new highlights?

(Or low.)

[Melanie, the neutral party]

My favorite SFFBC book(s) from this year...
The Space Between Worlds, Spirits Abroad, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, and Djinn City

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Another year just about done! Any new books on your personal highlight and lowlight reels from the bookshelf?

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

The Bone Ships was a pleasant surprise (as an audiobook). Probably my fave book from the 2024 arrivals.

I wish we'd done better with the sci-fi options but it was out of our hands.

[Melanie, the neutral party]

Thistlefoot was my favorite fantasy pick this year. The Will of the Many was my stand out scifi pick (though I did read it before it got chosen.

Another highlight was reading through the The Broken Earth Trilogy and more recently Ancillary Justice trilogies with my SFFBC book friends.

[Cheryl L]

Ryan wrote: "The Bone Ships was a pleasant surprise (as an audiobook). Probably my fave book from the 2024 arrivals."

I also very much enjoyed The Bone Ships on audio. I thought the narration was excellent.

[Meredith]

I read 16 books from the shelf this year, plus 2 are still in progress. It turned out to be a good year for me, 11 of the 16 were 4 or 5 stars. I didn't have any 1 or 2 star reads this year. I also haven't had any DNFs, though Lord of Light is really pushing it.

5 star reads
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
Jinn-bot of Shantiport
(plus I previously read Strange the Dreamer and This is How You Lose the Time War and gave them 5 stars)

Strong 4 star reads
Word for World is Forest
Way Station (a pleasant surprise!)
The Fox Wife
Lonely Castle in the Mirror
Path of Thorns

[Meredith]

Cheryl L wrote: "Ryan wrote: "The Bone Ships was a pleasant surprise (as an audiobook). Probably my fave book from the 2024 arrivals."

I also very much enjoyed The Bone Ships on audio. I thought the narration was ..."

Adding Bone Ships to my tbr for the next time I'm looking for a good audiobook!

[Kaia]

I read 10 of the new group books this year for the first time, and there were 3 that I had read previously.

My favorites were:
The Fox Wife
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
Lonely Castle in the Mirror
My Real Children
Shards of Earth

These two I also loved, but read before this year:
I Who Have Never Known Men
This is How You Lose the Time War

I participated in some of the re-reads read this year, too: 7 completed (6 were actually new books for me).

Favorites from these:
-The Word for World is Forest
-Alphabet of Thorn
-Tombs of Atuan
-Babel-17
-The Raven Tower

[Meredith]

Kaia wrote: "I read 10 of the new group books this year for the first time, and there were 3 that I had read previously.

My favorites were:
The Fox Wife
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
Lonely Castle in the ..."

I also really enjoyed Raven Tower and Alphabet of Thorns when I read them. Anne Leckie is a must read for me, but you are reminding me that I want to read more Patricia McKillip too.