I thought I read a lot of stinkers this year, so I was surprised to find I gave 22 books a 5 star rating.
I started the year with Gabriel Bergmoser’s brilliant roller coaster ride of thrills and scares The Hunted and Graeme Simsion’s hilarious and sweet The Rosie Project.
I tackled the Vorkosigan Saga series by Lois McMaster Bujold; a total of 20 books (there are 21 books, but I did skip one) and I am sure I will re-read some, if not all, of the books again one day. I also am now interested in tackling her other series. I ended up giving 9 of the books a 5 star rating! Shards of Honor and Barrayar were re-reads. Plus Mountains of Mourning which is a novella, The Vor Game, Mirror Dance, Memory, Komarr, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and A Civil Campaign. Those last two are included in my top 5 reads of the year.
Another in my top five is Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I was unsure about this one. It lived up to the hype though. I loved it. I listened via audible with a full cast and I highly recommend this format.
Talking of hype. I read two Liane Moriaty titles. Little Big Lies and What Alice Forgot. Both were easily 5 star reads and I plan to read a couple more of Moriaty’s in 2021.
I read a few sequels which became 5 star ratings. Chris Hammer’s sequel to Scrublands, Silver was great. Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway series never disappoints – The Lantern Men became an instant favourite and I’m looking forward to the new 2021 released book. Michael Robotham also never disappoints and I loved the second book in his Cyrus Haven series When She Was Good. And Dervla McTiernan is also proving to be consistently good. I loved her new Cormac Reilly book A Good Turn.
Last year Beth O’Leary and Christian White’s debuts made my list. This year they proved second books can be great. O’Leary’s The Switch and White’s The Wife and the Widow were winners.
Although she’s hugely popular, one new to me author was Lionel Shriver. I will need to read some of her other titles sooner rather than later because The Motion of the Body Through Space also got 5 stars from me.
Next year, I’ve set myself the challenge of reading at least 5 classics. I hadn’t thought any of those five would be by Dickens but now I’m thinking I might have to include him after finishing the year with rating A Christmas Carol 5 stars.
Now for the bad…
All of the below I rated 1 or 1 1/2 stars out of 5
The Kissing Game was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Ack. Think it wins the award for the worst book I read this year. Although there was also The Love Square which had very similar problems. Ack.
There were a couple of big name books I added to my DNF shelf and gave one star to: Peripheral by William Gibson and Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. Both pretentious and boring.
Strike two for me with Ingrid Alexandra with Across the Water.
Other big name books I finished but found awful were Robyn Davidson’s Tracks (I can’t even) and Fiona McIntosh’s A Beautiful Death (oh, Lords, I’ve heard she’s going to write another in this series).
There were a couple of horrendous Mills & Boon (Harlequin) titles but the worst was #1 Boss
I actually remember some others without fondness but somehow I gave them [perhaps generous] 2 star ratings at least.
Last year I finished my wrap up with saying I hoped it was a happier new year for everyone, especially those fighting fires in Australia. I guess that didn’t work out too well but surely things can only get better. This year, my reading choices were obviously (like everyone else) affected by Covid. There was an entire period around April where the mood due to the pandemic influenced me a lot. I’m lucky to live in Australia were we’ve had very low numbers of infections and even luckier to live in Far North Queensland where we’ve got even lower numbers than the rest of Australia, so I was able to snap out of my covid reading rut to some extent. It’s obvious the world will be crazy again in 2021, but I will again hope we have a happier year.
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