{"id":2518,"date":"2010-11-27T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2518"},"modified":"2010-11-25T22:13:18","modified_gmt":"2010-11-25T09:13:18","slug":"2010-reads-my-personal-picks-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/11\/27\/2010-reads-my-personal-picks-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"2010 Reads: My Personal Picks So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not the end of the year yet, but reading Christchurch City Libraries’ top picks<\/a> yesterday made me think about the books that have been standout reads for me so far this year. I read a huge number of books so to qualify a book really needs to standout in retrospect as well as being something I enjoy while reading. (That’s a much bigger list and needless to say there’s some very good books on it.) So here’s my top 6 picks so far, in alphabetical order by author:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Windup Girl<\/strong><\/em> by Paolo Bacigalupi<\/strong> — medium-future dystopian scifi that really hooked me in from the opening sequence<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tigers at Awhitu <\/strong><\/em>by Sarah Broom — this accomplished and moving debut poetry collection made a great reading start to my year.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Room<\/strong><\/em> by Emma Donoghue<\/strong> — a Booker shortlisted novel I didn’t expect to enjoy from the back cover, but by the end of Chapter 2 I didn’t want to put it down.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Treekeeper’s Tale <\/strong><\/em>by Pascale Petit<\/strong> — powerful poetry from celebrated UK poet, Pascale Petit, covering themes of nature and archaeology.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Immortal Beloved <\/strong><\/em>by <\/strong><\/em>Cate Tiernan — <\/strong>a YA paranormal urban fantasy that is not<\/span> about vampires (despite the title.) I really enjoyed the characters\u00a0 and Tiernan’s use of (real) history in the backstory.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tymon’s Flight<\/strong><\/em> by Mary Victoria<\/strong> — I love the concept of the “world tree” and the steampunk overtones with dirigibles and\u00a0 flying machines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not the end of the year yet, but reading Christchurch City Libraries’ top picks yesterday made me think about the books that have been standout reads for me so far this year. I read a huge number of books so to qualify a book really needs to standout in retrospect as well as being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2518"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2536,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions\/2536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}