The end of one year and beginning of the next is always a great time for lists, both of “big hits’ from the previous year and “looking forward to’s” for the next, and maybe even a few resolutions …<\/p>\n
Not to be left out, I posted about my top reads for 2010 on January 2nd<\/a>, as part of reflecting on 2010 generally, with a preview on November 27<\/a>. I also talked about looking forward to reading for the Hugo Awards<\/strong> again this year on January 9.<\/a> Not quite\u00a0 a resolution, more a resolve! And then yesterday I discovered that over on Tor.com<\/a> they’re really going one better and compiling a\u00a0 list of the Best SciFi-Fantasy Novels for the (past) Decade<\/strong><\/a>—eleven years really, since the dates are 2000-2010. Anyway, here’s my list (with a ‘best book’ for each year):<\/p>\n 2000: Steven Erikson Deadhouse Gates<\/em><\/p>\n 2001: Neil Gaiman American Gods<\/em><\/p>\n 2002: China Mieville Perdido Street Station<\/em><\/p>\n 2003: Robin McKinley Sunshine <\/em><\/p>\n 2004: Scott Westerfeld The Risen Empire<\/em><\/p>\n 2005: George RR Martin A Feast for Crows<\/em><\/p>\n 2006: Max Brooks World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War <\/em><\/p>\n 2007: Naomi Novik His Majesty’s Dragon<\/em> \/ Temeraire<\/em> (UK)<\/p>\n 2008: Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games; <\/em>Helen Lowe Thornspell<\/em><\/p>\n 2009: Paolo Bacigalupi The Windup Girl <\/em><\/p>\n 2010: Helen Lowe The Heir of Night<\/em><\/p>\n You may notice that 2008 has not one but two<\/em> titles. That is because Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games<\/em><\/strong> came out in that year and I loved it, but of course 2008 was also the year that my first novel, Thornspell<\/em><\/strong>, was published by Knopf—and how could publication of one’s first novel not be the very best book in that year for you?<\/p>\n As for 2010—again, although I have so far very much enjoyed Cate Tiernan’s Immortal Beloved<\/em><\/strong>, Mary Victoria’s Tymon’s Flight<\/strong> and Paolo Bacigalupi’s Shipbreaker<\/strong><\/em>, as my first adult novel published, and the first in the epic-scale The Wall of Night series<\/strong>,\u00a0 The Heir of Night<\/strong><\/em> will always be the top book of 2010 for me!<\/p>\n And as the work that I commenced just a few months before the rollover into 2000 and finally saw published in 2010, to be honest, The Heir of Night<\/strong> <\/em>is probably the “Book of the Decade” for me, as well … \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The end of one year and beginning of the next is always a great time for lists, both of “big hits’ from the previous year and “looking forward to’s” for the next, and maybe even a few resolutions … Not to be left out, I posted about my top reads for 2010 on January 2nd, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-funstuff","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109","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=3109"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3123,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions\/3123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}