This year I read about 81 books, which is more than a book a week. When you read this many books, it gets actually pretty hard to choose which books are the best. In the non-fiction category, I really thought A A Brief History of Equality was the most important, in terms of introducing ideas that I'd never thought about, and questioning the existing social orders (for instance, the unquestioning idea that corporations should exclude labor from their controllers) It's not a fun book to read, since many parts of history are depressing, but neither are many of the books that cover the state of the world today. For fun, I really enjoyed Self-made Man, a courageous, gender-swapping story of a woman who succeeded in passing off as a man and the observations she made of male society.
Another great book was Crying in HMart. The story was great and the description of Korean culture entertaining. I read it at almost the same time as Himawari House, which is easily the best graphic novel I read this year. If you have to choose, Himawari House is the better novel. But the best thing about books is you never really have to choose between two great books. Read both!
When it comes to fiction, the best book I read all year was Exhalation. That's cheating since it's a re-read. I would say the best new book was Inhibitor Phase. Alastair Reynolds comes back to the revelation space universe and I love it.
Audio Books played a huge part of my year this year. Easily the best production was The Sandman. I am still in awe that Amazon managed to reproduce a comic book in audio format. I have yet to see the Netflix series, but for it'd have to be ridiculously good to top the graphic novel.
Other honorable mentions for the book of the year: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Dying of Whiteness, and Science Fiction as Philosophy all immediately come to mind as being well worth the time.
I had a great year of reading, and I hope you did too!
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