Around April I decided I should keep track of what I read in 2013. I can’t swear that I managed to put everything on this list, but most of it, for sure. I finished 33 fiction and 9 non-fiction books, and started a dozen more. I was going to include a snarklist of abandoned books, but tastes vary and there are so many books to recommend that it’s not worth the time to disrecommend a book.

Fiction

Out of so many books this year, here are three I thought were particularly noteworthy.

• Who Fears Death – Nnedi Okorafor Post-apocalyptic fantasy coming of age novel including discussion of genocide, rape and female circumcision. Incendiary, or at least uncomfortable topics, but I liked this book. I discussed reading it here.
• Maledicte – Lane Robins I’m not sure I can remember reading another novel with such intense emotions that didn’t involve me sobbing empathetically. The cover says this is a novel of love, betrayal and vengeance. I’d say mostly vengeance, but there was plenty of love. Just not the floofy romance kind. The burn up the sheets and kill anyone who keeps us apart kind. The my lady is a transvestite and everyone in court is scandalized by two men making out in public but I don’t care kind. I went looking for what else Lane Robins had done after stumbling across her short story Road Test on Strange Horizons, and I’m glad I did.
• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke Neal Stephenson-levels of complexity, Jane Austen setting, and every footnote (there were many footnotes) of Louis de Bernieres level peculiar and yet familiar whimsy. I should have saved this book for a long flight, preferably one across at least eight timezones, for after a slow start I was utterly lost. However, I have verified that my husband would notice if I were to spend half my time and energy in fairy land.

And many more…

• Buddha’s Little Finger – Victor Pelevin This novel of magical realism, Buddhist philosophy, and Soviet revolution was given to me by my taller half, who read it in the original Russian and could not shut up about it. If you have any interest in philosophy, the questionable nature of reality, or have an idea who Chapaev was, go for it. If you’re looking for a little light reading, don’t.
• Where’d You Go Bernadette – Maria Semple You probably already heard about this book, and if you are a Seattlite, you will probably agree that it is hilarious.
• Fifty-One Tales – Lord Dunsany Modern lit would categorize this as flash fiction fantasy, I think. I would categorize it as perfect little bits of classic fantasy’s antecedents for reading on your phone while waiting in lines or taking short bus rides.
• Three Parts Dead – Max Gladstone Necromancy meets lawyering in a fantasy whodunnit set in a city powered by steam boilers feeding off the heat of a fire god. No deep messages, but enjoyable. Also discussed here.
• Rule 34 – Charles Stross A few years ago, I liked the big ideas and the small peculiarities of Stross’s Accelerando and Rule 34 was a similarly layered, gritty story of a high tech future. It was also written in second person, which took a little getting used to.
• The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories – Angela Carter A variety of riffs on classic stories, some closer to the originals, some quite original. I particularly enjoyed her version of Puss in Boots, from the cat’s snarky point of view, and her reversal of Beauty and the Beast.
• Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood A dystopia of corporate greed and genetic engineering gone wrong, this was a Burnable Book Club which inspired emotional outbursts previously only provoked by Haruki Marukami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Sex at Dawn. I enjoyed the several threads of plot twisting together and the silly brand names (Soy O Boy!), others did not appreciate Atwood’s characterization of either gender.
• The Lives of Christopher Chant; Conrad’s Fate – Diana Wynne Jones I listened to half of the The Lives on audio a while back and finally finished the story. Alternate worlds whose existence teeters on the vagaries of probability, wonderful cats, and uncles who can’t quite be trusted. Wynne Jones is crazy good at fantasy world building, but also maintains some of the British atmosphere that we all know (and love?) from Harry Potter. Except she did it twenty years earlier, and I wish I had found her books twenty years ago – ten year old me would have devoured anything I could find by her. Which reminds me, I know a ten year old avid reader…
• Dragonsbane – Barbara Hambly The latter portion had some nice twists on the usual tropes which surprised me; in the first half I correctly guessed the identity of the mystery character within a few pages of his introduction. I have mixed feelings about this one – I wanted to find out what happened, but I also didn’t think it suffered much when I started skimming heavily in the second half.
• Anansi Boys – Neil Gaiman I’ve been meaning to read more Gaiman. So I did.
• Cinder – Marissa Meyer Cinderella retold (obviously) with cyborgs and robots and evil mind control ladies from the moon. A good afternoon’s entertainment. As I wrote here, I’m looking forward to the sequels.
• Scarlet – A.C. Gaughen A YA retelling of Robin Hood, or at least of an early adventure. Warning: may contain excessive amounts of teen angst.
• The Hero and the Crown – Robin McKinley It’s fun to reread books that were so important to me as a kid. Nostalgia reminds me how much I loved this story, adult thought processes tell me that I loved it because of the horse and appreciate the positive (and surprisingly science-minded!) role model, and writer-brain says ‘wait, that Luce guy is totally deus ex machina.’
• Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart In a not-so-distant future, the young folk spend their days shopping for hypersexualized clothing online, and refer to their parents’ conversations as ‘verballing.’ Books are smelly, fully formed sentences are over-rated. But the loving attention and stable bank balance of an older man can be quite comforting in the latter days of the failing American empire.
• Trials of Artemis – Sue London Every book gets a bit better when the heroine’s weapons collection is finally delivered to the estate of her new husband.
• Scarlet – Marissa Meyer Cinder was good; Scarlet was better. Second in the series and I really enjoyed the weavings of Meyer’s world. There was enough intrigue that I went back to reread and appreciate the double meanings preceding the story’s big reveal.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain – No one made me read this in school, but I can see how it might be used as part of a history curriculum looking at social structure of the South. I read Puddin’ Head Wilson and The Innocents Abroad last year and might need to make Twain an annual tradition.
• Breakfast on Pluto – Patrick McCabe Pussy Braden is the very definition of an unreliable narrator, but I enjoyed piecing together her version of 1970s Northern Ireland.
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne If Jules Verne was actually a time traveler, large portions of this book must be lifted directly from Wikipedia to list the names and classifications of so much marine life. I kept waiting for Captai Nemo and M. Arronax to just make out already, and once I started thinking about it, there were so many double entendres I couldn’t stop.
• The Selected Stories, Vol. 2 – Philip K. Dick – I don’t if there’s a brief way to adequately describe the stories of Philip K. Dick. Ecclectic and fanciful? But subtly disurbing?
• Short Stories – Ray Bradbury – Another audiobook, adapted as 30 minute radioplays. I thought I detected a theme of the dangers of relying on technology instead of human interaction, particularly in the context of parenting.
• Forged In Blood I & II – Lindsay Buroker – Concluding books in 7-book series, so no point in telling you what they were about when you can download the first for free and find out yourself what Buroker is doing right as an indie author (most everything, I think).
• Torrent – Lindsay Buroker – Actually, although I loved the Emperor’s Edge series through seven books, the new Rust & Relics characters and storyline didn’t tickle my fancy as much. I will likely read up on her Yukon steampunk novellas instead of following this new series.
• Kidnapped & David Balfour/Catriona – Robert Louis Stevenson – Kidnapped is a crazy adventure buddy story, rightly beloved by many boys. Catriona is equally thrilling, but it is a political/legal drama followed by a romance. All following the same character, and allowing me to piece together a lot of what I knew about Scottish history. I also listened to the audiobook, which means I skipped the Scotch spelling. YMMV.
• Room With A View – E.M. Forster – I discovered the movie first, but the book is an enjoyable comedy of manners.
• A Hidden Fire – Elizabeth Hunter I haven’t read Twilight, but this seems like Twilight for readers who prefer references to Dante and cage fighting to sparkliness. And there’s some exploration of why exactly a 450 year old demigod would fall for a 22 year old mortal. I mean, beyond the fact that she apparently smells like honeysuckle.
• The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov I read this as part of my Russian studies in college and it was a pleasure to fall back into the story with some knowledge of the story and its allusions already.

Non-Fiction

• The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL – Eric Greitens A memoir of a humanitarian aid worker turned Navy SEAL. I picked this up because my martial arts practice makes me think about hard and soft, and matching intention in self defense. I enjoyed it up to the last chapter, which is a pitch for the [doubtlessly worthy] non-profit the author has founded. Since I kept talking about it, the taller half (not a martial artist) read it but thought the messaging was carefully controlled to be pro-military experience. YMMV.
• Reflections: On the Magic of Writing – Diana Wynne Jones Since I went on a Wynne Jones fiction bender, I also picked up this collection of essays. Written for different purposes over several decades, they were a little hit or miss for me. I skipped her dissection of C.S. Lewis since I haven’t read much C.S. Lewis since I was in grade school, but found her thoughts on the differences between child and adult readers interesting.
• Nomadic Furniture – James Hennessey, Victor Papanek  This book was a curious time capsule. Some ideas that are obviously precursors of IKEA, some that are are just wacky. I don’t think the homemade cardboard carseat will work in the 21st century…
• Quilting Modern – Jacquie Gering, Katie Pedersen Becoming a homeowner has given me dreams about space for a sewing machine and led to a lot of pinteresting. See also, Katie Pedersen’s blog.
• Composed – Rosanne Cash – Memoir by singer-songwriter who happens to be Johnny Cash’s daughter. I liked some of her ruminations on expanding her breadth as an artist; her descriptions of dealing with the death of her parents made me cry.
• Last Chance to See – Douglas Adams – The man was not only an amazing and hilarious science fiction writer, he was an amazing and hilarious science truth writer.
• Dancing in the Dark – Morris Dickstein – A critic & academic’s cultural history of the 1930s. Good for me to get context on a lot of pieces I was aware of (all those love songs were from the Gershwins and Cole Porter? Dang!) but unwieldy and sometimes repetitive. I expect you could read only the chapters that interested you most and call it good.
• Destiny Disrupted – Tamim Ansary – A conversational history of the world from the Islamic standpoint. I had a library copy, but I’m going to purchase my own because this was so fascinating and provides so much context to world events and life around me. 
• Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West – Hampton Sides Like Destiny Disrupted, this book gave me a context and understanding I did not have. Probably I learned about the Kit Carson and the Mexican-American War during high school, but do you think I retained any of it? Sides gives a narrative of the hispanic settlers, the American military interests and the Navajo and other Native American groups here, not just a list of names and dates to be memorized.

I ended up listening to a lot of books as eaudio this year while working on house projects, and much of the fall was in the non-fiction realm while I worked on my own fiction. Since I’m wrapping up a period of intense creation, I’m looking forward to some more literary consumption as I begin 2014. Where to start? My 2013 reading was pretty equally divided between male and female authors; in 2014 I hope to read more new books and more indie authors.