2005: Some of the Goods

Jeff VanderMeer bowed out of writing a best-of-the-year article for Locus Online this year, and he and Mark Kelly schemed to get me to do it in Jeff's stead. I think they both knew me well enough to suspect that I would try to read every book published in English in 2005, and giving me the assignment late in the fall was a form of entertainment for them. I nearly drowned in books -- books sent by publishers, books borrowed from multiple libraries, and even a few books I bought on a whim. I barely slept. My eyes turned into big red sores on the front of my face. When I finally got down to the last three-foot stack of books to look through, I nearly cried, because one three-foot pile didn't seem particularly daunting at that point. I doubt I'll ever be able to do such a thing again, because I doubt I'll ever have an entire month free just for reading again, but though it was utterly exhausting, the whole process was also exhilarating.

And so now I present you with "2005: Some of the Goods". You'll find plenty of surprises there, I expect, as well as a few books I've been championing for a while.

Mine is, thankfully, not the only point of view Locus Online offers. Claude Lalumière also offers his choices, and his include comics, TV shows, movies, etc. Claude and I usually have entirely opposite taste, but we agree about Kelly Link and Howl's Moving Castle, and I suspect I'll enjoy Lisa Tuttle's The Mysteries, but I only got a copy of it recently. And I'd never heard of some of the other things he lists, so am intrigued.

I think there's one other best-of-the-year article that will be posted on the site, too. I'll update this post once it is.

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