Here are our favorite books published in 2011. Hover over the cover to see who recommends each book. You can read some of our thoughts about these books in this post. In the comments, let us know if you agree, and what books we missed that are on your Best of 2011 list.
ADULT SFF
CHILDREN/YA
ANTHOLOGIES/ STORY COLLECTIONS
AUDIOBOOKS (older books released in audio format in 2011)
Each of us has listed a few of our our favorite 2010 releases (hover over the cover to see who recommends each book). This year we’ve added an audio category — these are books that were released on audio for the first time in 2010. Read some of our comments about these books in this post.
Children / Young Adult
Anthologies
Science Fiction
2010 Audiobooks
It’s quite a bit longer this year because 1. we added a few new reviewers and 2. our mailboxes have been stuffed with review copies from publishers. Mostly we did not read the same books, but special mention goes to the first 10 novels which were highly recommended by more than one of us. Hover over the cover to see who recommends each book.
Honorable mentions to a couple of the best books we read this year that don’t qualify for our list :
The Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe (science fiction)
To Ride Hell’s Chasm by Janny Wurts (reprinted in 2009)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (science fiction)
Joe Abercrombie‘s The Last Argument of Kings and Brandon Sanderson‘s The Hero of Ages (both trilogy enders) top our list this year. In fact, those of us who read any Abercrombie or Sanderson novels named them as favorite authors this year. Another mention goes to last year’s favorite: Patrick Rothfuss. Those of us who finally got around to reading his 2007 debut novel this year put it at the top of our lists.
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We’ve named Patrick Rothfuss‘s The Name of the Wind as FanLit’s Favorite Book of 2007. Since this is our first year in existence, this is our first award ever. Mr. Rothfuss’s response: “That’s so cool. I’m proud to be your first….”
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Here are some of our very favorite fantasy novels and series (the first book in a series is shown). Each of our reviewers provided their top favorites. We don’t all love every book on this list, but there is definitely a lot of overlap!
You might also be interested in the archive of our Best of the Year lists.
For children and young adults:
Here we keep a list of our favorite books for each year and (see the bottom post) a list of many of our all-time favorite fantasy epics and stand-alone novels. If you’re new to the genre, here’s a good place to start (and this should keep you busy for quite a while, too!).
Comments are welcome.
