In the comments for this entry on The Blood of the Lamb, I made a list of a bunch of “classic” or “literary” books from the early part of the 20th century which just leave me cold. Squub made me realize the silliness of an un-recommendation list. Only people filled with a certain kind of strangeness would go and read books from a list that someone hadn’t particularly recommended to read. Like me.
Anyway, in no particular order, the 21 best books that I read in 2003:
1. Quicksilver by Neal Stepehson
2. A Place So Foreign and Eight More by Cory Doctorow
3. City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer
4. Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World by Bruce Schneier
5. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail by Hunter S. Thompson
6. Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
7. Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions by Clyde Presowitz
8. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
9. Hundred Camels in the Courtyard by Paul Bowles
10. Dark Star by Alan Furst
11. Super Flat Times by Matthew Derby
12. The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics by Richard Davenport-Hines
13. Behindlings by Nicola Barker
14. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
15. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
16. Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey in the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck
17. Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years by Bruce Sterling
18. At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom by Amy Hempel
19. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold
20. Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
21. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright
I believe that I have written about most (if not all) of these elsewhere here. This is when the search thingy becomes handy, as I am too lazy to link these to those.