What is the best book you've read in the past year?

The answers (in order recieved):

  • i don't even know. i have NO IDEA what i was reading last year. but since may, it's been sacrament by dave eggers.

  • "Green hills of Africa" Ernest Hemingway

  • This summer, I devoured John Piper's 'Don't Waste Your Life'. It was an excellent read. Pogniant. Biting. Encouraging. Profound.

  • Hm... The most recent Discworld book "Night Watch" was pretty good, and so was "Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix" ("Yeah, I'd like one order of Phoenix to go, and could I get onion rings instead of fries with that?").

  • Tie: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and Humans by Robert J. Sawyer

  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!

  • Zim, by Don Zimmer.

  • The Art of Happiness, which was based on conversations and lectures given by the Dali Lama. It is really interesting and thought provoking, even if you do not have any buddhist leanings.

  • Where the Red Fern Grows. Its a story about a boy and his two hunting dogs. I know its a kids book, but it still entertains me today as much as it did 15 years ago.

  • Fiction - Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur S. Golden Non-fiction - Icebound, by Jerri Nielsen

  • The Autobiography of Dale Cooper (from the audio tapes) 

  • Best?  That's a toughie.  I really enjoyed Tony Horwitz's "Blue
Latitudes" about the journeys of Captain Cook, perceptions of the man, 
places
he visited, etc.  That might have been my favorite nonfiction book.

Fiction?  "Declare" by Tim Powers was a lot of fun in the secret history 
of the
Cold War vein.  Max Barry's "Jennifer Government" was kind of goofy, but 
also
fun.

Terry Pratchett's lastest Discworld book, "The Wee Free Men," was 
excellent. 
Spider Robinson's new Callahan book, "Callahan's Con," made me cry, and 
Amy
laughed at me....

But mostly because I laugh at her when she cries at books.

  • The missing pages from the 9/11 report, supposedly about the Saudis. Easy to read since there was nothing to read.

  • Right now I'm in the middle of "Household Gods" by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove. It's awesome! I've also read the Ender's Shadow series (parallels the Ender's Game series). In other words...I dispute the question because I've read lots of good stuff.

  • Hmm.. So many books, so little time.. The latest Song of Ice and Fire? The latest Harry Potter?

  • "I Don't Know How She Does It" by Allison Pearson. Very humorous British author!

  • Hmmm...I quite liked 'Empress of the World' by Sara Ryan (see www.sararyan.com). I haven't read a ton of new books this year so far though, sadly...hmmm. Oh, and duh! How could I forget 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'?!?? :) Twas awesome!

  • A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman

  • Vampire$

  • Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card

  • Maybe not the 'best' book, but the most interesting read that fell outside my usual Dean Koontz/Star Wars/Harry Potter triumverate, was "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. Boffo cyberpunky, Shadowrun-esque goodness!

  • I don't read books. I haven't read any that weren't manuals for something. So, I guess the manual for Star Wars Galaxies. I read that.

  • The white mughals, i am from pakistan &its an eye opener how we indo pak people let the english traders take over our entire ingdom our precious land ,how we were and what they made us and why we we are culturally and personally the way we are after the partition .excellent read for people who want to know of british raj over the world their foxy and twisted ways to rule an entirely different place to theirs.after reading this i realized why my grandma said the things she said bout kashmir and india and that they came disintegrated india and left kashmir to fight on till the blood runs dry .

  • When the Wind Blows - James Patterson

    My answer:

    In all fairness, I can't remember what I was reading more than two or three months ago. I loved a couple of the baseball books I read, most notably Michael Lewis' Moneyball and Gary Huckabay et al's Baseball Prospectus 2003. When I wrote this question I was hoping that the answer would be Joseph Heller's Catch-22, but I'm only 113 pages into it.
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