Best non-Folio read this year?

Any chance that we can discuss something other than discriminatory pricing, misleading advertising and impertinent FS staff? I have read quite a few Folio titles this year, in an attempt to clear the backlog, so it hasn't been a great year (so far) for non-Folio reads. I am hoping to be swamped with recommendations.

My pick : Hancox by Charlotte Moore, an account of the Moore family's ownership of their home Hancox in Sussex (or was it Kent?). I can't quite account for the appeal of this book since none of the Moores was especially distinguished, apart from the paterfamilias who rose from an impoverished Irish upbringing to become President of the Royal College of Physicians (or was it Surgeons? my memory is shocking). But I found it engrossing.

I absolutely loved Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, a fantastic entry in the dystopian genre. As a friend said after we'd both finished it: "Her plots aren't always that original, but her language is so amazing that you're blown away regardless."

This is def not a book that I thought I would enjoy but I was pleasantly surprised:

Animals People by Indra Sinha

http://www.amazon.com/Animals-People-Novel-Indra-Sinha/dp/141657879X/ref=sr_1_1?...

It may well be the book I am reading now, Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?, a collection of stories and essays published by Chin Music Press, a book full of grace and heartbreak.

> 1

The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.

Great book: part of a Library of America anthology volume which is part of their 4 volume Steinbeck set.

Great value for money too.

I think my favorite non-FS book this year has been The Wizard of the Crow followed by The Poisonwood Bible. An African theme after my first trip to the Serengeti early in the year. I bought the Wa'Thiong'O book in Kenya thinking maybe I'd get some books by African authors that might be hard to find in the States, only to find the author teaches at the University by my house. Small world.

For me one of the most interesting non-FS reads in 2010 was A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch. I especially enjoyed the chapters on early Christianity, but at more than a thousand densely printed paged it is quite a long read.

One the most beautifully illustrated non-FS books I’ve read in 2010 is Ashen sky: the letters of Pliny the Younger on the eruption of Vesuvius, illustrated by Barry Moser. For those who can read German Laterne, Nacht und Sterne by Wolfgang Borchert, published by Faber and Faber Leipzig falls in the same category.

There have been plenty of non-FS books that I have enjoyed this year, but the absolute cream of the crop would be:

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (Her French Revolution novel A Place of Greater Safety is next in the queue)
Heartstone - C.J. Sansom (The latest in the wonderful Shardlake series)
The Lifecycle of Software Objects - Ted Chiang (A really thought-provoking sci-fi novella)

and I'm currently thoroughly enjoying an Everyman's edition of Rushdie's Midnight's Children

> 2 Have you read The Year of the Flood as well? Oryx and Crake is certainly a classic and stands out on its own, but I think the TYOTF (a sort of prequel) is an excellent companion piece and very masterful in its own way. I went to the launch last year in Edinburgh, with readings and a small choir singing God's Gardeners hymns and Margaret Atwood in a crazy hat, so that book will always have a special place in my heart.

My pick of the year was definitely Anathem. I read Eco's The Name of the Rose at a very impressionable age (my parents told me I couldn't see the movie until I'd read the book!), and I've been intrigued by post-apocalyptic monastic themes since reading A Canticle for Leibowitz a few years ago, followed by A Glass Bead Game. I suppose it appeal to both the archaeologist in me (preserving a previous civilization) and the reader in me (preserving the books!).

Anathem's a massive book, and it seems like many readers found it too wordy, but I love how Neal Stephenson plays with language to present a world that echoes our own but that is simultaneously very foreign. His vocabulary is highly evocative.

Oh, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed E M Forster's A Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread when I was in Florence last month. Slightly fluffy but very wry humour, and especially fun to read in Italy!

Edited to fix two appalling spelling errors!

>9 SpoonFed:

No, I just got it in the mail from Amazon on Monday! :) I will definitely be reading it sooner rather than later. I don't know if you heard, but she's working on a third book, to round it off as a trilogy. Fingers crossed she finishes soon!

Best fiction; The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam

Best non-fiction: The Vertigo Years by Phillipp Blom

Fiction: The Lost Books of the Odyssey: A Novel

NonFiction: Listen to This

After I finish a book I usually like to sit with it for a day or two before I rate it. I just finished The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel about an hour ago,but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the best I've read this year.

I'd second the nomination for Wolf Hall. I would also recommend what is the what by Dave Eggers. I've also read Freedom: A Novel by John Frantzen, which I would not rate so highly.

I've got Freedom:a novel, What is the What and Wolf Hall on my TBR pile - will have to shuffle them up to the top. I keep hearing great things about the latter two, and I'm really intrigued by the very conflicting reviews that Freedom seems to be getting.

I looked forward to Wolf Hall's appearing in paperback, but when I finally read it, it was a huge disappointment. Mantel's imaginative reconstruction of Thomas Cromwell's life would be fascinating, but the book is marred on literally every page by confusion over who is meant by "he", so that you're rereading paragraphs to figure out who is speaking or who is being referred to. Mantel's strategy of creating a limited omniscient narrator with Cromwell's point of view is, I suspect, intended to create a sense of intimacy between the reader and the main character. But over and over again the narrator shows Cromwell thinking about, talking about, talking to other people, and using "he" to refer to Cromwell himself as well as the man he is thinking or talking about or listening to. You can see how often this strategy breaks down by counting the number of times Mantel has to resort to "he, Cromwell". After reading a few hundred pages of this, a generous interpretation would be that the author has bravely attempted an unusual narrative strategy that doesn't quite work; after a few hundred pages more, you just want to dismiss her as not having mastered the basics of the writer's craft.

>16 mboudreau:

Taking a look at the reviews on Amazon, this is by far the biggest bone of contention about the book, and it fiercely divides those pro and con. I found it strange for a couple of chapters and then had no problem at all with it, and I absolutely loved the 'stream of consciousness' approach. I really can't wait for the sequel, 'he' and all.

Edited because I can't spell.

Fiction: The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
Non-fiction: The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters by John Gross

>16 mboudreau:/17

I loved the book. I was a little confused at first by the ambiguous "he" but it ended up being a huge plus for me.

But I did have a few friends who were unable to get past 5 pages of the book.

>16 mboudreau:/17/19 Hmmm, we have the book, it awaits, but I am now not sure that it will turn out to be a cracker. I read Mantel's Giving up the Ghost which I thought very good, but so far none of her fiction.

>8 HuxleyTheCat: I just have a complete blank when it come s to sci-fi. I can no more imagine myself reading it than, say, Gray's Anatomy. John Wain famously said that an interest in sci-fi is evidence of a bankrupt mind - now I'm by no means endorsing that, but it does seem that sci-fi is a taste you have or you haven't. My heart stoped when somebody mentioned that the new publishing director at FS likes sci-fi. I wake sweating at night to think that the Folio fiction list might in years to come comprise solely Patrick O'Brian, sci-fi and the Vapids.

Well I like sci-fi and Patrick O'Brian so two out of three isn't bad!

Actually I think that the term speculative fiction is probably better suited to my taste. I read a lot of straight science fiction when I was in my teens, Asimov, Clarke etc and then moved on to fantasy, but having recently been reacquainted with the genre, I realised that much of the stuff that is really thought provoking cannot be fully comprehended or appreciated by your average fourteen year-old. There is also an awful lot of very poor material being published in the genre too - but that's true of publishing in all genres.

The novella in question is definitely of the thought-provoking variety, and appealed to me because it is extremely well-written, had an emotional pull and was of interest from an academic point of view too.

> Well, on your recommendation I shall certainly look out for it. Not too old to change my spots and all that.

I would certainly third (or is it fourth now?) Wolf Hall if I had read it this year - but it was my book of the year for me. I positively liked the use of 'he', and didn't have a problem with it at any stage.

This year, of the non-Folio books, I would probably say Virginia Woolf's The Years is currently sitting on top of the pile, with the caveat that the book that has provided me with the most fun this year so far has been To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Best non-fiction has so far been Leviathan by Philip Hoare, but several very promising books are lined up for reading before the end of the year!

I think I will have to go with The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt