Best and worse reads of 2013

[CandyLoo]

I've been waiting for this thread to no avail so here we go...
Best: A Casual Vacancy - those characters will stay with me for a long time
Worse: The half - life of Hannah by Nick Alexander - badly written, no story, utter drivel...

And yours?

Best

Ready Player one
Doctor Sleep
The Goldfinch
Life after Life
Wool
We are water

Worst

100 year old man
Harold Fly
Casual Vacancy

BEST
Life After Life - Amazing!
100 year old Man - funny and sweet
Before I Go To Sleep
Moranthology
Gone Girl and Dark Places - love Gillian Flynn
The End Of Your Life Bookclub
Currently in middle of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and loving that too.

WORST
The Lifeboat (yawn)
The Summer House (Santa Montefiore) - what a load of tosh

Best; The Passage Justin Cronin
The Spinning Heart Donal Ryan
Big Brother Lionel Shriver
City of Bohane Kevin Barry

Worst (by far); Death Comes to Pemberly

Funniest; Bossypants Tina Fey. It would be a great light read over Christmas for anyone who hasn't read it yet. Genuinely hilarious.

My favourite book of 2013 was Wolf Hall. Brilliant.

My worst was A Prayer For Owen Meany, which I've been meaning to read for years. Sorry, I know some people love it, but it just didn't work for me.

I agree with the Death Comes to Pemberly haters. Peculiarly charmless.

This thread might inspire me to give Life After Life a go.

Cote, I gave up a few paragraphs into The Power of Now. When I hear people raving about it, I sometimes feel uneasily that I've missed out on something important, so it's good to know I'm not the only one.

I couldn't believe how rubbish The Power of now is! I was expecting some profound wisdom but it was a load of old twaddle. I giggled through the first third and then binned it.

My people!

I wonder whether the tv adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley will be any better. I struggled to get through the book - disappointing, because I've read and enjoyed quite a few of P D James's novels in the past.

Here are the reads I most enjoyed in 2013.

Non-fiction:
The Horlogicon, Mark Forsyth
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, Artemis Cooper
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Things, Paula Byrne
Amateurs in Eden, Joanna Hodgkin
Persian Fire, Tom Holland
Under Another Sky, Charlotte Higgins

Fiction:
Restoration, Rose Tremain
The Shelbourne Ultimatum, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
Little Children, Tom Perrotta
Heartbreak Hotel, Deborach Moggach

Books I was most disappointed by:
The Hive by Gill Hornby
Mad about the Boy by Helen Fielding.
Neither was "bad" in that they were very readable and I raced through them both, but I wanted to love them and instead found them both deeply irritating.

Best - The Shadow Year by Hannah Richell
Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Worst - Gone Girl.

Oh can I add another one to my favourites - Miss Peregrine'e home for perculiar children.

bibliomania & lookatmycameltoe - Rest assured that you have missed nothing. I ended up writing down the particularly ridiculous howlers in The Power Of Now - a list I enjoyed reading out loud in our book club meeting Stuff like:

(1) Even a stone has rudimentary consciousness. If it didn't, its atoms would disperse

(2) A woman's period pains is her body tapping into the eternal suffering of women through history (or some such)

If you are interested, I can go find my list

worst - Casual Vacancy
Ivanhoe

best - someone at a distance Dorothy Whipple
Naples 44 by Norman Lewis

Ooh yes, would love to see your list, Cote!

peanut, I chanced on The End of Your Life Bookclub in the library just after seeing your recommendation, so I'm going to give it a go.

Another worst read - if I'm allowed to call it read when I abandoned it a couple of chapters in - was an Agatha Raisin book, There Goes the Bride.

This year I re-read an old series by the same author (writing under the name Marion Chesney rather than M C Beaton) - the "Six Sisters" series of Regency romances. I loved them in my teens and enjoyed them again this time round. But as an author, she just churns out far too much with no quality control. With the Agatha Raisin book, it read as if she had published her plot notes rather than the finished text.

bibliomania - I hope you love The End of Your Life Bookclub - it's very very good. I read it for a bookclub I belong to, and started making lists of the books I wanted to read from it.

Best...South Riding by Winifred Holtby.

Worst... Casual Vacancy by ? Rowling.

Similar subject separated by over seventy years in time and aeons in quality of writing.

Bibliomania and Duchess - hope you catch this as see not many posts on this thread in the past week, but you can find a list of all the books mentioned in End Of Your Life Bookclub here www.scribd.com/doc/145547069/The-End-of-Your-Life-Book-Club-by-Will-Schwalbe-Complete-Reading-List

Duchess, I actually bought a copy of Daily Strength For Daily Needs from Amazon for £0.01 after reading TEOYLBC!

That's a really good list, thanks for the link peanut :) Have saved it to my favourites list.

Best - Game of Thrones
Devastation - Daniel D Longdon
Retribution - Daniel D Longdon
Worst - The Gift - Cecelia Ahern

Happened to come across Daniel D Longdon at Waterstones when he was doing a signing, bought the first book, loved it so got the 2nd on my Kindle

somebody gave me the Cecelia Ahern one, so glad I didn't actually pay for it - utter crap

I loved where'd you go, Bernadette, and also miss peregrines home (although I haven't quite finished it yet)
Haven't had any really bad reads, although I do tend to avoid books I don't like the write up about (or kindle equivalent of the back cover!)
I've got the latest Celia ahern book to start, and a couple of random shorts from Karin slaughter.
I did read a Cathy glass book, and really wasn't sure, it felt like it couldn't decide if it was fiction or non fiction, and I couldn't get in to it.
The love verb was very good, can't remember who wrote it but I sobbed all the way through, not a book to read when you're getting your hair done!

I agree with Bibliomania about Amateurs in Eden - a lovely read about Nancy Durrell (first wife of Lawrence Durrell). It did put me off reading anything else by Lawrence Durrell though - not that I was a fan anyway.

Agree Carlajean- Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple is great, as are all her other books. Persephone books have been my best find this year, Also thought Consequences by E.M. Delafield was heartbreaking.

I really enjoyed the (admittedly flawed) MaddAddam by Margaret Attwood. A good round off for her trilogy (After the Flood is still my fave though)

For light reading enjoyed CJ Samson's Shardlakeseries and loved the first half of Dominion.