Your book of the year

[CaptainTripps]

Saved the best till last. Am halfway through 11.22.63 by Stephen King.

I have come late to King. Last xmas I was working my way through the Stand (hence my user name) and thought I was in heaven. Was so gutted to get to the end of it.

Ahh so I will read more Stephen King, thought I. And I did: Under The Dome, Duma Key, Cell. I just couldn't reach the giddying heights of the Stand.

Then I started 11.22.63 two weeks ago. King is back on form!This is a brilliant book. His characters are so real, so long as you can suspend your disbelief over the whole time travel thing! Once that is done, it is a beautiful story. I recommend it even if you are not a King fan.

The blurb from Amazon:
WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11.22.63, the date that Kennedy was shot - unless . . .

King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 - from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life - a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

With extraordinary imaginative power, King weaves the social, political and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation into a devastating exercise in escalating suspense.

I enjoyed 11.22.63 a lot, except for the ending which disappointed me (though not sure what I think might have pleased me tbh - fussy!).

Best read of the year for me has been 'No Name' by Wilkie Collins for fiction and 'Into the Silence' about Mallory and Irvine's Everest quest for non-fiction.

I loved 11.22.63 too. I also felt that way about The Stand when I finished reading it.. nothing else could compare!

I really enjoyed Wonder by RJ Palacio. Passed it onto my teens to read after me too.

I've got Into the Silence on my list to read.

My favourite book was The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. I liked the story but the best thing about it was the writing, really evocative.

I LOVED the snow child!! My sister hated it, but she loved where d'ya go Bernadette and I loathed it,

Hadn't read any Stephen King for years but just finished 11.22.63 last week, really enjoyed it, shall now look at his Dark Towers series.

Can't tell you how much I love the Dark Tower. :)

I read the first book in The Dark Tower series but couldn't quite get into it. Someone told me to keep going though as it picks up from book two.

Books 2, 5 and 7 are my favourites.

I should keep going with them then :)

Difficult to choose just one...

I thought Fatherland by Robert Harris was very good. It's an alternative history, starting from the premise that the Germans won the Second World War and set in a 1960s version of Hitler's Germany, but that's almost incidental because it's largely a crime thriller centred around a series of deaths. Really well done.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Prisoner of Heaven was pretty good, although I think The Shadow of the Wind which is an earllier book in the same series was better. Very Gothic and atmospheric.

For non-fiction I found James Shapiro's Contested Will, about the arguments behind the question of the authorship of Shakespeare very interesting. Gossip From The Forest by Sara Maitland, which examines various forests across the country and ties them into fairy tales, was wonderful. Graham Robb's The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe was fascinating too.

The authors I have read most have been Phil Rickman, Ian Rankin and Trudi Canavan.

I enjoyed, 'Gossip from the Forest' hugely, except for the bits when she was wiffling on about herself/her son/ her dog.

The book that stood out for me last year was "The Hundred year old man that climbed out of the window" It was just daft, but really exciting and I loved the ending.

I also enjoyed "the prisoner of heaven" and that was the last book of 2013 for me. I want to read more this year. Chillie - i found the end of it really frustrating though - i also read in the blurb that there is to be a fourth and final novel in the series that ties all the loose ends together. So felt i needed it NOW!!!

Then there was "my idea of fun" by Will Self - he is an "interesting" author I tried to read "the umbrella" but it flummoxed me before the end of the first chapter. I really loved "the book of Dave" - disturbing.

Haven't read any King for a long long time - i read them alot as a teenager but got a bit pissed off with the apocalyptic endings. I don't really read any horror anymore as since having children i am sensitive I did read the last one by James Herbert this year too - bitterly disappointed, i couldn't help but wonder if the poor sod was going mad :(

Me Before You was probably the best book I read in 2013. Loved it.

Game of Thrones, The Handmaid's Tale, Astray by Emma Donoghue and Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks by Christopher Brookmyre all came near the top of my list too.

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson. Nothing else came anywhere near it.

The Light Between Oceans.

I really liked The Light Between Oceans too. It's probably the book I recommended most often to friends last year.

I also tried Stephen King for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed The Dome. Just great entertainment.

However I think East of Eden by Steinbeck would have to be my book of the year. I now have another three of his novels waiting to be read. Such intelligent memorable writing.

The best book of 2013 for me was The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida. Most amazing, poetic, beautiful book

Into the darkest corner by Elizabeth Haynes. Couldn't put it down.
Love Jojo Moyes and Lisa Jewell