Just as an experiment, I’m collating all the reviews I have blogged on this particular date over the years, on my usual end-of-month, end-of-year system: grouped by category, and then with recommendations and disrecommendations. I’ve written a week of these in advance, and we’ll see how it goes from there.
Non-fiction
Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder (2023)
Non-genre
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (2009)
The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding (2012)
Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann (2014)
Speculative Fiction
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov (2006)
Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov (2006)
Second Foundation, by Isaac Asimov (2006)
Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde (2007)
Children of the Atom, by Wilmar H. Shiras (2008)
The Humans, by Matt Haig (2017)
The Happier Dead, by Ivo Stourton (2022)
Queen of the States, by Josephine Saxton (2022)
Doctor Who, etc
Torchwood: The Sin Eaters, by Brian Minchin (2009)
The Brilliant Book 2011 (2011)
The Fall of Yquatine, by Nick Walters (2012)
Code of the Krillitane, by Justin Richards (2012)
Joyride, by Guy Adams (2017)
The Stone House, by A.K. Benedict (2017)
What She Does next Will Astound You, by James Goss (2017)
Ruby Red, by Georgia Cook (2024)
Comics
Keys to the Kingdom (Locke & Key Vol 4), by Joe Hill (2012)
The Best
Nothing else on the list will quite manage to top John Steinbeck’s gruelling Of Mice and Men. (Review; get it here)
Honorable Mentions
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, by Jessica Bruder, is the disturbing anthropological study on which the Oscar-winning film was based. (Review of book and film; get it here)
Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, for all its flaws, is a bedrock of sf. (Review; get it here)
The Brilliant Book 2011 is a Doctor Who annual-type book which features the one and only Doctor Who story by Brian Aldiss, who was also probably the oldest person ever to write anything for Who. (Review; get it here, at a price)
The one you haven’t heard of
What She Does Next Will Astound You, by James Goss, is the best of the spinoff novels from the all-too-short-lived Class. (Review of all three Class books; get it here)
The one to avoid
I was unimpressed by The Humans, by Matt Haig. (Review; get it here)