Well, it’s been interesting for me to look back on my years of bookblogging by date, but I don’t think it’s been interesting to many other people, so I’m drawing this series of posts to a close as of today.

Non-fiction
The Story of Alice, by Mavis Batey (2004)
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol VIII (2010)

Non-genre
The Man With Two Left Feet, and Other Stories, by P.G. Wodehouse (2006)

SF
A Dance with Dragons, by George R.R. Martin (2011)
Gráinne, by Keith Roberts (2016)
“Slow Sculpture”, by Theodore Sturgeon (2018)
How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu (2023)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who – Vengeance on Varos, by Philip Martin (2008)
Doctor Who – The Mark of the Rani, by Pip and Jane Baker (2008)
Doctor Who – The Two Doctors, by Robert Holmes (2008)
Doctor Who – Timelash, by Glen McCoy (2008)
Doctor Who – Revelation of the Daleks, by Jon Preddle (2008)
Doctor Who – The Mysterious Planet, by Terrance Dicks (2008)
Doctor Who – Mindwarp, by Philip Martin (2008)
Doctor Who – Terror of the Vervoids, by Pip and Jane Baker (2008)
Doctor Who – The Ultimate Foe, by Pip and Jane Baker (2008)

The best
Out of a rather thin crop today – since I started end-of-the-month blogging, I’ve posted fewer reviews on days like this – the best is definitely GRRM’s fifth volume, A Dance with Dragons. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mention
Sadly, Robert Holmes wrote only one Doctor Who novel, The Two Doctors, but it’s one of the best ones. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
For a BSFA winner (in 1987), Keith Roberts’ Gráinne is undeservedly obscure. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
The Ultimate Foe – a bad telling of a bad story. (Review; get it here)

July books summary, 2004-2024

And that’s all, folks. Now that it’s all over, I count that I have linked reviews to 535 books: 178 science fiction and fantasy (excluding Doctor Who), 122 non-fiction, 99 Doctor Who fiction (excluding comics), 71 non-sff fiction, 48 comics and 17 plays and poetry.

My choices for best of each day, however, have not been evenly distributed: 10 each for non-fiction and sff (8% and 6% respectively), 8 for non-genre (11%), 2 plays and poetry (one of each, 12%) and one comic (2%), but no Doctor Who fiction.

Doctor Who

I actually did give a top spot on 11 July to a non-fiction book about Doctor Who, Ian Potter’s Black Archive on The Myth Makers. (Review; get it here.)

I gave honorable mentions to the following Doctor Who fiction books:
The Brilliant Book 2011 (1 July)
Loving the Alien (5 July)
Risk Assessment (7 July)
The Algebra of Ice (23 July)
Doctor Who: The Visual Dictionary, Dorling Kindersley version (24 July)
Dead of Winter (28 July)
Doctor Who: The Two Doctors (31 July, er, today)

James Goss wrote two of the above, and my favourite is his Eleventh Doctor novel, Dead of Winter. (Review; get it here)

Comics

The only comic that I gave the top spot to, over the 31 days, was Art Spiegelman’s Maus, on 16 July, but it is the best of them. (Review; get it here.)

Plays and Poetry

The only script that got the top spot was Hamilton, on 22 July, but I stand by that – it’s superb. (Review; get it here)
The only poetry that I flagged as best of the date was Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf, on 4 July. (Review; get it here.)

Non-genre fiction

I gave top spots to:
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1 July)
Ian Rankin’s Dead Souls (3 July)
Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel (7 July)
Ulysses, by James Joyce (19 July)
Middlemarch, by George Eliot (23 July)
The Way by Swann’s, aka Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust (24 July)
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway (26 July)
Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith (27 July)

Most of the above are classics, but there may be a couple that surprise you. My favourite by far is Middlemarch. (Review; get it here)

Science fiction and fantasy

I gave top spots to:
Farthing, by Jo Walton (6 July)
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (9 July)
Ian McDonald’s River of Gods (17 July)
City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett (18 July)
Appliance, by J.O. Morgan (21 July)
Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly (25 July)
Joint win for A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher and A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (28 July)
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (29 July)
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ (30 July)
GRRM’s A Dance with Dragons. (31 July, today)

Of the above, The Hobbit will always have a special place in my heart.  (Review; get it here) Of the books I had not previously read, I guess I would choose The Female Man. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction

The non-fiction books that I awarded the top spot to were:
Jayne Olorunda’s Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles (2 July)
Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins (5 July)
The Johnstown Flood, by David McCullough (8 July)
The King of Almayne: A 13th Century Englishman in Europe, by T.W.E. Roche (10 July)
Ian Potter’s The Myth Makers, as mentioned earlier (11 July)
Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table (12 July)
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (13 July)
George and Sam by Charlotte Moore (14 July)
The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton (15 July)
Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (20 July)

All of the above are very good, and my favourite is Michael Collins’ Carrying the Fire, about his career as an Apollo astronaut. (Review; get it here)

Finally, a quick look at the worst books that I have reviewed on any day in July. None of them were comics; one was poetry (6% of that category); five non-fiction (4%); five non-genre fiction (7%); six Doctor Who books (five novels and an annual, 6%); and, coming as I do from a place of love for the genre, 17 science fiction and fantasy novels (10%), two of them by M. John Harrison.

This adds up to 34, over the 31 days of July, because I gave myself some latitude; on several days I did not put anything in this category, and on several days I put two or three. I think the one I most regret even touching, never mind opening, is Tom Sharp’s awful Wilt in Nowhere. (Review; get it here.)

To finish on a more positive note: please do consider looking at the more obscure of the above, which I guess include Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel (review; get it here); Appliance, by J.O. Morgan (review; get it here); and Jayne Olorunda’s Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles (review; get it here). If you appreciate my taste in general, you’ll probably appreciate these.

Non-fiction
A History of India, by John Keay (2008)
Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale, by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook (2009)
The Essence of Christianity, by Ludwig Feuerbach (2014)
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 (2014)

Non-genre
Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow (2006)
Billionaire Boy, by David Walliams (2014)

Poetry
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri (2009)

SF
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams (2006)
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ (2007)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who: Aliens and Enemies, by Justin Richards (2011)

Comics
The Countdown Annual 1972 (2012)

Not many today.

The best
The Female Man is justly famous. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
The Writer’s Tale is a brilliant insight into how Russell T. Davies approached his writing of Doctor Who. (Review; get it here)
We’re a little distant from The Divine Comedy, but it retains its power. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
The Countdown Annual 1972 is a charming snapshot of an earlier age. (Review; get it here)

The ones to avoid
I could not finish (review) either The Essence of Christianity (get it here) or The Journals of Lewis and Clark (get them here).
But even worse is David Walliams’ repulsive Billionaire Boy. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
Broadstairs: Heydays and Nowadays, by Nick Evans (2012)
Ireland Under the Tudors, by Richard Bagwell (2014)

Non-genre
The History of Richard Calmady, by “Lucas Malet” [Mary St Leger Kingsley Harrison] (2008)
A House for Mr Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul (2008)
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens (2013)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O’Farrell (2014)

SF
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (2007)
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (2009)
Rogue Queen, by L. Sprague de Camp (2014)

Doctor Who
Beast of Fang Rock, by Andy Frankham-Allan (2016) [Lethbridge-Stewart novel]
Adorable Illusion, by Gary Russell (2019) [Bernice Summerfield novel]
The Waters of Mars, by Phil Ford (2024) [Tenth Doctor, novelisation]

Best
Not gonna make any excuses; The Hobbit is my favorite of all of the above. Not perhaps substantial enough for three epic films though… (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
Brave New World is justifiably a classic of science fiction. (Review; get it here)
The Vanishing of Esme Lennox is a brilliant short book about hidden Scottish family history. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
The History of Sir Richard Calmady is a great novel about a privileged man, born with only vestigial legs. Published in 1901, it is frank about sex, disability and religion. An overlooked and neglected classic. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
Rogue Queen was hailed as breaking taboos on sexual themes in sf when it was published in 1951, but to today’s ready it is dull and off-target. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement, by Paul Bew (2019)

Non-genre
Paid and Loving Eyes, by Jonathan Gash (2012)
Last Term at Malory Towers, by Enid Blyton (2012)
Tales from the Secret Annexe, by Anne Frank (2016)
Nant Olchfa, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)

SF
The Lady of the Shroud, by Bram Stoker (2006)
The Lost Road, by J.R.R. Tolkien (2011)
Kushiel’s Mercy, by Jacqueline Carey (2015)
The Secret History of Science Fiction, eds. James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel (2016)
Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn (2021)
Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas (2021)
Raybearer, by Jordan Ifueko (2021)
Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger (2021)
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by “T. Kingfisher” [Ursula Vernon] (2021)
A Deadly Education, by Naomi Novik (2021)
To Paradise, by Hanya Yanagihara (2023)

Doctor Who
Hidden, by Stephen Savile (2009) [Torchwood, spinoff novel]
Doctor Who Annual 1973 (2010) [Third Doctor, annual]
The Highest Science, by Gareth Roberts (2010) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
Dead of Winter, by James Goss (2011) [Eleventh Doctor, spinoff novel]

The best
I’m going to give a one-off joint win here, to two 2021 Lodestar finalists (reviewed here), A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking (get it here) and A Deadly Education (get it here).

Honorable mentions
I have a lot of four-star ratings for the above. the two I’m going to pick out are:
Kushiel’s Mercy, by Jacqueline Carey, is one of the superb erotic fantasy series, and probably the only one I’ll cover in this series of write-ups. (Review, get it here)
Dead of Winter, by James Goss, is a splendidly creepy Eleventh Doctor / Amy / Rory story. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement is a collection of Paul Bew’s writings on Northern Ireland in the early 2000s. Lucid and informative. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn, seemed to me to be trying to say important things about race and class by importing Welsh and British legends to North Carolina, and I could not get over the cognitive dissonance. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents, by Charles Willis Thompson (2007)
The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol. VII (2010)
Katherine Swynford: The History of a Medieval Mistress, by Jeannette Lucraft (2013)
The Prisoner, by Dave Rogers (2015)
Empire of Mud, by J.D. Dickey (2016)
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, by Mary Trump (2020)

Non-genre
The Spring of the Ram, by Dorothy Dunnett (2012)
Spend Game, by Jonathan Gash (2013)
Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie (2013)
Crash, by J.G. Ballard (2014)
Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters (2018)

SF
The Mark of Ran, by Paul Kearney (2006)
Coyote Dreams, by C.E. Murphy (2007)
The Guardians, by John Christopher (2007)
Kiss of the Butterfly, by James Lyon (2013)
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins (2013)
Killdozer!, by Theodore Sturgeon (2022)
Stray Pilot, by Douglas Thompson (2023)

Doctor Who
Coldheart, by Trevor Baxendale (2012) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]
Plague of the Cybermen, by Justin Richards (2013) [Eleventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
The Ripple Effect, by Malorie Blackman (2013) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
Doctor Who: Cybermen Monster File (2014) [Cybermen, spinoff multimedia]
Choose Your Future: Night of the Kraken, by Jonathan Green (2019) [Twelfth Doctor, game book]
Choose Your Future: Terror Moon, by Trevor Baxendale (2019) [Twelfth Doctor, game book]
Times Squared, by Rick Cross (2020) [Lethbridge-Stewart, spinoff novel]

The best
I was really blown away by Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, a great novel of repressed Victorian London, and also Surrey. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
The Spring of the Ram, by Dorothy Dunnett, is the second of her superb Niccolò sequence, taking him from Flanders to distant Trebizond, in the shadow of the fall of Constantinople and the imminent threat of a repeat. I loved all of these, but this was one of my favourites. (Review; get it here)
Empire of Mud is a great micro-history of the city Washington and the District of Columbia. Did you know that before the Pentagon, there was the Octagon? Which is still standing, and actually has only six sides. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents, by Charles Willis Thompson, is by the Washington correspondent of the New York Times and the New York World, and wrote this book in 1929, about the presidents of the previous thirty years – McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding and Coolidge and Mark Hanna, the power behind the throne of McKinley’s presidency, and three-times Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan. A brilliant personal insight into a rather neglected part of US history. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
The Prisoner, by Dave Rogers, is one of these annual-style books, published in 1989, about the 1960s series, which adds very little to its recapitulation of the plots of the 17 episodes. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election, by John Danforth et al (2022)

Non-genre
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway (2010)
Jill, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)
Jill and Jack, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)

Scripts
Faust, by Goethe (2010)

Song lyrics
How to be Invisible, by Kate Bush (2024)

SF
Plastic Jesus, by Wayne Simmons (2014)
Anno Mortis, by Rebecca Levene (2018)
Light, by M. John Harrison (2021)
The Separation, by Christopher Priest (2021)
Upgrade, by Blake Crouch (2023)

Doctor Who
The Book of the Still, by Paul Ebbs (2014) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]
Dead Romance, by Lawrence Miles (2016) [Bernice Summerfield novel]
Doctor Who and the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis (2020) [Second Doctor, novelisation]

Comics
Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, by Mary M. Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot (2015)

Again, not as many as some days.

The best
To my surprise, I was blown away by The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s sparse and lucid account of young things in Paris and Spain. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
Christopher Priest’s The Separation is one of the great alternate-WW2 novels – and there are some bad ones too. (Review; get it here)
Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, is a great mixture of historical feminism and the lived experience of a late twentieth-century professional woman. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
My distant cousin Amy Dillwyn’s best novel is Jill, about a young woman finding herself (and love with other women) by travelling around Europe in the 1890s. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
I do not like Light, by M. John Harrison. I thought the sex was sordid, the characters unpleasant, and the plot barely comprehensible. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s, by Robert Thomas (2004)
How Languages are Learned, by Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada (2014)
Boy, by Roald Dahl (2016)
Hallelujah: The Story of a Musical Genius & the City That Brought His Masterpiece to Life, by Jonathan Bardon (2024)

Non-genre
Chloe Arguelle, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)
A Burglary, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)

SF
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick (2015)
Gateways, ed. Elizabeth Anne Hull (2019)
The Transfer Problem by Adam Saint (2023)

Doctor Who
The Doctor Who Quiz Book of Dinosaurs, by Michael Holt (2018) [Fifth Doctor, quiz book]
The Unofficial Master Annual 2074, ed. Mark Worgan (2022) [Master]

Comics
Brussel in beeldekes: Mannekin Pis en andere sjarels, ed. Marc Verhaegen (2014)

Rather slim pickings today.

The best
Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly has flaws – every woman character is referred to by the size of her breasts – but the central theme of loss of self is utterly compelling. And the prediction of a 1977 book, that 1994 would see the war on drugs still being waged and lost, only with superior technology and occasional state collusion, turns out to have been entirely true; thirty years on from 1994, almost fifty since the book was written, we haven’t learned much. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mention, also the one you haven’t heard of
Jonathan Bardon’s history of Handel’s Messiah is great on how he came to be in England, then in Ireland, and the social situation of 18th-century Dublin that almost guaranteed success. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
I got only fifty pages into The Transfer Problem, by Adam Saint. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
The Bloody Sunday Report, Volume VI (2010)
First Generation, by Mary Tamm (2019) [Doctor Who-related autobiography]
Amy Dillwyn, by David Painting (2023)

Non-genre
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver (2015)
The Way by Swann’s, by Marcel Proust (2018)
The Rebecca Rioter, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)

SF
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones (2004)
Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs (2007)
Deathbird Stories, by Harlan Ellison (2007)
Making Money, by Terry Pratchett (2009)
Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon (2012)
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester (2016)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who: the Visual Dictionary, by Andrew Darling, Kerrie Dougherty, David John, Simon Beecroft, and Amy Junor (2007) [First to Tenth Doctors]
Revolution Man, by Paul Leonard (2011) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]
So Vile a Sin, by Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman (2014) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
Doctor Who and the Vortex Crystal, by William H. Keith, Jr (2015) [Fourth Doctor, game book]
Doctor Who and the Rebel’s Gamble, by William H. Keith, Jr (2015) [Sixth Doctor, game book]
The Ultimate Treasure, by Christopher Bulis (2024) [Fifth Doctor, spinoff novel]

Comics
Albion, by Alan Moore, Leah Moore and John Reppion (2007)
Shattered Visage, by Dean Motter and Mark Askwith (2009)

The best
Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m going to go with the critical consensus and nominate The Way by Swann’s, also known as Swann’s Way, originally Du Côté de chez Swann, by Marcel Proust. I find that in general I enjoy the great modernist writers, and I found the descriptions of children’s perceptions of the world of grownups, and of what it is like to be a man in love, simply superb. Also, more girl-on-girl action than I had expected. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mentions
I’m giving you three quirky extras today.
Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon, won the 2003 Nebula for Best Novel. It’s about a high-functioning autistic chap in a near-future world; I don’t think it hits all the notes perfectly, but I’m glad it was done. (Review; get it here)
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by the late great Diana Wynne Jones, is a hilarious dissection of the tropes of fantasy novels; she knew a thing or two about that subject. (Review; get it here)
The Dorling Kindersley Visual Dictionary for Doctor Who is rather glorious. (The more recent BBC publication of the same title equally so.) (Review; get it here)

The ones you haven’t heard of
My distant cousin Amy Dillwyn wrote a number of novels in the 1890s, the first of which was The Rebecca Rioter, a story of industrial unrest in South Wales a few decades before. There is also a nice recent biography of her by the late David Painting. (Review of both; get The Rebecca Rioter here; get David Painting’s biography here.)

The one to avoid
Actually I’m leaving this blank today; none of the above is awful. I guess I was least impressed with The Ultimate Treasure, a below-par Sixth Doctor story. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker (2010)

Non-genre
Middlemarch, by George Eliot (2021)

Doctor Who
The Algebra of Ice, by Lloyd Rose (2016) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]

Comics
Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, by Phil and Kaja Foglio (2011)
De Sterrensteen, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Peter Van Gucht & Luc Morjaeu] (2014)

A rather short list today, so let’s keep this short too.

The best
Middlemarch is one of my favourite books ever. It is about fifty times better than the other four above, combined. Sometimes the conventional wisdom has a point. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mention
Somehow it’s been rare for Doctor Who books to reach the top spot in my recommendations here, but The Algebra of Ice is a great multi-stranded Seventh Doctor novel which starts with the death of Edgar Allan Poe and then just gets weirder. (Review; get it here, at a price)

Non-fiction
Becoming, by Michelle Obama (2019)

Non-genre
The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt (2015)

Script
Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (2016)

SF
The Light Ages, by Ian R. MacLeod (2005)
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (2006)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling (2007)
Beowulf, tr. J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (2014)
The Ruin of Kings, by Jenn Lyons (2020)
Half Life, by Shelley Jackson (2022)
End of the World Blues, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (2022)
Nova Swing, by M. John Harrison (2022)
The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden, by Catherynne M. Valente (2022)
The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean (2024)

Doctor Who
Parasite, by Jim Mortimore (2012) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
The Last Pharaoh, by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett (2021) [Erimem, spinoff novel]

The best
I became a Hamilton fan in January 2016, and delightedly grabbed the Hamiltome, as we cognoscenti called it, as soon as I could. It is a brilliant look behind the writing and the making of the musical, including the songs that were taken out (the third cabinet battle, the one about John Adams, etc). I know that not everyone is a fan, but heck, this is my blog and I get to recommend the things that I like. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
Two books by authors with confusingly similar names (though one was born in 1963 and the other died in 1965, so they are probably different people):
The best known book by Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) is The Haunting of Hill House, and I loved it too; edgy, brilliant ghost story. (Review; get it here)
The best known book by Shelley Jackson (1963-) is Half Life, an amazing phantasmagoria of a damaged society seen through the eyes of conjoined twins. (Review; get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
For once I’m leaving this blank; Half Life is the most obscure of the books I liked from the above list, and it’s not all that obscure.

The ones to avoid
Two classics that I really didn’t get on with:
The Sorrows of an American is a dismal New York tangle of love affairs, Norwegian ancestors and 9/11. (Review; get it here.)
Nova Swing simply repelled me, like most of Harrison’s writing does. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
Under the Devil’s Eye: Britain’s Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915-1918, by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody (2006)
The Republic, by Plato (2007)
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O’Driscoll (2019)

Non-genre
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane (2006)
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (2009)
Lucy, by Jamaica Kincaid (2012)
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (2013)
The True Deceiver, by Tove Jansson (2015)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, vol 1, by Jeff Kinney (2016)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, vol 2, by Jeff Kinney (2016)

Poetry
The Knight in the Tiger Skin, by Shot’ha Rust’hveli (2005)

SF
The Afterblight Chronicles: Kill or Cure, by Rebecca Levene (2007)
Misspent Youth, by Peter F. Hamilton (2009)
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov (2013)
City of Lies, by Sam Hawke (2020)
Riding the Unicorn, by Paul Kearney (2021)
Appliance, by J.O. Morgan (2023)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who [The Novel of the Film], by Gary Russell (2007) [Eighth Doctor, novelisation]
Conundrum, by Steve Lyons (2011) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
Wonderland, by Mark Chadbourn (2012) [Second Doctor, spinoff novel]
Vanishing Point, by Steve Cole (2013) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]
Millennium Shock, by Justin Richards (2014) [Fourth Doctor, spinoff novel]

Graphic story
Napoleon Bonaparte for Little Historians, by Bou Bounoider (2014)

The best, also the one you haven’t heard of
A hidden jewel from the Clarke submissions list: Appliance is a great collection of themed short stories about the invention of a teleporter and its consequences. I felt that it was not a novel, and therefore not eligible for the award, but it was great all the same. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
Reading The Old Man and the Sea, somehow you are out there in the Gulf of Mexico, struggling against the forces of nature. Brilliant stuff. (Review; get it here)
I met Seamus Heaney only once, a chance encounter in a pub (the Foggy Dew in Temple Bar in Dublin, some time around 1989); he offered to buy me a drink on the basis of having known my parents in their mutual QUB days, but I was too shy to accept. I wish I had. I learned a lot from Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, and I would have learned something from even ten minutes’ conversation with him. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Alliance, by J.O. Morgan; see above.

The one to avoid
Even worse than The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Bou Bounoider’s childrens’ book about Napoleon is rambling and poorly written. Readers will be startled to learn that “Wellington was an Englishman, a bit like Paddington Bear.” None of those things is quite like the other. Wellington was born in Ireland, and Paddington Bear was a) from Peru and b) a bear. The book is aimed at the 6-12 age group, and they will like the illustrations but may not learn much from the text. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey (2004)
Veeps, by Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger (2009)
EU Lobbying Handbook, by Andreas Geiger (2020)
Kosovo: A Short History, by Noel Malcolm (2022)
Stability Operations in Kosovo 1999-2000: A Case Study, by Jason Fritz (2022)
The Smell of War, by Roland Bartetzko (2022)
How to End Russia’s War on Ukraine, by Timothy Ash et al (2023)

Non-genre
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens (2010)
Desert, by J.M.G. Le Clézio (2013)
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (2013)
The Last Empress, by Anchee Min (2013)

SF
Galactic Patrol, by E.E. “Doc” Smith (2006)
Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler (2014)
The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, by Theodore Roszak (2014)
The Goblin of Tara, by Oisin McGann (2014)
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame (2019)
Wormhole, by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown (2023)

Doctor Who
The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch (2013) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]

The best
Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century is a great analysis of why it is that Tolkien’s works have struck such a deep chord with so many readers. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mentions
Kosovo: A Short History is magisterial, but only goes to 1997 unfortunately. (Review; get it here)
Dawn is a typically unsparing Butler examination of slavery and symbiosis. (Review; get it here)
Desert goes from the Western Sahara to Marseilles, and finds that the human desert may be in the latter rather than the former . (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Maybe it’s slightly cheating to count thinktank papers as books for these purposes, but I found the June 2023 Chatham House report on “How to end the War in Ukraine” very rigorous and coherent, in particular debunking the various justifications that have been given for the war. Though my good friend Ian did this rather more pithily a year earlier. (Review; get it for free here)

The one to avoid
I do not understand the reverence for the works of E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith in the history of science fiction. They are all rubbish, and Galactic Patrol is as bad as any of them. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, by Maxine Hong Kingston (2009)
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll (2016)
The Darwin Awards, by Wendy Northcutt (2022)
The Popes and Sixty Years of European Integration (2023)
Frontiers of the Roman Empire: The Lower German Limes, by David J. Breeze (2024)

Non-genre
Ulysses, by James Joyce (2015)

SF
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis (2011)
An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon (2018)
Heroine Complex, by Sarah Kuhn (2018)
The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden (2018)
TOR: Assassin Hunter, by Billy Bob Buttons (2020)
Guy Erma and the Son of Empire, by Sally Ann Melia (2022)
The Immortality Thief, by Taran Hunt (2023)

Doctor Who
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, by Christopher Bulis (2007) [First Doctor, spinoff novel]
City at World’s End, by Christopher Bulis (2007) [First Doctor, spinoff novel]
The Plotters, by Gareth Roberts (2009) [First Doctor, spinoff novel]

Comics
The Iron Legion, by Pat Mills et al (2007) [Doctor Who: Fourth Doctor]
Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir, by Stan Lee, Peter David and Colleen Doran (2019)

The best
It’s a bit of a cliche, but I really do like (most of) Ulysses, and it does reward return visits. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
The Immortality Thief is a story of a race against time with unlikely allies in an abandoned space structure inhabited by horrible creatures. I didn’t think it put a foot wrong.(Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
I picked up a short trilingual book on the Frontiers of the Roman Empire: The Lower German Limes at a reception last year, and found it unexpectedly absorbing and fascinating, comparing the Rhine frontier with Hadrian’s Wall and other Roman boundaries. (Review; get it for free here)

The ones to avoid
I’m going to be mean today, because three of these books got two stars or less out of five in my personal ratings.
TOR: Assassin Hunter – historically illiterate, clunky writing. (Review; get it here)
The Plotters – really historically illiterate; I expect better from Doctor Who novels. (Review; get it here, at a price)
Guy Erma and the Son of Empire – leaden, unreadable prose. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
Dalek I Loved You, by Nick Griffiths (2009) [Doctor Who]
How to Make School Make Sense, by Clare Lawrence (2009)
A Fortunate Life: The Autobiography of Paddy Ashdown (2010)
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vols I & II, by Edward Gibbon (2010)
The Bloody Sunday Report, Volume V (2010)

Non-genre
Chronicle in Stone, by Ismail Kadarë (2009)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Bar (2011)

SF
City of Illusions, by Ursula Le Guin (2007)
Discount Armageddon, by Seanan Maguire (2018)
Stories of the Raksura: The Dead City + The Dark Earth Below, by Martha Wells (2018)
A Natural History of Dragons, by Maire Brennan (2018)
Introduction to the Stormlight Archive for Hugo Voters, by Brandon Sanderson (2018)
City of Stairs, by Richard Jackson Bennett (2018)
In the Serpent’s Wake, by Rachel Hartman (2023)
Mercury Rising, by R.W.W. Greene (2023)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma, by Eric Saward (2008) [Sixth Doctor, novelisation]
Doctor Who – Attack of the Cybermen, by Eric Saward (2008) [Sixth Doctor, novelisation]
Verdigris, by Paul Magrs (2009) [Third Doctor, spinoff novel]
State of Change, by Christopher Bulis (2011) [Sixth Doctor, spinoff novel]
The Dalek Book, by David Whitaker and Terry Nation (2011) [Dalek spinoff collection, one story features Susan]
Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, ed. Paul Cornell (2016) [First to Eighth Doctor, short stories]

Comics
Buddha, Volume 1: Kapilavastu, by Osamu Tezuka (2006)
Fables vol 5: The Mean Seasons, by Bill Willingham (2009)
Black Hole, by Charles Burns (2010)
The Malignant Truth, by Si Spurrier et al (2024)[Doctor Who: Eleventh Doctor]

The best
Unusually I have not given any of the above five stars out of five on LibraryThing. I have given three of them 4.5 out of five, and of those three I think marginally ahead is City of Stairs, the first in the fantasy Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett. It was famously crowded off the Hugo ballot by the Sad Puppies; I found the worldbuilding and plotting excellent. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mentions
In the Serpent’s Wake is the second of Rachel Hartman’s equally excellent Tess of the Road novels, about a polar expedition in a fantasy world. (Review; get it here.)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a heart-warming story of wartime occupation int he Channel Islands. (Review; get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
The Dalek Book, dating from 1964, is possibly the very first Doctor Who spinoff publication, and reflects a very creditable creative effort from the creatures’ creators. (Review; get it here if you are lucky.)

The one to avoid
The Twin Dilemma, Colin Baker’s debut, is by far my least favourite Doctor Who story of the 1963-89 TV era, and its novelisation is equally my least favourite Doctor Who book of all time. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
Terre des Hommes, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (2011)
Fanny Kemble and the lovely land, by Constance Wright (2016)

SF
River of Gods, by Ian McDonald (2004)
The Door into Summer, by Robert A. Heinlein (2004)
Earth is Room Enough, by Isaac Asimov (2007)
Newry Bridge, or Ireland in 1887 (2018)
Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton (2020)
The Chosen Twelve, by James Breakwell (2023)
Godkiller, by Hannah Kaner (2024)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who – Warriors of the Deep, by Terrance Dicks (2008) [Fifth Doctor, novelisation]
Doctor Who – The Awakening, by Eric Pringle (2008) [Fifth Doctor, novelisation]
Doctor Who – Frontios, by Christopher H. Bidmead (2008) [Fifth Doctor, novelisation]
Doctor Who – Resurrection of the Daleks, by Paul Scoones (2008) [Fifth Doctor, novelisation]
Doctor Who – Planet of Fire, by Peter Grimwade (2008) [Fifth Doctor, novelisation]
Moon Blink, by Sadie Miller (2019) [Lethbridge-Stewart]

The best
My favourite of these is Ian McDonald’s great Indian novel River of Gods, which in these days of AI seems more and more relevant. (Review; get it here.)

Honourable mention
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry explores the challenges of flying in North Africa in Terre des Hommes, whose lyric description of the desert almost makes up for the colonialism. (Review; get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
I’m fascinated by the nineteenth-century actor, writer and campaigner Fanny Kemble; Constance Wright’s book looks at her relationships with America, with her American husband; and with abolitionism. (Review; get it here.)

The one to avoid
The Chosen Twelve is an awkward rehash of The Hunger Games. (Review; get it here)

Not so many today.

Non-fiction
The Rules of Management, by Richard Templar (2005) 
The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, by Christopher Hibbert (2005) 
The Belgian House of Representatives: From Revolution to Federalism, by Derek Blyth, Alistair MacLean, and Rory Watson (2006)

SF
Keepers of the Peace, by Keith Brooke (2005) 
The Hallowed Hunt, by Lois McMaster Bujold (2005) 
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro (2006)
A Feast For Crows, by George R.R. Martin (2011) 
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (2012)

Comics 
The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman (2004)

The best
Art Spiegelman’s Maus is a classic invocation of the Holocaust with the humans involved portrayed as anthropomorphic animals. Of many memorable literary treatments of the genocide, this is one of the greatest. (Review; get it here.)

Honourable mentions
Four heavyweight sff classics here, each of which is well worth revisiting – or trying for the first time if you haven’t.
The Hallowed Hunt (review; get it here) and A Feast for Crows (review; get it here) are both worthy installments in well-known fantasy series.
Dracula (review; get it here) and Never Let Me Go (review; get it here) are both stories of bodysnatching with perhaps more thematic similarities than you might have thought.

The one you haven’t heard of
The one to avoid
None of these is sufficiently good-yet-obscure or sufficiently awful to be worth drawing attention to.

Non-fiction
Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, by M.J. Simpson (2006)
Café Europa: Life after Communism, by Slavenka Drakulić (2006)
The Cruise of the R.Y.S. Eva, by Arthur Kavanagh (2008)
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, by John Bolton (2020)
The Combined Election: an analysis of the combined Parliamentary and District Council elections in Northern Ireland on 7th June 2001, by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2024)

Non-genre
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho (2006)
Eleven on Top, by Janet Evanovich (2006)
The Successor, by Ismail Kadarë (2007)

Poetry
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman (2012)

SF
What Ifs?™ of American History, edited by Robert Cowley (2007)
“Goat Song”, by Poul Anderson (2019)
The Monster’s Wife, by Kate Horsley (2021)

The best
He’s an awful man, writing about another awful man, but I really enjoyed The Room Where It Happened, where John Bolton tells us about working with Donald Trump. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mention
The Successor is one of those intense Eastern European novels; even if you know nothing about Albania and its politics, you’ll find it creepy and lingering. (Review; get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
Also in that part of the world but a century earlier, Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh MP set off on his yacht to tour the Ionian Islands in The Cruise of the R.Y.S. Eva; all the more interesting because he had no arms or legs. (Review; get it here.)

The one to avoid
I’m sorry, folks, but most of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is self-indulgent rubbish. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
A Narrative About War And Freedom: Dialog with the commander Ramush Haradinaj, by Bardh Hamzaj (2004)
George and Sam, by Charlotte Moore (2007)
The Discovery of the Germ, by John Waller (2007)
The Lost Heart of Asia, by Colin Thubron (2009)
The Imprint of Place: Maine Printmaking 1800-2005, by David P. Becker (2011)
Shakespeare’s Handwriting: A Study, by Edward Maunde Thompson (2013)
Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, by Verlyn Flieger (2015)

Non-genre
Wilt in Nowhere, by Tom Sharpe (2007)
Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol (2013)

SF
The Sharing Knife: Legacy, by Lois McMaster Bujold (2007)
Harpist in the Wind, by Patricia A. McKillip (2007)
The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner (2013)
The Lives of Tao, by Wesley Chu (2014)
Harrow The Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (2021)
Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse (2021)
Network Effect, by Martha Wells (2021)
The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal (2021)
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke (2021)
The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin (2021)
The Stars Undying, by Emery Robin (2023)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who – the Caves of Androzani, by Terrance Dicks (2007)
Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, by Terrance Dicks (2007)
Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, by Terrance Dicks (2007)
Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, by David Fisher (2007)
Everyone Says Hello, by Dan Abnett (2010)
Harvest of Time, by Alastair Reynolds (2013)

Comics
Arena of Fear, by Nick Abadzis et al (2023)

The best
As a parent of autistic children myself, I found George and Sam by Charlotte Moore very helpful reading. Her sons are much more able than my daughters, but there is a lot of common understanding. (Review of first edition; get the second edition here.)

Honorable mentions
My favourite Hugo finalist of 2021 was N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became, where the boroughs of New York – and other urban places – become personified. (Review of 2021 Hugo finalists; get it here.)
Legacy starts with one of the best sex scenes Lois McMaster Bujold has ever written, and gets even better from there. (Review; get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
And I’m really sure you haven’t heard of it: I was given The Imprint of Place: Maine Printmaking 1800-2005 as a freebie from a conference that I spoke at in Maine in 2007, didn’t read it until 2012, but loved the art when I did read it. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
I found Wilt in Nowhere abandoned in an airport lounge, and took it for my own library. I wish I’d left it in the airport. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
The Bloody Sunday Report, Volume IV (2010)
A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf (2013)
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss (2016)

Non-genre
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (2013)
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton (2015)
The Cider House Rules, by John Irving (2023)

SF
The Compleat Enchanter – The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea, by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (2006)
PEACE, by Gene Wolfe (2008)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein (2009)
Nexus, by Ramez Naam (2014)
HWJN, by Ibraheem Abbas (2017)
Full Immersion, by Gemma Amor (2023)

Doctor Who
The Glamour Chase, by Gary Russell (2011)

Comics
Weapons of Mass Diplomacy, by Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain (2018)
Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, letters by Clayton Cowles (2020)
LaGuardia, written by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin (2020)
Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda (2020)
Mooncakes, by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker, letters by Joamette Gil (2020)
Paper Girls, Vols 1-6, written by Brian K. Vaughan, drawn by Cliff Chiang, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared K. Fletcher (2020)
The Wicked + The Divine, Vols 1-9, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles (2020)

The best
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is passionate, witty and essential, and I wish I had read it twenty-five years earlier. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
The Cider House Rules is a lot longer, but also very much worth reading for a humane take on abortion, and much else, in mid-twentieth-century rural Maine. (Review; get it here)
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston includes many jewels by the great writer herself, and also a moving epilogue about finding her grave. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Arthur Vlaminck is plucked from his almost-completed PhD to become speech-writer for the French Foreign Minister. Grim and well-observed hilarity ensues in Weapons of Mass Diplomacy. (Review; get it here)

My favourite of my own reviews from this day

Reading “The Compleat Enchanter“,
when I came to the fourth section,
(set in Finland’s Kalevala)
somehow I began to wonder:
Can one write LiveJournal entries
in iambic tetrameter?
(Yes, I know that last word’s bogus
and perhaps that gives the answer.)

(Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
Full Immersion, by Gemma Amor, attempts to turn intense personal psychiatric experience into a novel and doesn’t succeed. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi (2008)

Non-genre
The Virgin in the Garden, by A.S. Byatt (2024)

SF
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future, eds Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan (2009)
Your Code Name is Jonah, by Edward Packard (2018)
Atlantis Fallen, by C.E. Murphy (2023)
The Circus Infinite, by Khan Wong (2023)

Doctor Who
Timewyrm: Exodus, by Terrance Dicks (2006)
Doctor Who and the Visitation, by Eric Saward (2008)
Doctor Who – Arc of Infinity, by Terrance Dicks (2008)
Doctor Who – Snakedance, by Terrance Dicks (2008)
Doctor Who – Mawdryn Undead, by Peter Grimwade (2008)
Doctor Who – Terminus, by John Lydecker / Steve Gallagher (2008)
Doctor Who – Enlightenment, by Barbara Clegg (2008)
Doctor Who – The King’s Demons, by Terence Dudley (2008)
Doctor Who – The Five Doctors, by Terrance Dicks (2008)
Downtime, by Marc Platt (2009)

Comics
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey (2016)
Marzi: A memoir, by Marzena Sowa (2017)

The Best
Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table is a humane and inspiring meditation on humanity through the lens of chemical elements. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mentions
The anthology So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future brings forward a number of important voices to the spectrum of sf writing. (Review; get it here.)
A lot of people seem to disdain the first of A.S. Byatt’s Federica novels, The Virgin in the Garden, but I was fascinated and amused by it. (Review; get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
C.E. Murphy has not (yet) had the recognition that she deserves in terms of winning awards, yet she consistently churns out good to excellent fantasy (and occasionally sf). You could do worse than start with her Atlantis Fallen. (Review; get it here).

The one to avoid
Terence Dudley’s novelisation of his own Doctor Who story, The King’s Demons, is very disappointing. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
The Megalith Builders of Western Europe, by Glyn Daniel (2007)
Asteroids: A History, by Curtis Peebles (2007)
The Nobel Prizes, by Burton Feldman (2007)
Queen Elizabeth I, by J.E. Neale (2009)
In Xanadu, by William Dalrymple (2017)
The Complete Ice Age, ed. Brian M. Fagan (2018)
After the War: How to Keep Europe Safe, by Paul Taylor (2023)
The Myth Makers, by Ian Z. Potter (2024)

Non-genre
Once in a Blue Moon, by Magnus Mills (2007)
Three To See the King, by Magnus Mills (2007)
Faith, by Joanna Trollope (2007)
Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy (2009)

Scripts
Antigone, by Sophocles (2012)
Oedipus the Tyrant , by Sophocles (2012)
Oedipus at Colonus, by Sophocles (2012)

SF
Newton’s Wake, by Ken MacLeod (2004)
The Human Abstract, by George Mann (2004)
Cartomancy, by Mary Gentle (2004)
The Magicians, by Lev Grossman (2011)
Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer (2020)
Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge (2020)
Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee (2020)
Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher (2020)
Riverland, by Fran Wilde (2020)
The Wicked King, by Holly Black (2020)
Bluebird, by Ciel Pierlot (2023)

Doctor Who, etc
Martha in the Mirror, by Justin Richards (2010)

The best, also the one you haven’t heard of
I’m going to give top billing to the book on this list that I read most recently, Ian Potter’s survey of the history behind the 1965 Doctor Who story The Myth Makers, which goes in depth into the personal stories of two of the key people behind the camera, as well as the usual analysis of what the story is actually about. (Review; get it here.)

Honourable mentions
Two of the books on the 2020 Lodestar Award ballot (reviewed here) struck me as especially impressive: Naomi Kritzer’s Catfishing on CatNet (which won; get it here) and Frances Hardinge’s Deeplight (get it here).
William Dalrymple’s In Xanadu, an account of his student-era retracing of the route of Marco Polo from Palestine to China, is an old favourite. (Review; get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
The Myth Makers, as described above.

The one to avoid
George Mann’s The Human Abstract was one of a number of books I reviewed for the old Infinity Plus website; it was by far the worst of them. (Infinity Plus review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
The Bloody Sunday Report, volume III (2010)
Sculptor’s Daughter, by Tove Jansson (2015)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind, by Yuval Noah Harari (2017)
The King of Almayne: a 13th century Englishman in Europe, by T.W.E. Roche (2022)

Non-genre
The Great Fortune, by Olivia Manning (2005)
The Spoilt City, by Olivia Manning (2005)
Friends and Heroes, by Olivia Manning (2005)
Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiassen (2005)
The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio (2011)
Glimmer of Hope, Glimmer of Flame, by Ag Apolloni (2024)

SF
The Postscripts BSFA Sampler, ed. Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers (2012)
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham (2015)
Robot Visions, by Isaac Asimov (2018)
The Golden Fleece aka Hercules, My Shipmate, by Robert Graves (2020)
Land of Terror, by Edgar Rice Burroughs (2020)
Shadow Over Mars aka The Nemesis from Terra, by Leigh Brackett (2020)
Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord, by Olaf Stapledon (2020)
The Wind on the Moon, by Eric Linklater (2020)
The Winged Man, by A.E. van Vogt and E. Mayne Hull (2020)
The Memory Librarian, ed. Janelle Monáe (2023)
Ion Curtain, by Anya Ow (2023)

Doctor Who, etc
In The Shadows, by Joseph Lidster (2010)

The best, and also the one you haven’t heard of
The King of Almayne: A 13th Century Englishman in Europe is a fantastic biography of the English prince who almost became Holy Roman Emperor and died 750 years ago. Unless you’ve been subjected to one of my previous rants about Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, you may not have heard of him. A remarkable individual in a remarkable time. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
The Decameron – classic stories of grim Renaissance life, including a surprise reference to County Down. (Review; get it here)
Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiaasen – one of his many bizarre tales of the alternative reality that is Florida. (Review; get it here.)
Sirius, by Olaf Stapledon – Long before Diana Wynne Jones, a dog with extrahuman powers in today’s world… (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
See above. (The King of Almayne)

The one to avoid
Land of Terror, by Edgar Rice Burroughs is racist rubbish. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror, by George Soros (2006)
A History of Modern Sudan, by Robert O. Collins (2009)
The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, by Douglas H. Johnson 2009)
Emma’s War: Love, Betrayal and Death in the Sudan, by Deborah Scroggins (2009)
Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood, by J. Michael Straczynski (2020)
Joanna Russ, by Gwyneth Jones (2020)
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick, by Mallory O’Meara (2020)
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn (2020)

Non-genre
Intimacy aka The Wall, by Jean-Paul Sartre (2022)

SF
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (2006)
Malpertuis, by Jean Ray (2009)

Comics
The Day I Swapped My Dad For 2 Goldfish, by Neil Gaiman (2011)

This is a good day, with the above having an average of 4.3 stars out of five on my LibraryThing catalogue, and only one book with less than four. Still, there is one standout.

The best
Really you cannot beat the short bleak vision of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mentions
Two of the 2020 Best Related Work Hugo finalists (reviewed here) were particularly outstanding, Mallory O’Meara’s biography of Milicent Patrick (get it here) and Farah Mendlesohn’s study of Robert A. Heinlein (get it here).
To that I would also add Emma’s War, which still reverberates across her adopted country (South Sudan) today. (Review; get it here.)

The ones you haven’t heard of
I know that Sudan is a minority interest, but the two histories by Robert Collins (get it here) and Douglas Johnson (get it here) have different strengths and deserve to be better known. (Both reviewed with Emma’s War, above.)

The ones to avoid
None. I didn’t get on with Gwyneth Jones on Joanna Russ, but it’s far from awful. (Review; get it here.)

Non-fiction
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, translated and with an Introduction by Benedicta Ward (2007)
The Desert Fathers: Translations from the Latin with an Introduction by Helen Waddell (2007)
The Faerie Queene: a selection of critical essays, edited by Peter Bayley (2011)
The Johnstown Flood, by David McCullough (2021)

Non-genre
The Mermaids Singing, by Lisa Carey (2012)
The Commissioner, by Stanley Johnson (2016)

SF
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, attributed to Luo Guanzhong (2015)
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (2020)
The Monk, by Matthew Lewis (2022)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who: Planet of the Ood, by Keith Temple (2024)

The Best
The Johnstown Flood – magisterial account by the great David McCullough in his younger days of a man-made disaster that wiped out a town in Pennsylvania in 1889; one of the victims was the uncle of my as-yet-unborn grandmother. A book of both its times, ie 1889 and 1968. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions:
The Desert Fathers, Waddell translation – the thoughts of the saints who isolated themselves in the desert are by definition a bit dry, but Helen Waddell invests them with humour and sympathy. (Review; get it here)
The Master and Margarita – one of the great Russian fantasy novels of that creative period soon after the Revolution. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Even though it was made into a film starring John Hurt, the original novel, The Commissioner, by Stanley Johnson (father of Boris) is not that well known (only 11 owners on LibraryThing, 10 ratings on Goodreads). A tale of Brussels skullduggery in more innocent times. (Review; get it here)

The ones to avoid
I’m leaving this category clear again; none of the above is awful. I didn’t gel with Three Kingdoms, but that’s on me at least as much as the writer and translator. There are enough ghosts and sorcery for it to qualify as sf above. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
The Economist Style Guide (2006)
Young Elizabeth, by Alison Plowden (2012)
Danger to Elizabeth, by Alison Plowden (2012)
Marriage with My Kingdom: The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth I, by Alison Plowden (2012)
Elizabeth Regina, by Alison Plowden (2012)
The Bible: The Biography, by Karen Armstrong (2012)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Ann Jacobs (2012)
The Russian Phoenix, by Francis House (2012)
TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 3: Jon Pertwee, by Philip Sandifer (2013)
Boys in Zinc, by Svetlana Alexievich (2021)

Non-genre
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (2013)
Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel (2016)
Gigi, and The Cat, by Colette (2019)

SF
The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, translated and edited by Jeffrey Frank and Diana Crone Frank (2007)
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl (2013)
True History, by Lucian of Samosata (2015)
Dreaming in Smoke, by Tricia Sullivan (2020)
The Extremes, by Christopher Priest (2020)
Aurora: Beyond Equality, eds Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan Anderson (2023)
The Splendid City by Karen Heuler (2023)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who Annual 1986 (2011)
Risk Assessment, by James Goss (2012)

Comics
Rose de Paris, by Gilles Schlesser and Eric Puech (2018)
Junker: een Pruisische blues, by Simon Spruyt (2022)

The Best
Today’s pick is a political novel from the early 1970s which I bet you have never heard of: Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel. Due to the Republican candidate’s death shortly before the 1976 election, an obscure politician from New Jersey – “a corridor of swampy weather and toadstool habitations that called itself a state” – is elevated to political superstar status, and tries to use it for good. There are no TV debates. There is a sub-plot with a sex tape of which there is only one copy. It’s just great. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable Mentions
I’m in a forgiving mood today, so you can have four:
The Name of the Rose – the fascinating medieval novel by Umberto Eco. (Review; long footnote; get it here.)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl – gruelling first-person account of the real effects of the “peculiar institution”. (Review; get it here.)
Boys in Zinc – the human impact of the post-Soviet wars on ordinary Russian soldiers and their ordinary families. Helped win the writer a Nobel prize. (Review; get it here.)
Risk Assessment – one of James Goss’s many excellent contributions to the Whoniverse, this time concerning Torchwood. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Aurora: Beyond Equality – a useful representation of both how far sf had come in 1976 and how much farther there still was to go. (Review; get it here.)

The ones to avoid
I’m leaving this category blank today; I like some of the above more than others, but none is actually awful.

Non-fiction
The Making of Doctor Who, by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks (2007)
Self-Portrait, by Anneke Wills (2015)
Naked, by Anneke Wills (2015)

Non-genre
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson (2013)

Script
Le Mariage de Figaro, by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (2018)

SF
The Prisoner, by Thomas M. Disch (2006)
The Mind of Mr Soames, by Charles Eric Maine (2007)
Farthing, by Jo Walton (2008)
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian Aldiss (2016)
De piraten van de Zilveren Kattenklauw, by “Geronimo Stilton” (2017)
“Bears Discover Fire”, by Terry Bisson (2023)
“The Hemingway Hoax”, by Joe Haldeman (2023)
Titan Blue, by M.B. Fox (2023)

Doctor Who
Hunter’s Moon, by Paul Finch (2013)
Something Borrowed, by Richelle Mead (2013)

Comics
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, by Ivan Petrus Adriaenssens (2013)
De dag waarop de bus zonder haar vertrok, by Béka, Marko, and Maëla Cosson (2020)
De dag waarop ze haar vlucht nam, by Béka, Marko, and Maëla Cosson (2020)

The Best
Farthing, by Jo Walton, is a great what-if-Hitler-won alternate history; an alternate 1948, where Britain made peace with Germany in 1941 after Rudolf Hess’s mission. It is a crime novel that turns into a political parable. I couldn’t put it down. (Review; get it here)

Honourable mentions
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson, another of her very humane tales of middle America. (Review; get it here)
The Making of Doctor Who (first edition), by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, was the book whose second edition pushed a much younger me into fandom. (Review; get it here, at a price)

The one you haven’t heard of
Self-portrait, a charming and (I think) honest autobiography by Who actress Anneke Wills, bringing to life the Swinging Sixties. (Review; get it here)

The ones to avoid
Titan Blue was one of the least impressive books I looked at for the Clarke Award, real Nutty Nuggets stuff where the first female character to speak does so on page 48, and again on page 60. (Review; get it here)
Also to mention Doctor Who novel Hunter’s Moon (review; get it here), and mid-20th century British SF novel The Mind of Mr Soames (review; get it here) which were both rather poor.

Non-fiction
The Medieval Cookbook, by Maggie Black (2007)
Why I am not a Christian, and other essays on religion and related subjects, by Bertrand Russell (2008)
Hope-In-The-Mist, by Michael Swanwick (2010)
The Bloody Sunday Report, Volume II (2010)
Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins (2021)
Face the Raven, by Sarah Groenewegen (2022)
Franco-Irish Relations, 1500-1610: Politics, Migration and Trade, by Mary Ann Lyons (2023)

Non-genre
Mating, by Norman Rush (2015)
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer ((2015)

Speculative fiction
Collected Short Stories, by E.M. Forster (2008)
Dune, by Frank Herbert (2017)
Moominvalley in November, by Tove Jansson (2018)
If Found Return to Hell, by Em X. Liu (2024)
The Death I Gave Him, by Em X. Liu (2024)

Doctor Who, etc
Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, by Tony Attwood (2009)
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry (2017)
Doctor Who Annual 2020 (2020)

The Best
There are a lot of good books today, but the standout winner is Carrying the Fire, the memoir of astronaut Michael Collins, which was my book of the year for 2021. (Get it here.)

Honorable mentions
Dune, of course. (Get it here.)
Forster’s Collected Short Stories – you may be surprised that I list it under “Speculative fiction”, but ten of the twelve stories have fantasy elements. (Get it here.)
Loving the Alien concludes a nice set of Doctor Who novels by Tucker and Perry. (Get them here, here, here, here and here.)
Why I am not a Christian, and other essays is rather humane, and I agree with it more now than I did then. (Get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
Even though it was a Hugo finalist for Best Related Work that year, Hope-In-The-Mist, Michael Swanwick’s biography of Hope Mirrlees and explanation of her fantastic story Lud-in-the-Mist, doesn’t seem to have scored on the book ownership sites. It’s great though. (Get it here.)

The ones to avoid
The 2020 Doctor Who Annual is disappointingly lazy stuff. (Get it here.)
Also unimpressed by Mating and The Seven Per Cent Solution. (Get them here and here.)

Non-fiction
Virgins, Weeders and Queens, by Twigs Way (2018)
A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, by Lynelle George (2021)
The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, by Philip Bates (2023)

Scripts
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne (2017)

Poetry
Beowulf, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley (2021)

Speculative fiction
Deep Dive, by Ron Walters (2023)

Doctor Who, etc
The Price of Paradise, by Colin Brake (2009)
The Shakespeare Notebooks, by Goss, Morris, Richards, Richards & Sweet (2014)
Fear of the Dark, by Trevor Baxendale (2024)

Comics
Pussey!, by Daniel Clowes (2007)

Not as many as usual today. I will trim the Honorable Mentions, but I’ll also say that all three of the Doctor Who books are rather good (you can get them here, here and here)

The Best
Beowulf, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, won the Hugo for Best Related Work that year; I didn’t vote for it, but it’s a great new take on an old story. (Get it here.)

The one you haven’t heard of
My old friend Twigs Way is a historian of gardening, and while I am not a gardener myself, Virgins, Weeders and Queens is a great historical miscellany. (Get it here, republished as A History of Women in the Garden.)

The one to avoid
Deep Dive was one of the Clarke submissions that year which failed to gel with me. (Get it here.)

Non-fiction
No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media, by Peter Steven (2022)

Non-genre
Dead Souls, by Ian Rankin (2010)
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison (2011)
The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje (2021)

Speculative fiction
The Holy Machine by Chris Beckett (2004)
The Book of the New Sun (four books), by Gene Wolfe (2005)
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong (2016)
The Area X trilogy (three books), by Jeff VanderMeer (2017)
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, by James Finn Garner (2018)
Mickey⁷ by Edward Ashton (2023)
Linghun, by Ai Jiang (2024)

Comics
De Apenkermis, by Willy Vandersteen (2014)
Amoris van Amoras, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Geerts] (2014)
Het Aruba-dossier, by “Willy Vandersteen” [Paul Geerts] (2014)

A slight change of format today.

The Best
Dead Souls is one of the better of the generally excellent Inspector Rebus novels. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
Linghun, by Ai Jiang (review; get it here)
Mickey⁷ by Edward Ashton, now filmed as Mickey 17 (review; get it here)
The Holy Machine by Chris Beckett (my review on Infinity Plus; get it here)

Books that I rather bounced off though most other people thought they were great
The Book of the New Sun (four books), by Gene Wolfe (review; get it here and here)
The Area X trilogy (then three books, now four), by Jeff VanderMeer (review; get it here)
The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje (review of film and book; get it here)

The ones to avoid
No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media, by Peter Steven – out of date and ranty. (Review; get it here)
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong – I didn’t last fifty pages. (Review; get it here)

Non-fiction
Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro, with six short stories never before collected, by A. J. Langguth (2004)
Vicious Circles and Infinity: An Anthology of Paradoxes, by Patrick Hughes and George Brecht (2007)
Manufacture and Uses of Alloy Steels, by Henry D. Hibbard (2011)
Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles, by Jayne Olorunda (2014)
Europe in the Sixteenth Century, by H.G. Koenigsberger and George L. Mosse (2017)
The Eleventh Hour, by Jon Arnold (2022)

Speculative fiction
Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman (2006)
I Am Not A Serial Killer, by Dan Wells (2011)
Roger Zelazny’s The Dawn of Amber: Book 1, by John Gregory Betancourt (2021)

Doctor Who, etc
Doctor Who Files 1: The Doctor, by Jacqueline Rayner with a story by Stephen Cole (2009)
Doctor Who Files 2: Rose, by Jacqueline Rayner (2009)
Doctor Who Files 3: The Slitheen, by Jacqueline Rayner (2009)
Doctor Who Files 4: The Sycorax, by Jacqueline Rayner with a story by Stephen Cole (2009)

The Best
Jayne Olorunda’s autobiography of growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, before and after her Nigerian father was killed by an IRA bomb, is essential reading. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
A.J. Langguth’s biography of Saki has a lot of fascinating material. (Review; get it here)
Joe Haldeman’s Camouflage takes the veteran author in some surprising directions. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Jon Arnold’s Black Archive on The Eleventh Hour teases out a lot more about the Eleventh Doctor’s first story. (Review; get it here)

The one you can skip
I only read H.D. Hibbard’s pamphlet on alloy steel because he was my great-grandfather. It was already six years out of date when it was published in 1919. (Review; get it here)