Best and Worst Books of 2003?

Thousandstars writes "I saw the article on the best and worst movies of 2003, and, being a literature geek, I thought it would also be appropriate to ask for the best and worst books of 2003. In fiction, Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is toward the top of my best list. How about everyone else?"

Comments

Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) sucked...

[nebaz]

I hate to say this, but the Crossroads of Twilight, the 10th Robert Jordan "Wheel of Time" book, really sucked. No major plot advancement has happened at all. Several pages are spent on one of the main characters taking a bath! It seems like in these books, time goes slower and slower. I think the series has gone downhill, since about the fifth book or so, but this one was really bad. I see no way for him to end the series in my life time, at this pace, with so many dangling plot threads, and a release cycle of one book every two years,

Pratchett is always good

[quantax]

Terry Pratchett's "Nightwatch" wasn't too bad, though it was not IMO as good as the previous 'Nightwatch' books such as "Guards! Guards!" and "Men of Arms", but it is definitely worth checking out if you're a Discworld fan. I haven't read "Monsterous Regiment" yet, anyone have an opinion on how that was?

Re:Pratchett is always good

[elmegil]

I enjoyed Monstrous Regiment quite a bit. I think Pratchett is starting to get less manic and silly as he slows down with age, and whether you like that or not is really going to be a matter of taste. I thought Night Watch was better than a few of his more recent outings (wasn't really hep on Hogfather, and Carpe Jugulum and The Fifth Elephant left me a little flat), as well as really liking The Truth. I think the stories where he mostly is covering new characters give him some more room to stretch, whereas a lot of the old characters are so thoroughly developed it's harder to use them to say something new. Which doesn't mean he can't and doesn't succeed at that, but just that unused characters can seem more fresh.

Isaac Adamson/Hillary Clinton

[Otter]

I tend to be a bit behind on books, as I get them mostly from the library. But since the only posts at this time are some LoTR comments and a particularly inane SCO bit, I'll kick in what I can:

I really enjoyed two books by Isaac Adamson -- Hokkaido Popsicle and the earlier Tokyo Suckerpunch. It's hard to describe them, but they're perfect for Japanophiles and other Asia-pop enthusiasts>

Worst book of 2003 is easy -- Hillary Clinton's memoirs. As much as I detest her, she's obviously an interesting person but her book sounded like it was written by her staff and focus-grouped before publication.

Re:"Literature Geek?"

[Little Brother]

Yes. I've met one of each of those. The sports geeks (if they're good) will know the history of most major sports, and a few minor ones. The history is beyond what would be found in almanics and will include the predesessors of the sport. They will understand one or two sports (like CS geeks will understand one or two programming languages) extensively. They are able to tell you about all the current rules and the progression from earlier rules that brought the current rules into being. They know nearly every current player in their sport of choice (The hockey geek I knew could give me the entire starting roster of every team in the NHL (I had to use google to even find out what the teams were)). Sport geeks often invent their own plays/moves, and these often actualy work on whatever level they are playing at and they can support why such a play/tecnique would work in the majors. (I'm sure some people in the majors ARE sports geeks, but I have no way of knowing.) Although a sports geek may be a fan of a specific team, they are able to list the strong and weak points of any team more-or-less objectively.

As for fasion geek, see fung shui (spelling) masters for more information. (I guess, I know less on this topic)

Re:Some quickies

[Bishop923]

Actually in Book 5 they are 15 years old, each book is one year in the series.

Re:Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) sucked..

[nebaz]

You get to the last book of a dekalogy only to realize that the author sucks.

Fair enough. :-) In fact quite true. It's just that I thought the first few books were really good, and like a good junkie "first hit is free", felt that I had invested too much time to just give up, and hope that there may be some salvagable stuff. And to be fair, there are a few good moments in the later books. Last chapter in book 9 in particular. Dumai Wells, as someone else suggested, is another good point. It just seems as though Jordan thought "there are about 200 Aes Sedai in the tower, and I will not stop writing until I name them all." There are some web references (google Encyclopedia WOT) that name all the characters, and there are like 1500 NAMED characters in the book. It's hard to keep track.

Da Vinci code, TOTAL DRIVEL

[Ars-Fartsica]

The fact that so many people lauded this airport-bookstore drivel tells me just how low-brow the reading audience has become. From the mindless cliff hangers (resolved in three pages for the idiots who can't track a plot) to the impossibly silly puzzles to the hocus-pocus Templar BS plot (which has been around for decades)...I kept looking for the "Nancy Drew" logo on the side of this "young readers" crap.

Re:Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) sucked..

[goodviking]

I'm re-reading them again right now actually, just because I got bored and wanted something to read. It's really, really sad, knowing what they are going to come to, since the first few books are just awesome. He's managed to create this incredibly intricate and believable world, and then proceeds to run all the characters into the ground ...

I would recommend "The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List" as a good reference for finding alternatives. It's really a fantastic resource (it's where I found "A Song of Fire and Ice"). I stopped reading the WOT when it seemed to cross from "great series" to "author's pension plan".

Life of Pi and Middlesex

[wazzzup]

Although they came out in 2002 the paperback versions debuted in 2003.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel. My favorite this year. What a fantastic book. It's no wonder many colleges and universities are incorporating it into their required reading cirriculum. An Indian boy becomes lost at sea after a ship he was riding on sinks. His only passenger in the lifeboat - a Bengal tiger.

Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides. Written by the same author of The Virgin Suicides. It's a story about a Greek girl (boy) born as a hermaphrodite in a Greek family and her experiences growing up in that environment and that condition. Won the Pulitzer I believe.

Books rock. They are soooooo much better than the tripe offered on t.v. BTW, is anybody else offended that TLC stands for The Learning Channel? There's nothing learning about that channel anymore. Just Trading Spaces and the umpteen variations on that theme.

Re:All political pundit books

[Sebastopol]

Thanks for not modding me a troll, despite the fact it was a huge troll! ;-)

I frequently read "spinsanity.com" and they covered all of these books. They try to be fair and objective, and what I've concluded is that the wave of books from the left, which followed the wave from the right, tend to more factually supported and less fanciful. Moore is a bit flamboyant and admittedly exaggerates, but Al Franken does mix in good satire with his solid facts, and Joe Conason was really sincere in his attempt to shed light. Compare those three to the rants of O'Reilly, Coulter, et al, that serve no other purpose than to revv folks up for war.

Re:2 cents.

[Arthur Dent]

I would have. But it got such terrible reviews that I passed.

Review 1

As I say, it's easy to explain why this book is bad. What is much, much harder to explain is why so many people think this book is good, or at least why so many people are buying it. After all, if you want to read a book about why the left was wrong and Sen. McCarthy was right, far better ones are out there. Making use of Soviet archives, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have teamed up to write several excellent books about the American Communist Party over the past several years. Even if you prefer to get your history from a female conservative columnist, Mona Charen published a far more thoughtful attack on the post-war left last fall. In Useful Idiots, Charen covered some of the same ground as Coulter, but she did it logically, chronologically and without failing to notice that there were some important differences between Robert Kennedy and, say, Abbie Hoffman.

For that matter, even if you want to read a conservative rant, there are better ones -- Tammy Bruce's The Death of Right and Wrong, for example. If Coulter's shtick is that she's a right-wing blonde, Bruce's shtick is that she's a right-wing lesbian. The formula is the same: quotes picked out from newspaper articles, research that consists largely of extensive Internet surfing. But because Bruce is writing about pop culture, and not accusing the entire post-war Democratic Party of high treason, the end result is somehow less irritating.

Another Review

In short, Ann Coulter has once again revealed herself as one of the most destructive forces in American politics, repeatedly making outrageously irrational arguments and demonstrably false claims. Treason is the culmination of a dismaying trend toward factually misleading and inflammatory books from pundits such as Michael Moore, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage (Salon Premium subscription or viewing of ad required for Savage column). These authors may delight partisans and make their publishers rich, but their work impoverishes our political discourse.

BTW, that's also a reason why I don't Stupid White Men or Dude, Where's my Country.

Re:Some quickies

[ePhil_One]

"Potter" is not really a childrens book the way other children's books are.

The first books really were kids books. Simple stories, lots of "don't jump to conclusions" moral lessons.

But the later books are becoming more complex, and I just don't see how anyone can call a 900 page tome a "children's book" What amazes me is that kids are still reading it. 12 year olds are going out and reading a 900 page novel.

That is an accomplishment.

Re:No kidding; GREAT BOOK!

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Remember that elves can ride eagles, and that elven archers are incredibly potent - early on, Gimli dismounts a Nazgul with a single shot! "

Because we all know dwarves are great at archery.

P.S.
I think you meant Legolas, Gimli is the dwarf.