The Book Vipers discussion

With one month to go of 2015, what have been your favourite books and those that you wished you hadn't bothered with? So:

Top three books
Worst three books
Top Book Vipers Monthly Read
Worst Book Vipers Monthly Read

Over to you!

This year I discovered poetry, my teachers tried hard to put me off it by making me read rubbish so I think my top 3 of 2015 have to be poetry books.

Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison
New Beat Newbie
Travelling Backwards

The worst books of this year were
The Great Gatsby
All the Light We Cannot See
To the Lighthouse (even though I haven't finished this one I think it will be making the list.

Top Viper monthly is easy The Sisters Brothers

Worst Viper monthly All the Light We Cannot See really disappointing book.

Well, the year's not finished yet, I might discover something wonderful or awful these next 31 days, but here goes:

Best books (in no particular order)

The Circle by Dave Eggers
S. by J.J. Abrams (I have yet to finish this one, but I'm absolutely loving it so far)
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Worst books (again, in no particular order)

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (couldn't finish it, it was just sooo badly written/researched and unbelievable! It made me so angry!)
Seraphita by Honoré de Balzac (couldn't finish this one, either. Lots of religious musings which don't appeal to me)
Allegiant by Veronica Roth (well, do I really need to explain why?)

I can't say anything about the best and worst Book Vipers monthly reads, as I'm pretty new to the group and I haven't participated to any group reads yet.

Top 3 for me
The Buried Giant
Sugar Street
Solomon Creed

Worst books
To the Lighthouse (I'm with you on this one Jason)
Scoop
My Brilliant Friend

Top Book Viper read The Blind Assassin closely followed by the best classic The Way We Live Now

Worst Book Viper read To the Lighthouse. Glad I read it, but won't be reading it again!

Top 3 Books:
Jane Eyre
Rebecca
The Luminaries/The Chaperone

Worst 3 Books:
In the Woods
The Girl on the Train
To the Lighthouse

Top Vipers Monthly Read:
Rebecca
Adored this book. Saw the film when I was quite young so it was like coming to the story fresh. The different ending to the film was a nice surprise too.

Worst Vipers Monthly Read:
To the Lighthouse
I really couldn't stand To the Lighthouse. I wanted to enjoy it but it was so unreadable.

I had a lot of two star rated books this year. One of my less enjoyable years. Hoping to remedy this in 2016.

I enjoyed a lot of fantastic books thanks to the Full Deck Challenge though, so thank you for that, Book Vipers!

Best books in no particular order:
We Are Not Ourselves
The Good Doctor
After Hannibal

Worst books:
Nora Webster
A History of Loneliness
Frankenstein

I haven't really participated in the Vipers monthly read. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray which I enjoyed. I was immediately put of by All the Light We Cannot See (the short chapters) and The Miniaturist

I actually have 5 1 stars this year (currently) but...

Worst books of Viper:
All the Light We Cannot See
To the Lighthouse

Rest of my worst books;
The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie Summary & Study Guide
Kongens fald
Stamtræet

Best books - at least some of them - was:
Anna and the French Kiss (and the rest of the series)
Leoniderne
The Hunger Games (and book 2 aswell)

Seems I got a thing for young adult this year XD

Seems like none of you liked To the Lighthouse. I was never intrigued by it, but I must remember not ever to add it to my wishlist...

If you already like Virginia Woolf then you might like To the Lighthouse. Otherwise probably not so much.

Laurie wrote: "If you already like Virginia Woolf then you might like To the Lighthouse. Otherwise probably not so much."

Well, no, in fact I don't. So I won't try.

I loved To The Lighthouse, as did my friend. In fact we disliked some of her other books more. Glad we are all different. It seems I may be more different than others. Haha

I always struggle slightly with rating my best reads of a year, because I tend to focus on the best I've read recently.

The Goldfinch and The Snow Child are the biggest highlights for me. after that it's a tie between The Story Sisters and Quiet, both of which have stayed with me for different reasons.

Disappointments of this year are books I had high hopes for but didn't feel delivered: Swann's Way, The Cookbook Collector and The Alchemist.

My best Viper's monthly read was Wild. I didn't expect to enjoy this, and it is one of the best books I've read this year.

My worst Viper's monthly read still got s good rating from me, but was All The Light We Cannot See. I rated it highly for the first 3/4 of the book, but the ending was too contrived and let the novel down. It doesn't help that the other monthly reads I did this year were excellent!

It's difficult to stick to a top 3 best books.

Top 3:
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Moon and Sixpence
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Worst 3:
I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
A Case of Exploding Mangoes
House of Small Shadows

Top Vipers:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
closely followed by
The Sisters Brothers

Worst Vipers:
I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

I have to agree with Jason on his opinion of The Great Gatsby and also with Pamela's opinion of Scoop, I couldn't even finish that one.

My favourites this year have been:
Elizabeth Is Missing
The Book of Strange New Things and
Dog!: You'll Never Look At Your Dog the Same Way Again.

Worst reads were:
The Martian
The Long View and
The Luminaries

Joy, I really liked The Book of Strange New Things too. I also have to agree with you about The Luminaries- not one of my better reads.

Joy, Nice to see Dog! On somebodies list, great book.

Jason wrote: "Joy, Nice to see Dog! On somebodies list, great book."

I think its a pity the author gave it this title as I suspect it will only appeal to dog lovers, whereas of course the book is not really about dogs at all. I just loved it!

Top Three
All the Light We Cannot See--I'm a little embarrassed to admit this now that I see it on a few worst lists. I thought it was beautiful.

We Need to Talk About Kevin--difficult to read. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to others, as it deals with violence. It was thought-provoking, though, and it lead me to watch the film. The actress who played Kevin's mother was absolutely brilliant.

Big Little Lies--fun, fun, book. Now I think I've read all of her books.

Bottom Three
The Luminaries--This took me forever to read and I just didn't care about the characters.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer--On the one hand, I admired the writing style. On the other hand, ewwww....

Five Days Left--I was hooked by the premise--what would you do if you only had five days left to live? Even for me, it was too cloying. And I liked All the Light We Cannot See

It’s been a rough year. I wasn’t able to join in any of the monthly reads, though I added several of the titles to my TBR list and still intend to look them up. My top three books were…

1. The Salt God’s Daughter by Ilie Ruby
This was my favorite read of 2015. Its focus on female family members and fairy tale gloss was Alice Hoffman-esque, but unusual Jewish and West Coast elements kept it fresh and non-copy-cat-ish.

2. Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell
Maybe my favorite entry in the violent yet somehow lyrical Saxon Series.

3. Eight Days Gone by Linda McReynolds
A really neat historical picture book for my kiddos telling of the Apollo 11 moon landing, well written with nifty rhymes and engaging illustrations.


And my three least enjoyed books…

1. The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms
2. The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg
Both blurbs presented these stories as set within unique fantasy worlds featuring female main characters. I was expecting impressive world building, skillful character development, and/or page-turning adventure. Instead I got pretty juvenile “romance” on both counts.

3. Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
I had the twist figured out around chapter two and didn’t find the writing clever enough to overlook that fact.

Top Three Books:
1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Out of the over 400 books I've read this year, this is one of only two books I've rated five-stars.
2. $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn Edin. Not as well written as the above, but an important book on poverty in America.
3.Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood by Terry Masear. The most charming book I've read in a while.

Worst Three Books:
1. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee- not only is it deeply racist, but Scout is a racist. I now hate one of my favorite characters in literature.

2. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee- truly horrible writing. The worst book I've read, so far, this century.

3. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee- so badly written in all respects that I question how much of TKAM was due to her editor.

This book was so bad, I cannot think of a book that deserves keep it company on a worst books list.

Jacqueline I loved it too. As,did all of our book club....a first.

Bella, you have certainly legitimized my decision not to read Go Set a Watchman. I don't need to ruin TKaM for me with this book, and I don't intend to ever read it.

Bella wrote: "Top Three Books:
1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Out of the over 400 books I've read this year, this is one of only two books I've rated five-stars..."


Wow. I received this book as a gift, but I haven't read it yet. Not anxious to do so now!

Have left this until most of the way through December but I think that these are my hits and misses:

Hits
Landmarks
A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction
The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island

Misses
The Age of Miracles
The Luminaries
To the Lighthouse

Top BV book
Neverwhere

Worst BV Book
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman