Top Ten Books of 2006

With great difficulty I’ve managed to isolate the ten new books (i.e. not re-reads) that I enjoyed most in 2006. I can’t possibly rank them in order of enjoyment so I’m listing them in the order I read them. I’ve linked to my earlier reviews of each book.1. Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road2. Ami McKay, [...]

Assassin’s Apprentice, by Robin Hobb

In my last post I raved about re-reading a favourite novel by my favourite fantasy author. I continued my Christmas fantasy excursion by reading an old, but new-to-me, trilogy from my other favourite fantasy author. This was Robin Hobb’s Assassin trilogy. I had read the two follow-up trilogies, The Liveship Traders and The Tawny [...]

Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay

As I moved into my Christmas reading this year I decided to relax with some classic fantasy, which included re-reading my all-time favourite fantasy novel, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana. I first read this about 12 or 13 years ago and I can still remember where I was sitting when I read the final pages [...]

Ten Thousand Lovers, by Edeet Ravel

Ten Thousand Lovers is a spare, beautifully written novel about a young Canadian woman in Israel, Lilly, who falls in love with Ami, who is charming and lovable — but who works as an interrogator for the Israeli army. The progress of this sweet-yet-doomed love affair, and the difficulties Lily has accepting Ami’s career, [...]

Whitethorn Woods, by Maeve Binchy

Now I know there are some literary types who look down their noses at Maeve Binchy (of course, they’d look even farther down their noses at the “inspirational romance” category I’ve been reading, so that’s OK). However, I have to say I thoroughly enjoy a good Maeve; she’s always readable, has an unerring eye [...]

Human Traces, by Sebastian Faulks

Human Traces is a big, sprawling, compelling novel set in 19th-century England and Europe. It’s the story of two doctors who are pioneers in the study of the human mind — back in the era when psychology, psychiatry and neurology were still poorly understood as disciplines and much of what went on in the [...]

A Time to Mend, by Angela Hunt

Like my previous selection, Sandpiper Drift, I chose A Time to Mend specifically because I was exploring the sub-genre of “inspirational women’s fiction,” particularly the Steeple Hill imprint. This particular novel has a typical romance-novel plot structure: two strong-willed, independent souls strike sparks of all kinds when they meet in the hospital where she’s [...]

Sandpiper Drift, by Vanessa del Fabbro

I mentioned when talking about the Ann Burton books, below, that I’ve always had this sort of ingrained prejudice against books that could be easily labelled romance novels — even though I do like a good love story with a happy ending. However, the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo this year seems to fall into [...]

Deborah’s Story, by Ann Burton

As some of you may know, I’m a bit of a connaisseur of Biblical fiction, and not just because I write the stuff myself. I initially shied away from Ann Burton’s Women of the Bible series because of the rather romance-novel look of their packaging (oh, my prejudices!) but when she released a book on [...]

The Secret Supper, by Javier Sierra

Yet another novelist tries to ride Dan Brown’s coat-tails to DaVinci-related fame … and doesn’t quite cut it, in my humble opinion. The novelist in this case is Spanish, and the novel is a translation into English, so perhaps it was the translation that didn’t grab me. From a literary point of view, it’s certainly [...]