Book of the Year 2019 – the long list!

My Book of the Year for 2019 is…

one of the following.

Book of the Year 2019 long list

I long list nearly all of those I’ve given five stars on Goodreads during the year. So those are (links to my reviews here):

• Sapo Saga by Tony Laplume (scifi)
• The A-Zs of Worldbuilding: Building Fictional Worlds from Scratch by Rebekah Loper (non-fic)
• The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths (crime)
• ‘Kill the Black One First’ by Michael Fuller (non-fic)
• Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer (non-fic)
• Galileo’s Theme Park ed. by Juliana Rew (scifi, anthology)
• Cosmic Colin: Hairy Hamster Horror by Tim Collins (scifi, mg)
• Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo del Torro (dark fantasy)
• The Unwinding: Gin’s Story by Juliana Rew (scifi)
• Oceans (Frontiers of Speculative Fiction) ed. by Jessica West (spec fiction, anthology)
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (fantasy)
• The Witches by Roald Dahl (mg)
• Witchbone Winter – the Goblin’s Tale by Alex Norton (fantasy, mg)
• Starry Night by Rhonda Parrish (scifi novella)
• Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor (historical suspense)
• Deeplight by Frances Hardinge (scifi, mg)
• Secrets of the Great Fire Tree by Justine Laismith (mg)
• The Earthkeepers by Shawn Underhill (fantasy, mg)
• Death by Library by Rebecca M Douglass (cosy mystery)
• My Sister’s Bones by Nuala Ellwood (suspense)
• Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers (scifi)

That’s 21 out of 58. It’s a couple more than my average.  I think the number of excellent Netgalley offerings helped that.

This year I’m going to award some genre prizes, since I have a lot of scifi/fantasy/speculative fiction to pick from, and lots of 5 star mg and non-fiction reads, which is unusual.

Best Speculative Fiction (inc. scifi and fantasy)

Really difficult choice between The Unwinding: Gin’s Story, The Scorpio Races and Record of a Spaceborn Few…..

and the winner is:

Best MG/Teen

The winner is:

Best non-fiction

The winner is:

Book of the year 2019

even more difficult choice between The Scorpio Races, Record of a Spaceborn Few, The Stone Circle, Ashes of London, My Sister’s Bones and Deeplight…

and the winner is:

oh, heck… I really can’t decide.  Pick any of them, they’re brilliant.

Watch out for the Book of 2019 Giveaway Hop starting on 15th January!