Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2005

It's Zadie Smith for me.

I've noticed that I seem to be more attuned to the UK literary scene of the 00's than the US one (in the sense of knowing who's rated, not really in the sense of enjoying them), even though I hadn't moved here.

The 00's seem to have a very large amount of holocaust novels which, judging by their covers (haw haw), seem emotionally manipulative and not at all up to the task of tackling the subject.

For some reason the Sonic X anime is listed in the 2005 novels category on wikipedia. I approve.

Is Saturday the one where an angry burglar is stopped in his tracks by a reading of Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach? Jesus wept.

I really like Beyond Black. It's Mantel at her most scabrous.

Quite amusing that Remainder was just mentioned on the film poll, as that's my ironclad write-in here

I didn't put 2&2 together! Same here - Remainder is excellent.

Beyond Black

It's Real England: the novel

I'm striking out again. The only 2005 published novel that I can turn up that I've read is "Indecision" by Benjamin Kunkel, which seemed to get some attention at the time, but maybe since has faded from collective memory.

“No Country For Old Men,” the only one I’ve read.

According to my goodreads page, the only fiction I read this year was the Saunders novella Reign of Phil which I hated, and Charles Burns's Black Hole which has great art but I don't remember the story of it.

Huh, I didn't think of doing that. While I haven't put *everything* I've read into goodreads, I have been fairly thorough, and apparently the only things I read that were first published in the '00s were philosophy books and one friend's book. Kind of makes sense (I was voraciously reading modernists & post-war experimentalism, and studying stuff for college & university, so no time or interest in contemporary fiction) but does mean I have to wait until the '10s to have anything worth saying.

I keep a list of my reading but don't do Goodreads. the ux and design bug me out, i want to get the fuck off those pages faster than stay on them, for whatever reason. it's too bad, too, because i read a lot of books.

Agreed. I wish someone would make a better website for book nerds to rate their books.

I quit goodreads just because I felt like there didn't need to be yet another thing I'm supporting amazon on.

goodreads is the worst website ever. but i do use it to keep track of my reading and take notes on books

i haven't read any of these books but almost felt like voting for twilight just bc of how much i like the first film adaptation lol

This year is a total blank for me, but having just read Octavia Butler's Kindred, the chances are high I'll get around to Fledgling in the next year.

Never Let Me Go is the worst book I've ever finished. It makes me angry just thinking about it. Voting for Beyond Black which I'm reading now, as it happens.

i didn't know amazon owned goodreads. i use it for cataloging what i've read and not much else.

Sorting by publication year in goodreads seems completely worthless, is there some way of doing it that’s accurate?

xxp I knew there would be some extreme anti ishiguro opinions here. I like it. The setup is classic ishiguro, putting people in a situation that they cannot see is absurd and watching how they deal with it.

Would like to read The Sea to see if Banville's sad middle aged bachelor schtick still does anything for me, at the time it was my favourite booker winner whose title is "The Sea" one or more times. Saturday is, as noted, embarrassing.

JS: I was using the "date pub" column. It seemed to work OK for recent years.

the only two I've read here are the Vollman and the Zadie Smith, so I won't vote, but if I did, Vollman by a million miles.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2006