Tuesday, December 28, 2010

"BEST OF" Posts

It's the most wonderful time of the year! And I'm not saying that because it is the Holidays, though the Holidays are pretty awesome. I'm saying it because it is the time of year that bloggers from all around the internet start posting their year-end "Best Of" lists.

I pretty much cant afford to buy newly released books, nor am I cool enough to get free reading copies, so I sorta live vicariously through other bloggers through the year, reading their reviews, and filtering out the books I most want to read in the future, and then buy 'em when they come out in soft cover format. One great way to discover the hot new reads that I'll be reading once they cool off a bit and cost less is to read the year-end "Best Of" posts that cooler, more talented bloggers put out this time of year. Now, I realize not everyone on my blog roll has created such a list, but I've compiled a list of those who have. These are people who's blogs I devoutly follow, checking in whenever they post new stuff, and I really value their opinions so I think their "Best Of" posts are definitely worth taking a look at.

I'll kick things off with one of my favorite bloggers, The Speculative Scotsman. This dude consistently cranks out solid material at his blog, and his year-end lists are solid too. His "Top of the Scots" lists include movies, and games as well as books.

Over at the Mad Hatter's Bookshelf, there's a Long List edition of his best reads for the year. Which has me hoping for another, more detailed list in the future. One cool thing about this post though is that there's some interesting stats to check out.

Magemanda from Floor to Ceiling Books took a somewhat different approach to the typical year-end list, handing out awards in 20 Categories. Probably the coolest awards post so far, who else is gonna hand out an award for "best kiss"?

Pat from the Fantasy Hotlist released a list of his Top 10 Books for the year, plus an additional ten runners up. This is a horribly dull list post, but I'm sure he'll kick it up a notch when he hands out his year-end "Hotties" awards.

The Wertzone has long been a steady source of book recommendations for me, so I wasn't too surprised to find that Adam's Wertzone Award for best novel of 2010 post featured a bunch of novels I'll be reading sometime in the future.

The folks at Speculative Book Review are one of my favorite team blogs. The reviewers there have a nice variety of fantasy tastes, which overlap with my own preferences plenty often. Their The Year's Best post reflects the diversity of preferences presented by their reviewers.

Last up is the Fantasy Book Critic. the Top 25 Novels post there comes complete with a fancy little cover collage. There's also links to the reviews, if you want more information.

That's all the "Best Of" posts for now, hopefully the other folks on my blog roll will put their "Best Of" lists up soon!

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