I tend to read more magazines, but at some point in 2013 I started doing e-books and audiobooks on my commute, so I've had a big last couple of years by my standards. Here was 2015:
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. Alternately fascinating and exhausting, ultimately slightly disappointing in that it just sort of stopped.
American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Never grabbed me. I much preferred his book
Stardust (he does his own narration for the whole audiobook, quite well I think).
Paris, Edward Rutherfurd. I kept picking it up and putting it down so found the skipping around in time very hard to follow. I preferred his
New York.
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card. I know I'm not supposed to take it this way, but I just found it a fun book about kid soldiers playing war games. Also read
Speaker for the Dead, which I didn't like at all.
A Deepness in the Sky and
Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge. Both slightly inferior sequels to a
Fire Upon the Deep, but all three are worth reading.
Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson. I slightly preferred
Red Mars, which was very good. While I would recommend both, I would've been happy if he'd cut out about 80% of the political stuff and left the science/engineering.
The Moon by Night and
Camilla, Madeleine L'Engle. I decided to read every L'Engle book that the library has electronically, in order of publication (five books in so far).
Moon by Night is a lesser "Austin family" work; go with
Meet the Austins, which was wonderful.
Camilla is a lesser one-off effort; better is
And Both Were Young, which turned surprisingly good in the second half, plus I loved the anthropological value of a book about an American in Europe written and set 5 years after WWII -- while it's really not about the war at all, it unself-consciously documents how the war loomed over everything.
As my opinions above would suggest, I think I'm burned out on sci fi (and fiction in general). I've been finding myself listening to podcasts much more than audiobooks over the last few months. Speaking of, go listen to
the This American Life episode about girl scouts in a concentration camp in China. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Amber 34 mentions Richard Scarry -- I had never truly hated a book until I read one of his out loud to my nephew (but my nephew loved it). Now also up for consideration in the 'hated' category are the Diaper Baby comic books, by the guy who did the Captain Underpants books.
