2011 in review, 2 of 4: What I missed.

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2011 in review, 2 of 4: What I missed.

Posted on 2011-12-19 at 18:26 by Sam

This is the second of four posts looking back at 2011 in science fiction and fantasy audiobooks. I started with my year in listening and continue here with a look into what I missed. Next I’ll gripe at the world with my list of the most missing audiobooks of the year — those books I wanted to listen to but for which there was no audiobook. Lastly, I’ll lay out my picks for the year’s best in science fiction and fantasy audiobooks. But now! What I missed.

The full list of titles which came out in 2011 which at least passed my “oh, that might be interesting” test exceeds any suitable page length; so I’ve trimmed this down to a list which more or less represents two categories:

  • Audiobooks which, given more time and money, I would have listened to
  • Audiobooks which, for one reason or another I would have either listened to or which would have fallen into the first category, I nonetheless decided to skip, at least for now
So, here’s my still to-listen wish list from 2011, though some I will just have to continue skipping for now as I don’t want to fall too behind in 2012 reading:

NEW BOOKS: Many of these were the hardest passes. Some of these are first books in series which are new to me, and sometimes you just aren’t ready to commit to a new series. Some of these, well, I’ll tell you:

NEW LATER BOOKS IN SERIES of which I have read the previous books: Whether it’s not wanting to spoil the wondrous after-image of a first book done well (the strength of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow has actually been one thing which kept me from picking up Children of Men for example) or having fallen behind and missed a book, or, well, other reasons:

NEW LATER BOOKS IN SERIES of which I have not read book 1: Not all series have their previous novels as required reading, but I like to do things in order:

BOOKS FROM NEIL GAIMAN PRESENTS: I was surprised and excited to see this development, of someone with the stature and access Gaiman has going into these overlooked books with a mission of finding excellent narrators for them and producing excellent recordings. I haven’t gotten to any of his selections yet (!!) but all of them remain on my wish list at year’s end:

BOOKS FROM IAMBIK:  I found the production on Lavie Tidhar’s An Occupation of Angels to be top notch, and Iambik is producing audiobooks from wonderful indie presses Apex, ChiZine, and Small Beer (among others) and I’ll be getting back to a few of these:

GENRE BOOKS FROM PREVIOUS YEARS appearing at Audible.com for the first time this year: While the previous two categories are pretty much entirely comprised of these as well, there was a long list of other titles which arrived this year:

ANTHOLOGIES AND COLLECTIONS: I don’t take too many of these which aren’t more of a “shared world” (anthology, like METAtropolis or Wild Cards) or “connected stories” (collection) approach, but there were a good number of good-looking anthologies and collections that I still hold out hopes of getting back to:

NON-GENRE: I only read a handful of books outside of the science fiction and fantasy shelves, and that’s really a shame; I tracked some of these books all year and just kept waiting and waiting and… didn’t pick them up. I suppose that means that I am not as interested in literary fiction as I like to pretend that I am? But some of this is also waiting to get a “thumbs up” from some of these books from a few specific people to whom I turn for my recommendations here:

NON-FICTION: I didn’t listen to nearly enough non-fiction this year. If I remember, and handily I have that big list in part one! only Patton Oswalt’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland made it into my ears. Nonetheless, there were a lot of great-looking non-fiction titles that, in a focus to keep up with fiction, I didn’t make time for:

Whew! I started this post with a list twice as long, trimmed down from a wishlist that is twice that length again. There were an awful lot of good looking audiobooks, but unless one not on this list really hits me on the head, I’ve pretty much turned the page on 2011 with these to sneak into my listening over the coming few years.

Posted in regular | Tagged 2011-in-review