Playing Favorites

It’s the end of the year and I’m feeling somewhat listy and I know y’all are flush with gift card moolah so here are my 15 favorite books published in 2007 (for a complete look at what these are culled from you can browse the Reading List 2007 sidebar down and to the right). Note that I’m not saying best, I’m saying favorite. This list was done in a very cursory way, and I know I’ll be kicking myself over stuff not on here that should be . . . and, and, and yet I choose to resist the effort to be completist. I will, however, mark which ones are YA, to ease the finding of them in bookshops.

Dreamquake (Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet), Elizabeth Knox (YA)
Always and And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life, Nicola Griffith
Bad Monkeys, Matt Ruff
How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer
Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand
The Off Season, Catherine Murdock (YA)
The Red Shoe, Ursula Dubosarsky (YA/Middle Grade)
The Arrival, Shaun Tan (YA, etc.)
The Hearts of Horses, Molly Gloss
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, Peter Cameron (YA)
Ironside, Holly Black (YA)
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick (YA/Middle Grade)
Beige, Cecil Castellucci (YA)
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog, Ysabeau Wilce (YA/Middle Grade)

And bonus: My favorite short story is, hands down, Kij Johnson’s "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" from the Coyote Road anthology (YA). You people who can do such things need to start recommending this for awards, stat.