Thursday 15 December 2011

My Top Seven Plus Three Indie Books of 2011

I noticed many blogs are doing their Top Ten indie books, so I have shamelessly decided to copy. I limited myself to picking one book per author so as to include as many as possible, and set to work picking my ten favourites... and then stopped, frowning. As ever, I've made things needlessly complicated...

Firstly, I'm not even sure all these books were published in 2011. I certainly read them all this year, but they may have been published earlier. But aren't people always banging on about indie books and e-publishing meaning that people's books have a longer shelf life? Yes, they are, and if rather looser definitions of previously precise concepts like 'this year' are the price we have to pay for such literary longevity then I'm all for it.

Secondly, and more seriously, some of the best self-published books of read this year are by the authors I've joined forces with for Penny Dreadnought. It would seem somewhat dishonest for me to recommend authors whose success might, however tangentially, benefit my sales in the future. But equally, I read all three of these authors long before Penny Dreadnought was even a twinkling, and there's no doubt their work would have appeared in this Top Ten if we'd not decided to publish together... So after some deliberation I've decided to include them but not rank them. So my Top Ten starts with those three books in no particular order and then continues with a Top Seven counting down to my Number One...

I told you I'd made this needlessly complicated.

(All links to Amazon UK)




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#X. Arron Polson: These Darkened Streets

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#X. Iain Rowan: Ice Age

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#7. Jim Breslin: Elephant

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#6. Steven Baxter: Musings of A Monkey

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#5. Neil Schiller: Oblivious

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#4. Various Authors: Infinities

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#2. Marion Stein: Loisaida - A New York Story

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#1. Cate Gardner: Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits

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In other news, this is all sorts of brilliant:



3 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you so much!

It's quite an honor. Luckily I write an award acceptance speech to go along with each of my works, so I've come prepared.

Cate Gardner said...

Oh man, seriously!!! Thank you so much.

James Everington said...

Alan - I was unsure which of your to pick actually, but decided there's very few times I'm going to get to feature a Cthulhu/Harry Met Sally hybrid stage-play on my blog...

Cate - y' welcome!