Three ER Books Top Reads in 2013!

Three of my Early Reviewer books made my best reads list of 2013:

Escape From Berlin by Irene Watts

The War Within These Walls by Aline Sax

More Anti-Inflammation Diet Tips and Recipes: by Jessica K. Black

How about the books you received this year?

I got a lot of good ER books this year, and I'm so grateful. Top reads were The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart, Winter Well, an anthology of speculative fiction novellas, Countdown City by Ben H. Winters and Guests on Earth by Lee Smith.

3. Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines
2. Runner by Patrick Lee
1. Lord of Darkness by Robert Silverberg

Lord of Darkness was actually the best book I read all year.

Some of my best books of 2013 were ER books. Specifically:

Her by Christa Parravani
Haldol and Hyacinths by Melody Moezzi
All Good Things by Sarah Turnbull

I also had three ER books that made my list this year, although only one of them came from LT.

The Return: A Novel by Michael Gruber
The Romanov Cross by Robert Masello and
Gameboard of the Gods by Richelle Mead

Runner, A Sam Dryden Novel is in the top 10 though.

None of my ER books made it into my top 10 for the year. My top 3 ER books received/read in 2013 are:

Rose Harbor in Bloom by Debbie Macomber
The Family Mansion by Anthony C. Winkler
Bosnia's Million Bones by Christian Jennings

As you can see, they are all very different from one another.

Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins (July batch) made my Top 10 list.

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan/Eldar Shafir (June batch) was also quite good.

My only ER book this year was The Complete Lythande, but would be a best in any company.

I've read some excellent books this year, and my favorite ER books are
Good Kings, Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum - a lovely novel about some of the marginalized people in our society

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout - I love this author's writing

Manifest Injustice by Barry Siegel - for the fascinating and sad story of an incarcerated man. This one was from the December 2012 batch, but I read it in January.

I'm excited to see what new books the ER program introduces to me this year. I always learn about new books I want to read just but looking through the list.

I had one ER book that made my top 10 this year: The Tenth Witness by Leonard Rosen. Another one of my top reads, Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman, was an ER book but I got my reading copy from NetGalley.

I received some great books this year, even though I did not include them in my top five list. I loved Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, which has actually made many critics' top ten lists. I also really liked Loyalty, A Hundred Summers, and The Explanation for Everything.
Thank you, LT!

Would be interesting if there were a way to generate these mentions automatically, and include them in a person's Fun Statistics.

And a flower in the lapel of the LTER program, to identify how many LTER books made the LT "top reads". This could be approximated from the standpoint of pure quantity now: calculate where the LTER books fall in the most reviewed / most read / most catalogued. But the quality measure, how many LTER books made the LT Favourite Reads list, would require a method for each LTer to identify those top books first.

These three made my best of 2013 list:

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford (June 2013 batch)

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg (October 2013 batch)

A Half-Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb (March 2013 batch)

> 13- I didn't get it from ER, but I too thought A Half-Forgotten Song was fantastic, and it was one of my top books of 2013.

Both Countdown City and The Beggar's Opera (from November 2012 batch, read in 2013) were good, if not stunning. Most disappointing was It Happens in the Dark; I was hoping for so much more from the author of Find Me and The Judas Child.

My top three LTER books of 2013 in the order of favorites:
Night of the Comet by George Bishop
Mr. Lynch's Holiday by Catherine O'Flynn
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

My favorite three from NetGalley (also offered on LT):
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra *
White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse
Good Kings, Bad Kings by Sussan Nussbaum

* Favorite book of the year

Two of my ER wins from 2013 made my 5 star list.
The Drunken Botanist by Amy Steward
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

Of those, McCall Smith is one of my go to favorite authors, but Amy Steward was new to me. I ended up ordering two more of her books because they are lovely, funny, interesting, educating and she is a "local" author for me.