Still Looking Backwards

When, just prior to the start of Christmas festivities, I put together an assortment of “best crime fiction of the year” posts, I thought I’d covered most of that ground. However, there have been numerous such lists since--enough to justify this follow-up.

• Existential Ennui’s Nick Jones assesses the books and graphic novels he read last year (see part I, part II, and part III).
• Yvette Banek tallies up her favorite books and book covers of 2011.
• Rob Kitchin presents his top-10 list of 2011 reads.
• Gerard Brennan names eight favorite crime novels from last year.
• Paul D. Brazill catalogues what he believes were the 15 best crime novels/novellas of 2011 as well as the top five crime films of 2011.
• James Reasoner picks his favorite novels of 2011.
• Heath Lowrance offers his choices of 2011’s most notable books.
• Vince Keenan lists “ten titles I recommend unreservedly.”
• Sabrina Echols Ogden offers up her favorite reads of 2011 in her blog, My Friends Call Me Kate ...
• Bookgasm’s Alan Cranis puts forward his “Best Books of 2011.”
• Barbara J. Mitchell has a “sampling of excellent books from 2011.”
• Daniela De Gregorio and Michael G. Jacob--who write historical mysteries under the pseudonym “Michael Gregorio”--recommend 13 books they’ve read this year, most of them crime novels.
• Karen Meek of Euro Crime chooses her five favorite reads of 2011.
• In The House of Crime and Mystery, blogger Jacques Filippi suggests almost three dozen more books worth reading.
• Saskatchewan lawyer-reviewer Bill Selnes submits his own favorites.
• Jedidiah Ayres, who writes Ransom Notes: The BN Mystery Blog, really outdoes himself with separate compilations of the best villains of 2011, the best series debuts of the year, his favorite novellas, his favorite author debuts, his “flat-out favorite novels of 2011,” and what he thinks are the “best of the rest.”
• At the Scene of the Crime’s semi-pseudonymous blogger, Patrick, clues us in on his “worst reading moments of 2011.”
• Jen Forbes names her “2011 Overall Favorite Reads” and her “2011 Favorite Audiobooks.” She also participates in a year-end meme that has her selecting the “Worst Book of 2011,” the “Best Series You Discovered in 2011,” the “Book You Can’t Believe You Waited Until 2011 to Finally Read,” and more.
• Over the course of two posts (see here and here), Norman Price of Crime Scraps employes that same meme.
• Ditto Reactions to Reading.
• José Ignacio of The Game’s Afoot runs with that year-end meme too (see here), but he also delivers a list of his 10 favorite crime-fiction reads from the last 12 months.
• Finally, The Drowning Machine’s Naomi Johnson presents the Fourth Annual Lowhead Dam Awards, featuring new and used, prominent and unjustly overlooked books she consumed over the last year.