26 June 2010

Top reads 2005-2010 - crime fiction: the rest of the world

Yesterday I posted Top reads 2005 - 2010, British and Australian crime fiction explaining that these titles had been rated as 5s in my database 0f over 660 titles over that period.
So here are the rest of the world.
What staggered me when I looked at the list was the number of translated books (nearly half this list).
I have marked them with *
The other interesting thing for me to realise was that I give a rating of 5 to about 10% of all I read.

* Karin    Alvtegen    MISSING    2003
  Jan    Burke    Bloodlines    2005
  Harlan    Coben    THE WOODS    2007
  Michael    Connelly    THE CLOSERS    2005
  Michael    Connelly    THE BRASS VERDICT    2008
  Robert    Crais    The Forgotten Man    2005
  Linda    Fairstein    Entombed    2005
* Karin    Fossum    Calling Out For You!    2001
* Karin    Fossum    Don't Look Back    2002
* Karin    Fossum    BLACK SECONDS    2007
  Elizabeth    George    WITH NO ONE AS WITNESS    2005
* Arnaldur    Indridason    SILENCE OF THE GRAVE    2002
* Arnaldur    Indridason    VOICES    2003
* Arnaldur    Indridason    HYPOTHERMIA    2009
* Natsuo    Kirino    OUT    1997
  Laura    Lippman    By a Spider's Thread    2004
* Henning    Mankell    SIDETRACKED    1995
* Henning    Mankell    THE FIFTH WOMAN - audio    2003
* Henning    Mankell    THE MAN FROM BEIJING    2008
* Deon    Meyer    DEVIL's PEAK (audio book)    2007
  Richard    Montanari    PLAY DEAD    2008
* Jo    Nesbo    NEMESIS    2008
* Jo    Nesbo    THE SNOWMAN    2010
  Louise    Penny    DEAD COLD    2006
  Thomas    Perry    Dance for the Dead    1996
  Thomas    Perry    Shadow Woman    1997
  Lincoln    Preston    The Cabinet of Curiosities    2002
  Lionel    Shriver    We Need To Talk About Kevin    2005
  Michael    Stanley    A CARRION DEATH    2008
* Johan    Theorin    THE DARKEST ROOM    2008
* Carlos Ruiz    Zafon    The Shadow of the Wind    2004

In future posts, I'll look at the "nearly there's", those who were so close, on 4.9

5 comments:

Dorte H said...

I think the Scandinavians are well represented.

Officially I don´t give stars, but in my own head I do. I am not as generous as you as I give most books 3 stars, a few 4, and very rarely 5 stars. I don´t think it is possible to compare one reader´s system with anyone else´s, because when I give 3 stars it means my overall impression was positive, while 2 stars is for books with more minuses than plusses, and 1 is for books I only finished because I needed it for some purpose.

Kerrie said...

I think you are right Dorte. In the long run my rating system only lets me rank the books and pick out "best" lists like this one. After all, we are not marking exams. I sometimes worry that I'm not being crtitical enough, but then I know what I like and books I struggle with get a much lower rating.

Dorte H said...

I am sure our readers know our systems and can look through what we think about the books we read - and that is what matters.

Anonymous said...

Kerrie - Thanks for this list. I agree with Dorte that we who read and learn from your reviews do get to learn each of your systems. And for me, it's very nice to get slightly (even very) different perspectives on the same book.

Kiwicraig said...

We need to get you reading more Kiwi crime fiction Kerrie ;-)

Good list, and some great books - although I am suprised to see a Fairstein book get top marks - I've found her books pretty mediocre in recent years, and even the better ones (and ENTOMBED is one of the better ones) I still only consider as 'very good' rather than 'great', 'outstanding' or 'excellent'.

Different tastes eh? After all, one of my lowest rated books last year, BLOOD RUNS COLD by Alex Barclay, won the first Irish Crime Writing Award ....

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