Rose Fox’s wonderful Publisher Weekly’s blog, Genreville, published its Top 10 books for 2011… except it’s actually a Top 6 (which confused me a bit).

While I haven’t actually read a single book on that list, I own two of them (Zoo City and Triptych), am pissed off that I didn’t order Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan, Vol. 1 (which has now sold out) and will definitely be getting my hamstery hands on the Daryl Gregory collection, Unpossible.  I’m also intrigued by the Maureen McHugh collection.

What’s interesting about this list isn’t just, as Rose points out, that the publishers are all small to medium press outfits (not sure calling Angry Robot a small outfit is accurate, or for that matter Sub press, but I get the point), no, what’s interesting is though there were 4 slots left over, the award favourites for this year don’t get a mention.

Specifically, I’m talking about books like Among Others by Jo Walton  and Embassytown by China which have been touted as certain award nominees (though Rose does explain in the comments why Embassytown isn’t on the list).

I’m not saying that these two books should have featured – I wasn’t that fond of either of them.  Rather it’s nice to see a reading list that doesn’t just tick the boxes and  recommend the ‘popular’ books for the year.  At the very least I get exposed to novels and collections that I wouldn’t have otherwise (unless I stumbled across them).

But as more ‘Best Of’ lists come out toward the end of the year, I have a feeling that this one will stand out from the crowd for being a little different.

I am sad, though, that Deathless didn’t get a guernsey.  It’s a wonderful novel and will be on my Best Of 2011 list.