Admin Post: Happy 5th Birthday, Lady Business!

[helloladies]

Lady Business turned five years old on March 4, 2016! It's hard to believe we've been around this long (time flies!), but we're happy to still be kicking around the Internet discussing media. To celebrate, we decided to hold a birthday giveaway for the six books we read and loved the most in 2015. We each chose our favorite book and tossed it into the pile and we want you to enter our giveaway. :)

We're giving away:

• Bitch Planet Volume 1: Extraordinary Machine by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro, Taki Soma, & Robert Wilson (Susan)
• Black Wolves by Kate Elliott (Renay)
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Jodie)
• Uprooted by Naomi Novik (KJ)
• Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill (Clare)
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (Ira)

To enter, visit http://lady-business.org/#birthdaygiveaway to fill out the form, or click on the image below. The giveaway will run through March 22, 2016!



Thanks especially to Ana for starting this journey with us and helping us get to this point. Thanks also to all the people who help us, who read and promote our work, and who disagree with us and help us grow as people and critics! Here's to another five years. :)

Comments

[transcendancing]

My top *FIVE* books?!?! I don't think you understand how hard it was to get my best books down to *18*... *flails*

Okay if you want just *five* books (so mean!) then here's my best shot:

"The Beast's Garden" by Kate Forsyth
"The Disappearance of Ember Crow" by Ambellin Kwaymullina
"The Dreamer's Pool" by Juliet Marillier
"Peacemaker" by Marianne de Pierre
"Ancillary Sword" by Anne Leckie

But in case you're wondering here's my link to my 2015 favourites post so you can appreciate the full measure of the list.

[novin_ha]

Sorry if it's stated somewhere and I can't find it, but is the giveaway international or US/UK only?

[helloladies]

Hi! It's not, because we forgot to specify. We're sorry. It's definitely international. :)

[themadpoker]

Oh boy. Top 5 books is a nearly impossible choice for me so I'm going to go with 5 books I enjoyed A LOT in 2015 without guarantee they're the absolute top in the service of me not sitting here all day stressing about what I've left out. Also I'm excluding comics from my definition of books because nope, too hard, can't. Five print books I loved in 2015, go!

Filter House by Nisi Shawl
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Talk Sweetly to Me by Courtney Milan
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

My 5 Favourite books from 2015

[(Anonymous)]

My 5 favourite books from last year were:

Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
Purity - Jonathan Franzen
Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee
Why Not Me - Mindy Kailing
Two Years, Eight Months and 28 nights - Salman Rushdie

[(Anonymous)]

The Fifth Season
Ancillary Mercy
Uprooted
Black Wolves

and

Hell, i don't know. Seveneves or Court of Fives or Planetfall or Signal to Noise or The Traitor Baru Cormorant

-Joe

[ceitfianna]

Oh this is hard, but looking through my booklog, they jumped out to me.

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

Persona by Genevieve Valentine

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

A Red-Rose Chain by Seanan McGuire

Simon vs The Homo-Sapiens' Agenda by Becky Albetalli

[kaytaylorrea]

I love love loved A Red-Rose Chain. How rare is it for the ninth book in a series to be that phenomenal?

[ceitfianna]

So rare but McGuire is just that good. I'm waiting on her next Incryptid book which I know I'll probably read in a day and then reread. Her books are always worth a reread which for me is a sign of how great they are.

[kaytaylorrea]

I adore all of the Toby books and liked the first two Feed novels, but failed out of the first InCryptid book. Going back on the TBR if you like them enough to read and reread!

[kaytaylorrea]

Ugh, narrowing it down to five? I did a post with my top 15 here, but if I HAVE to narrow to five:

Manners & Mutiny by Gail Carriger
Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Act Like It by Lucy Parker
The End of All Things by John Scalzi

[scintilla10]

Oh no, 5 favourite books is so hard!!

In 2015, I loved:

Zen Cho, Sorcerer to the Crown
Naomi Novik, Uprooted
Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy
Brian K Vaught & Fiona Staples, Saga Vol I

[calvinahobbes]

Happy birthday! I can't believe your blog is five years old, because that means it was around for YEARS without me knowing about it??

Anyway, most beloved books I read in 2015, in no particular order:
- Lumberjanes!
- Uprooted
- Nimona
- Ancillary Justice
- A Natural History of Dragons

[renay]

We're pretty shy about self-promotion so we ran under the radar until recently. :) We're happy you found us, though, so now we can TRADE RECS. \o/

[readingtheend.pip.verisignlabs.com]

Top five of 2015? Eek, that is so hard! Nimona has to be one of them (monster giiiiiirls!), and then, I read this really great history of the DRC by David van Reybrouck, and Anne Jamison's Fic was an excellent introduction to fandom studies, and Claire North's Touch kept me up late, and then probably Between the World and Me.

(That is more nonfiction than I was expecting!)

[captainraz]

Five favourite books I read in 2015 (not necessarily published in 2015)

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee

(With a bonus recommendation for the Inheritance Trilogy by NK Jemisin because *incoherent noises*)

[calissa]

Congratulations! 2015 was the year I discovered you guys and I'm super sad I didn't know about you before. Wishing you all many more happy years.

As for my five favourite books I read in 2015:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Dreamers Pool by Juliet Marillier
Feed by Mira Grant
Prince's Gambit by C.S. Pacat

Wow, so hard to narrow it down to three.

[ms_geekette.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that most of these were not released in 2015, but I read and loved them in 2015, so hopefully that's ok. (It was hard to weed down my 5 star list at Goodreads for 2015.)

- Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon...and as an aside, people should check out The Raven and the Reindeer, which just came out - I liked it even better than this one...funny and feels...Ursula is evil)

-Missing Reels by Farran Smith Nehme (not f/sf, but if you are a classic movie fan I think you'd appreciate it...I am not really much of a classic movie fan and I liked it a lot)

-The Far Time Incident by Neve Maslakovic (time travel is my weakness and this was pretty good...I think Maslakovic owes a bit to Connie Willis with her time traveling university set-up, but since Connie is a bit of a slow writer, I am glad I have another author to follow)

-That Summer by Lauren Willig (a novel set in dual time periods...also got me in the feels)

-Kon Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft by Thor Heyerdahl (A true story! I have been trying to read some non-fiction to break up all of my f/sf reading. It's also a favorite of my mom's...read it for a reading bingo.)

What a great giveaway!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for offering these. :) Any attention to these books is a good thing!
-Ruthanne Reid

[(Anonymous)]

Ooh! Shiny!

Favorite books of 2015: The Fifth Season; Ancillary Mercy; Flux; Half-Resurrection Blues; Sorcerer to the Crown.

[(Anonymous)]

DOH

I'm @asymbina on Twitter and Tumblr.

[(Anonymous)]

My fave books from 2015 are, as follows:
1) Naomi Novik's "Uprooted"
2) the whole "The Wicked + the Divine" series
3) Naomi Novik's "Blood of Tyrants"
4) Jaan Kross's "Czar's Fool"
5) the "Percy Jackson and the Blood of the OLympians" series

-aldergroves

[dolorosa_12]

Only five is hard, but I think I can narrow it down to the following:

1. Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
2. Silver on the Road by L. A. Gilman
3. Black Wolves by Kate Elliott
4. Court of Fives by Kate Elliott
5. Space Hostages by Sophia McDougall

Happy fifth birthday!

I am Sharon, and I approved this list

[(Anonymous)]

1. Ancillary Sword/Justice/Mercy, Ann Leckie (I read them all this year and I'm counting them together because otherwise they'd take up most of the list)
2. Illuminae, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
3. Uprooted, Naomi Novik
4. Wild, Cheryl Strayed
5. The Scorpion Rules, Erin Bow

[novin_ha]

My favourite books in 2015 were not all published in 2015, but I hope they still count:

Sarah Rees Brennan, Turn of the Story. It's amazing and it's online for free. One of my favourite YA authors at her best. And it's so underloved.
Courtney Milan, Trade Me. Surprisingly, (most of all to me) I preferred Milan's new contemporary to her new historical romance.
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy - sweeping and glorious and fun. I had some slight misgivings about the conclusion, but the first among them was that I wanted more.
N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season - obviously.
and Jo Walton's My Real Children, which I read in ebook first and immediately ordered a paperback copy too, just so I could force friends to read it too. It was that awesome. And it made me cry several times.

[modernistgirl]

My top 5 of books read in 2015:

1. Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy
2. Naomi Novik, Uprooted
3. N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season
4. Richelle Mead, Gameboard of the Gods
5. Jo Walton, My Real Children