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sabotabbyI'm at 57 books (not including poetry and comics) and will definitely have one, maybe two or three more before the year is up, but it is Wednesday my dudes, so we shall talk about books. What I'm reading and what I thought were the best things I've read this year. I do try to keep it recent-focused but I don't buy a lot of books so I'm dependent on the public library system and am thus frequently several years behind on my reading.
Just finished: Britain, a Prophecy #1: Traditional Moral Values, Elizabeth Sandifer and J. Penn Wiggins. This is the first issue of a very promising new comic written by Elizabeth Sandifer (the TARDIS Eruditorum blogger and author of the stunning Neoreaction A Basilisk). Either the concept or the author alone would be enough to make me want to buy the thing. On the eve of the election where Margaret Thatcher will win a third term and in the midst of the AIDS crisis, a gay social worker has to track down a teenage runaway who happens to be a fairy princess. The social worker is also a fairy, and the brother of the Ancient of Days, who has his own plans for Britain.
This is very much the type of comic that made me get into comics in the first place, channelling Moore and Gaiman and Morrison and all the good stuff. It's queer dark 80s goth-punk. I alas do not care for the art style at all, but it's such a good story that I want to read more of it.
Currently reading: Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey. I am almost done this one and then there will be no more Expanse novels. SOB! But it's really good. As the war between the Laconian Empire and the remnants of the Transport Union rages on, the missing Laconian dictator, Duarte, reemerges with shiny new protomolecule powers. Meanwhile, the civilization that wiped out the gate builders is killing vast swathes of people and causing all kinds of weirdness. And a new existential threat emerges—a merging of consciousnesses that spreads like a certain virus, threatening to change humanity beyond recognition. I realize that this summary makes zero sense if you haven't read the books or seen the show at all but it's appropriately epic.
And now for the best books I've read this year.
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good. This is an absolutely brutal book about those who survived residential schools and those who didn't. It's a narrative of trauma, resistance, and survival with compelling, memorable characters and gorgeous prose. It won the Governor General's Award and absolutely deserved to.
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. A wonderfully inventive fantasy about immigrant communities in New York and the mythologies they bring with them. A weird, sprawling novel that breaks all the rules of genre fiction and thus endeared itself to me. I also liked the sequel, The Hidden Palace, though I felt the ending of that one was weak.
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. A Regency romance with magic by one of my favourite authors. How was I not going to absolutely love it?
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo. An adorable novella about a weretiger and the scholar who falls in love with her. It's not only a hilarious and romantic story in and of itself, but a very clever take on the idea of whose stories get to be told, and by whom. Every word and every character are a delight to read.
Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin. This is high-quality investigative journalism, with a Jewish writer going undercover in online fash groups to discover how they work and how the chuds in them think. It's riveting reading and despite the grim subject matter, quite a fun read owing to Lavin's skillful and funny writing.
My absolute favourite books of the year:
Fiction: Generation Loss/Available Dark by Elizabeth Hand. I'm grouping these together because I can. Aging disaster bisexual punk photographer meets cosmic horror. If you made a laundry list of things I want in a book, these two would tick pretty much everything. Cass Neary is the kind of fucked up, engrossing protagonist that genre fiction tends to be afraid of showing us, and the prose is so fantastic that it almost made me give up writing. I still haven't read the third one but if it's anything like these two, I will love it.
Non-fiction: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I can't think of any other non-fiction book that has made me cry not because the subject matter was sad but because of how jawdroppingly beautiful the writing was. Kimmerer's love and respect for the plants she writes about bleed through the page. This book absolutely changed my life.
Just finished: Britain, a Prophecy #1: Traditional Moral Values, Elizabeth Sandifer and J. Penn Wiggins. This is the first issue of a very promising new comic written by Elizabeth Sandifer (the TARDIS Eruditorum blogger and author of the stunning Neoreaction A Basilisk). Either the concept or the author alone would be enough to make me want to buy the thing. On the eve of the election where Margaret Thatcher will win a third term and in the midst of the AIDS crisis, a gay social worker has to track down a teenage runaway who happens to be a fairy princess. The social worker is also a fairy, and the brother of the Ancient of Days, who has his own plans for Britain.
This is very much the type of comic that made me get into comics in the first place, channelling Moore and Gaiman and Morrison and all the good stuff. It's queer dark 80s goth-punk. I alas do not care for the art style at all, but it's such a good story that I want to read more of it.
Currently reading: Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey. I am almost done this one and then there will be no more Expanse novels. SOB! But it's really good. As the war between the Laconian Empire and the remnants of the Transport Union rages on, the missing Laconian dictator, Duarte, reemerges with shiny new protomolecule powers. Meanwhile, the civilization that wiped out the gate builders is killing vast swathes of people and causing all kinds of weirdness. And a new existential threat emerges—a merging of consciousnesses that spreads like a certain virus, threatening to change humanity beyond recognition. I realize that this summary makes zero sense if you haven't read the books or seen the show at all but it's appropriately epic.
And now for the best books I've read this year.
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good. This is an absolutely brutal book about those who survived residential schools and those who didn't. It's a narrative of trauma, resistance, and survival with compelling, memorable characters and gorgeous prose. It won the Governor General's Award and absolutely deserved to.
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. A wonderfully inventive fantasy about immigrant communities in New York and the mythologies they bring with them. A weird, sprawling novel that breaks all the rules of genre fiction and thus endeared itself to me. I also liked the sequel, The Hidden Palace, though I felt the ending of that one was weak.
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. A Regency romance with magic by one of my favourite authors. How was I not going to absolutely love it?
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo. An adorable novella about a weretiger and the scholar who falls in love with her. It's not only a hilarious and romantic story in and of itself, but a very clever take on the idea of whose stories get to be told, and by whom. Every word and every character are a delight to read.
Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin. This is high-quality investigative journalism, with a Jewish writer going undercover in online fash groups to discover how they work and how the chuds in them think. It's riveting reading and despite the grim subject matter, quite a fun read owing to Lavin's skillful and funny writing.
My absolute favourite books of the year:
Fiction: Generation Loss/Available Dark by Elizabeth Hand. I'm grouping these together because I can. Aging disaster bisexual punk photographer meets cosmic horror. If you made a laundry list of things I want in a book, these two would tick pretty much everything. Cass Neary is the kind of fucked up, engrossing protagonist that genre fiction tends to be afraid of showing us, and the prose is so fantastic that it almost made me give up writing. I still haven't read the third one but if it's anything like these two, I will love it.
Non-fiction: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I can't think of any other non-fiction book that has made me cry not because the subject matter was sad but because of how jawdroppingly beautiful the writing was. Kimmerer's love and respect for the plants she writes about bleed through the page. This book absolutely changed my life.
Glorious Books Recommended
Date: 2021-12-22 03:47 pm (UTC)Re: Glorious Books Recommended
Date: 2021-12-22 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-23 07:19 am (UTC)I really need to read Sweetgrass, you and Mucca and a couple of other really smart people I know loved it.
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Date: 2021-12-23 02:51 pm (UTC)I loved this book so much! ^_^
and I enjoyed the sequel a great deal, too.
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