I read 41 books this year! That is less than over the last few years, but it also included a few big ones…and hey, I finished a Master’s degree this year too! I’m mostly a fiction reader (outside of work, at least). Now that I’ve got a blog, let’s do a list of my top 10 reads of the year (excluding The Lord of the Rings, which I re-read for the umpteenth time!). This is in no particular order really, other than #1:
10. The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J Marlowe: A dirty, grimy crime novel. I don’t read a lot of crime or hard boiled stuff, but a friend recommended this to me while we were browsing at Pulp Fiction and it left a big impression on me.
9. BleakWarrior by Alistair Rennie: this one is hard to describe. It feels like a fever dream. Violent and nasty but oddly compelling.
8. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico: The same friend who recommended The Name of the Game is Death recommended this book about digital nomads living in Berlin. It’s a vibe and mood book more than a plot book, but the mood it evokes, both vivid and dry, has lingered in my mind.
7. The Collected Lovecraft, Variorum Edition, vols 1-2: I’ve been a Lovecraft fan since high school, so when Chiroptera Press announced they were going to publish a set of the Variorum Edition (an authoritative version of the text, along with variations and notes on the publishing history of the stories) I knew I had to get them. I’ve read a lot of Lovecraft but never just worked my way through a complete collection, so it’s been a blast reading some new-to-me stories (“The White Ship” really strikes me as an under-collected gem). I have vol 3 but haven’t read it yet, and I’m especially looking forward to getting vol 4 when it comes out next year–it includes his collaborations and ghost-writing stories, most of which are rarely published.
6. Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin: this is Felker-Martin’s third book, and I think my favourite. They’re all very good books, but I really connected with the main character in this one, the characterization and pacing was just really strong.
5. The Tinfoil Dossier Trilogy by Caitlín R. Kiernan: This is a trilogy of 3 novellas: Agents of Dreamland, Black Helicopters, and The Tindalos Asset. The easy description would be X-Files meets Lovecraft, but that doesn’t nearly do these books justice.
4. rekt by Alex Gonzalez: a grim, nasty book about boys growing up online. I’m worried this is more on the pulse of where we are as a society than most people are ready to grapple with.
3. Shadow Ticket, Mason & Dixon, and Vineland: I read three Thomas Pynchon books this year. I was a big fan of his in my 20s but hadn’t re-read him in years, so last year I decided to re-read him all in order. So I was extremely surprised and happy when I learned that he was publishing a new book (Shadow Ticket) this year! I really enjoyed it, as I did my re-read of Vineland, but Mason & Dixon really stands out as my favourite of his books. It has an element of humanity and friendship that brings a warmth to it that is not always present in his writing.
2. James by Percival Everett: this is, in part, a re-telling of The Adventures of Huck Finn from the perspective of Jim, but it’s a lot more than that and goes places I did not at all expect it to go.
1. The Power Broker by Robert Caro: I’d been meaning to read this one for ages, especially since I’ve got some friends who are huge Caro-heads (yes, desperately waiting for vol 5 of his LBJ biography!). This is a big one, so I thought it would be fun to turn it into a book club! We followed the reading schedule from the 99% Invisible Podcast, who read through it last year. The book club was a lot of fun–we read about 100 pages or so each month then met to talk it over. And there was a lot to talk about! As someone who is particularly interested in the role of “local control”, public consultations, etc in housing, this book was particularly important for me to read, I think, since it helps describe what this was a reaction to: the despotic “urban renewal” of Moses and his ilk. A great book…but now it’s time to start thinking about whether I’ll take the plunge into those LBJ books too!
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