Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 2016

[starfishstar]

So...I read 35 books in this first quarter of the year. 15 of them just in the month of March. So that's a thing that happened.

!

And I've been looking forward all this time to writing up some thoughts about them! Here we go...


VERY TOP BOOKS:

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
     I can only second the Toni Morrison quote on the cover of the book: “This is required reading.” Framed as letters to his teenage son, reflections on race, on racism, on the struggle, even the beauty of the struggle… Slim little volume with unbelievable power. I want to recommend this to every American…every person, really.
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
     Very much like the above; no description of mine would do this book justice. Rebecca Solnit is so smart, wise, incisive, witty, terrifyingly insightful… She takes apart sexism and misogyny and deep-rooted cultural issues and brings all their pieces and moving parts to light. Recommended reading to everybody.
Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
    This book has slightly surprised me by slipping into my “very top books” out of 35 books, but how can I resist it? It really floored me. A graphic “novel,” though actually it’s a book of short stories in graphic form – is there a word for that? Gorgeous artwork and chilling, off-kilter stories, with odd, ambiguous endings. Just masterful. I don’t think of myself as much of a graphic novel person, but I may be changing my mind.

OTHER TOP BOOKS:

Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender
     Off-putting title, cringe-worthy cover, lame blurb…surprisingly fresh, funny, engaging book! Picked this up out of slightly morbid curiosity, then read the whole thing in a day and started hunting down the sequels. Nominally in the (light?) horror genre, but much more about friendship, sisters, identity, bravery, loyalty, the usual high school YA stuffz, and a dash of romance thrown in. Oh, and a wee spot of demonic possession, that too.
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
     I feel like I just made a great new YA discovery, though I know Maggie Stiefvater has been around for a while. Engaging characters, magical creatures I found genuinely terrifying, and such atmosphere. Makes me want to write something in the same vein, folklore/fairy tales blending seamlessly into the modern-day world.
Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead
     I think Rebecca Stead may be my new favorite middle-grade author. (Well, okay – tied with Tim Federle!) She writes such thoughtful, empathetic books with such real characters. This is a book about three girls facing the trials and tribulations of middle school, and nothing in it is a cliché – that alone is quite a feat! Excellent (as was Stead’s “When You Reach Me”) and left me itching to read everything else by her.
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
     So, I knew Neil Gaiman was brilliant and bottomlessly creative, but I’m tempted to say his brilliance and creativity comes through even more in his short stories than in his novels, because here he’s coming up with a brilliant and creative premise twenty times over, instead of just once. Everything Gaiman turns his hand to seems to become a sort of dark, mesmerizing gold.
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
     I’m still thinking about this book months later. A very incisive and thoughtful look at what it means to grow old in Western society, and how we could do that whole process better. Highly recommended for anyone with parents who will eventually age, or who themselves might eventually age, or, you know, everyone.


"HAD BEEN ON MY TO-READ LIST FOREVER, SO GLAD I FINALLY GOT TO READ IT" BOOKS:

Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster
     Kicked off the year by finally getting my hands on Forster’s book about writing (well, really it’s a series of lectures he gave on writing), which I’d been wanting to read for ages. As always, Forster is charming and erudite; it's delightful to sit at his metaphorical elbow as he chats about books.
So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ (translated from French)
     Finally found this one, too! A classic from Senegal that I’ve been wanting to read ever since I was there a few years ago. I was especially impressed because I’ve sometimes had the experience of reading books translated from a different language and very different culture where so much was lost in translation that it was hardly possible to follow the plot. Not so here; I don’t know if it was the author or the translator or both who made this work, but it was effortless and smooth and very moving, the story of a woman in a traditional marriage betrayed by her polygamous husband, reflecting on her life in a series of letters to her best friend.


HONORABLE MENTIONS, i.e., YET MORE TOP BOOKS:

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
    Charming YA debut; to some degree a romance, but even more a reflection on what it means to live despite life’s inevitable dangers.
M Train by Patti Smith
    Patti Smith is a strange mind. It took me about 2/3 of the way into the book to get her at all, but then I came to quite like her.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
     Seems unfair to compare a writer to her famous husband, but in this case they (Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer) do seem to be working in the same genre and themes. A quiet yet complex meditation on love and loss, with touches of what I'm coming to think of as “Eastern European Jewish magical realism” (i.e., writing in the footsteps of Isaac Bashevis Singer et al).
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
     A clever and fast-paced mystery classic. I enjoyed it a lot, though I’m not sure it quite lived up to the hype of being “her most difficult book to plot!!!” etc. (Though now that we've had our book club discussion about it, I'm seeing more of the cleverness that went into constructing the book – I may need to reread it!) Read it for the online_bookclub, and was glad to have a reason to pick up a fun classic.
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman
     Philip Pullman is such a good spinner of tales! From the Golden Compass series (which I consider a modern classic) back to his early books that were actually novelizations of the charming, romping plays he wrote for his middle school students when he was a teacher (!!), they all seem to share that delight in weaving a good yarn. This particular book takes some characters from his Victorian-era Sally Lockhart series, throws them bizarrely together with the “Ruritanian romance” genre…and comes out with a surprisingly page-turning adventure. I saw someone on Goodreads describe this as “really extremely good self-fanfiction” and I agree!


"AND ANOTHER THING…" – IN WHICH I REVISIT DOUGLAS ADAMS:

A student at the school where I work got really into Douglas Adams after I introduced him to the first “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” book, and he started requesting everything we could possibly get our hands on through inter-library loan. So I seized the opportunity, too, to read all things Adams that I hadn’t yet read, quickly reading the books once he’d finished them and before sending them back to their respective libraries. Here's what I read, this time around:

• And Another Thing… (the “sixth book” of Adams’ trilogy, written after Adams' death by Eoin Colfer)
• Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (really fantastic and fittingly droll look at the man behind the madness, written by Neil Gaiman)
• The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (collection of Adams’ early and unfinished writings)
• The Meaning of Liff (a goofy and charming book of made-up definitions for words that don’t exist, but should, by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd)
• The Deeper Meaning of Liff (more of the same)


THEMES: HORROR?

I surprised myself by reading a lot of things that connect at least tangentially to the horror genre, since I think of myself as a person who emphatically DOES NOT ENJOY horror of any stripe. (Last year I read a book of Kelly Link's short stories, and even her brand of quirky fantasy/horror hybrid was kind of too much for me.) Yet in the last couple months I enjoyed a Neil Gaiman book that was explicitly billed as being of a horror-type bent, and I loved Emily Carroll's horror/fantasy graphic novel, and I read a couple of "light" horror YA books that were really fun, and was fascinated, too, by the chilling magical beasts in "The Scorpio Races."

So, while I'm still never going to want to read Stephen King or the kind of gory, bloody horror novels that our 9th graders devour, maybe I'm learning to appreciate the fantasy/horror hybrid, the Gaiman-style fantastical horror/dark fantasy that's more like a subset of speculative fiction than like a slasher movie, and still allows room for whimsy, human connection, and maybe even hope.


LOOKING AHEAD:

Ahhh, so many books I want to read! Even as we speak I'm in the middle of three books at once (yet again...sigh) – a book of essays by the marvelous Zadie Smith, who might be my new favorite writer and thoughtful thinker; a fun short story collection based on Chris Van Allsberg's drawings (you remember him, right??); and a book for my local book club that I actually am utterly detesting, but will probably push through to the end out of loyalty to the group. And I have a massive pile of books waiting for me at home, and another big pile of books waiting for me at work. Also, a German friend sent me as a birthday present a massive tome of a book in German, that's dauntingly brick-like in size but also sounds really good. I've also still got all these books that people gave me as going-away presents when I left Berlin, and I'm thinking maybe I ought to have a dedicated German-reading month!


It's trite, but true:

So many books, so little time!

Comments

[gracerene]

Maggie Stiefvater is amazing! I'm so glad you enjoyed Scorpio Races. :)

The final book in her Raven Cycle series comes out at the end of April and I am basically vibrating with excitement! :D

[starfishstar]

I really enjoyed the Scorpio Races – and the Raven Cycle are probably the books of hers I'd be interested in reading next... I don't know how soon I'll get to them, though, because my list of books I want to read is literally over three pages long, aaaah! (And that's pretty much only counting new authors that have been recommended to me, not also the authors I've already read but would happily read more of...)