Some Books I Loved This Year, 2024

It's been a good year!  I read a ton this year, a lot of time on trains and in cafes.  Starting this blog has been a ton of fun, and I'm happy to move my annual tradition of listing some books I loved over to here

So here we are.  Not a ranking, not even a comprehensive list of my favorite books.  I like reading, I like writing, I like writing about reading, and I love being able to share.  Just what it says at the top:  Some books I loved this year

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"I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself" by Marisa Crane, 2023

This is a heavy one, this was a tough one.  This was a very good one.  This one felt too close to home, at times

On a scifi level, this is about an all-too-imaginable future in which the technology exists to mark criminals with a second, or third or fourth, shadow.  These "Shadesters" are allowed to live their normal lives, but everyone they meet knows instantly that they are a convicted criminal.  And it does that scifi thing of sketching out this society, forcing us to look at it, forcing us to realize that our society could be just as awful as the bigoted one we see on the page

On a human level, this is a book about trying to move on, about picking up after the worst thing you can imagine has happened and yet you're still here.  The main character of the book is a single mother with a second shadow, forced to keep herself going through her depression because she has a newborn child that needs her.  A child who also has a second shadow.  And much of the book is narrated in the second person, as our main character is talking to her deceased partner, about how hard it is to do thing solo when they'd always imagined doing them as a pair

This is a hell of a book.  Give yourself some space, and maybe a nice warm cup of tea, while reading this one

Tomorrow, I decide, will be better. Tomorrow, I will recover from today.

tags:  Feminist Lit, Near-future, Queer Lit, Science Fiction, Standalone

"Dungeon Crawler Carl" by Matt Dinniman, 2020

Believe the hype, this series is fun.  Is it silly and all over the place and at times deeply confusing and the author clearly takes the "throw a bunch of things into the book and see what works" approach . . . but it is fun.  And can't we all use more fun?

The Earth has been destroyed and the surviving humans have been forced to fight for their lives in a videogame-style reality tv series.  Yeah, so that.  They get experience points for killing enemies and unlocking achievements, and if they get really popular the fans watching around the galaxy can send them better items and equipment.

The LitRPG genre is getting popular these days, and some authors use it as a crutch--why take time to show your character learning and getting stronger when you can just flash up "you gained 100 Experience Points and are now Level 12!" or whatever?--but it does make for an easy way to jump into a fun and engaging universe.  And Dinniman sets his novels apart by putting a lot of thought into his world-building, a lot effort into the characters, and again the most important part is that it's fun

And yeah, he does mix in some genuinely touching pathos, as our main character deals with the trauma of his entire world being destroyed and a near-constant fight for survival.  But our other main character is a cat named Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, and she is a cat who is more concerned with increasing her view count than anything else.  So, yup

“Another floor ending with a big explosion,” Katia said after the train disappeared. 

“Spoiler alert, Katia,” Donut replied. “It’s always going to end with an explosion.”

tags:  Postapocalypse, Science Fiction, Series (ongoing)

"Spear" by Nicola Griffith, 2022

Alix Harrow, another author I love, reviewed "Spear" by saying, ""If Le Guin wrote a Camelot story, I imagine it would feel like Spear" and I knew I would have to read this book

It's a wonderful (and fantastically queer) entry into the canon of Arthurian myth, starring Peretur, a female version of Percival.  The novel seeks to bring the story back to its Welsh and Celtic roots, so the land of Caer Leon is ruled by King Arturus, alongside his Queen Gwenhwyfar and the great wizard Myrddyn.  But while some authors would have been content with this reskinning, Griffith takes it so much farther, drawing from Celtic myth to basically create a story in which these legendary characters have no idea that they're in fact merely bit players in an even grander story

At every turn, Griffith tries to subvert the tropes to tell not just a "new for the sake of being new" take on the story, but a better one (both the tropes of the story itself, and the tropes of common modern retellings.  Spoiler:  Rather than the love triangle modern authors so enjoy throwing in there, King Arturus, Queen Gwenhyfar, and the great knight Llanza appear to be in a perfectly happy and healthy polyamorous relationship)

Cannot recommend this highly enough.  It's marketing itself as an Arthurian story, while in fact being a delivery mechanism for some of the most fun Welsh and Celtic mythology I've read in a long time

tags:  Fantasy, Feminist Lit, Mythology, Queer Lit, Standalone

"When You Trap a Tiger" by Tae Keller, 2020

Let's start out by setting one thing straight:  I absolutely bawled while reading this book.  Full-on crying on the train.  So if you are embarrassed about crying in public, only read the last bit of this book in private.  But please read it

The Newberry Medal is, in my experience, one of the most unfakable marks of quality a book can hold.  Awarded each year for "the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children", the recipients of this award are often books that truly transcend the idea of "children's" literature to tell stories that are timeless and ageless.  "The Giver" won the Newberry, so did "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Bridge to Terabithia" and "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry" and "Holes" and "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" . . . you get the idea.  Unassailable classics, worthy of being read and read again until the pages are worn and the spine is cracked but you still want to give it one more read.  "When You Trap a Tiger" is on that tier

The story of a young girl and her relationship with her Halmoni, her Korean grandmother, and the myths she used to tell her granddaughters.  Myths of tigers and magic and the princess who whispered stories into the night until they became stars and filled the sky with light.  This book is a story of the magic of our heritage, the magic of our families, and how we can bring that magic into this real world.  And how important it is that we do so

“When I very little, before my mom leave, she tell me something important. She say, Ae-Cha, learn this: Everybody have good and bad in them. But sometimes they so focused on sad, scary stories in life that they forget the good. When that happen, you don’t tell them they are bad. That only make it worse. You remind them of the good.”

tags:  AZN/Asian Lit, Cozy, Coming of Age, Fantasy, Standalone

"Supergirl:  Woman of Tomorrow" by Tom King, 2022

Honestly, the formula for a good Superman/Supergirl story is really, really simple:

1. Take a character who is a good person and also very good at punching things

2. Confront them with a problem that can't be solved by punching things

That's it.  It's so simple that it's crazy how often writers mess this up.  And yet, so many writers think that *this* time they've come up with a villain that will be able to trade punches with Superman and it will be compelling.  It so very rarely is

Give me a Superman story like "Red Son", dealing with a world at war over dueling political ideologies.  That's an unpunchable problem.  Give me a Superman story like "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?" where he has to grapple with the notion that maybe the people of the world don't *want* a good-hearted hero, they want gritty violent heroes who do what it takes to punish the evil (in a parallel to the real-world debate in the comic book industry at the time).  Very unpunchable problem.  Give me a Superman like in "All-Star Superman", where he is supercharged by the sun and realizes that, though more powerful than he's ever been, his body cannot take the stress and he has only one year left to live.  Accepting one's mortality is not only an unpunchable problem, in a philosophical sense it's arguably *the* unpunchable problem

Give me a Supergirl story like "Supergirl:  Woman of Tomorrow", where the Maid of Might deals with regret over her failures, memories of all the people she couldn't save.  She deals with trauma from all the pain and death that she's seen.  And though largely offscreen, she deals with a lack of purpose, sent to Earth to help out a cousin (Kal-El, aka Superman) who doesn't really need her.  Really unpunchable problems.  And in the midst of all this, she meets a young woman who is herself full of pain and rage, and she needs to find a way to be the idol and inspiration this young woman needs.  

Oh and also it's a super fun Sci-Fi Western (it's basically an homage to True Grit) with jawdroppingly gorgeous art.  Great fucking book, that's how you do a superhero story

tags:  Comic/Manga, Science Fiction, Superhero

"Some Desperate Glory" by Emily Tesh, 2023

What a fascinating journey this novel was.  I had an idea of what this book would be based solely on the title (a reference to the Wilfred Owens poem, naturally), and as I started reading, it looked like I was right.  And then I abruptly wasn't, as the novel took a massive right turn and turned into something completely different.  And then it changed again.  And in the end, it really did end up . . . back about where it started, a novel about the horrors of war and the young people that end up paying the consequences of terrible, amoral leaders

This book could have been just a fun space opera about the remnants of humanity fighting a war of resistance.  But Tesh went so deep, added so much heart and humanity to this novel.  There's so much here, and it's incredibly diverse.  There's a lot here about how when times are tough, the sacrifices and difficulties almost always fall disproportionately on women.  There's a lot here about how just in general society often fails queer youth (with real shitty consequences).  There's a lot here about how trauma affects us not just on an individual level, but can seep into the bones of an entire society

And yes, there's a a whole lot here about how fascism is bad.  Fascism is bad, but what this book (exhaustively researched, with a wonderful bibliography in the back) does so well is talk about all the different ways fascism is bad, and all the heartbreakingly real consequences it has for the people living under it.  Oh and also there are cool space combat shenanigans so like, I'm never mad about that.  Also also it has the line, "'Wake us when it’s time for whatever alien terrorist crimes we’re committing.'"

tags:  Dystopia, Feminist Lit, Queer Lit, Science Fiction, Standalone

"Space Opera" by Catherynne M. Valente, 2018

Eurovision in space, for the future of humanity

No, really.  It's great.  Humanity is contacted by the galactic fraternity, and told that we have reached a point where we are soon about to expand.  And so we need to pass a test to prove our "sentience", prove that we are deserving of joining the galactic community, that we're not going to fuck it up and start invading other galaxies or whatever.  And what is the test?  One song.  One performance at the Metagalactic Grand Prix, and all we have to do is not place last and we're welcome to join the cosmos.  All we have to do is prove that we're capable of empathy, capable of art, capable of reaching out across space to create something that speaks to others.  And if not, we will be bombed to oblivion, because the galaxy has learned to have a zero tolerance policy regarding this sort of thing

The book knows exactly how silly of a concept this is, and loves it.  Our hero is a washed-up detoxing glamrock star.  Everything about this book is ridiculous.  But it also . . . has a point

"You know this is completely barbaric," [asks one of our main characters]

"May I ask--" [responds one of the aliens], "have you got any lions left?"

"Well, no, not . . . overly.  They went extinct a few years back"

"Please forgive my arrogance, but strictly speaking, they didn't go extinct, you made them extinct.  Because they were carnivores.  Because they were carnivores and they didn't look like you or think like you or talk like you, and they were a danger to you and yours, or at least they were years and years ago, because you're made of the sort of thing they like to eat."

"I suppose, but . . ."

"How about rhinoceroses?  Dodos?  Giraffes?  Those are herbivores, so they presented no danger to the continuation of your species, but you wiped them out all the same.  To a one.  And then there are the more immediately pertinent examples of the Lakota, the Cree, the Aboriginal Tasmanians.  Now, please tell me, before you cut the throat of the last lion or rhinoceros or dodo or Mayan farmer, did you let them sing a song?  Did you let them lay down a beat?  Did you let them dance for their lives?  Did you let them try to prove to you that there was more in them than just a longing to eat and breed and lie in the sun and die with a full belly?"

"N-no."

"Mmm.  Barbaric.  Of course, what can someone like me know?"

At first, it was hard to imagine that this book was written by the same person who wrote "Deathless".  But honestly, it makes sense.  Valente's skill at prose is truly incredible.  It's just a question of whether she wants to apply that skill to the dramatic and dark ("Deathless") or the stupendous and silly ("Space Opera").  The level of skill is the same (although yes, "Space Opera" does have its drama and darkness . . .)

Glagol Jsem and the Death of All That Came Before sang in perfect bone-shattering five-thousand-part harmony, with the combined voices of their entire genetic lines, and they wept the rosy pink electricity generated by five thousand weaponized agony-ducts, and they performed the traditional Alunizar interdimensional two-step, which no foreigner had ever been allowed to witness before that moment in the black library, a dance halfway between Bollywood and Sea World, lit only by the bioluminescent fire of their tears and the transported moonlight of poor, far-off, still-smoldering Aluno Prime. 

At the climax of the dance there was a brilliant iridescent spiderweb of exploding light, and Glagol Jsem phased into a dimension where the whole notion of sentience had never gotten past committee, wriggled with delight, made a salacious gesture in the general direction she’d come from, and never came back. 

They won by a single point.

tags:  Queer Lit, Science Fiction, Standalone

"Cute Mutants Vol. 1:  Mutant Pride" by S.J. Whitby, 2020

Ok so.  X-Men but make it queer.  Erm.  More queer.  Explicitly queer, I guess?  X-Men but make it explicitly queer.  So damn queer.  In a large and still-expanding universe (so far by my count, there are 5 novels in the main arc, 3 spinoff novels, and an anthology of stories written by other authors), Whitby has written a story about a X-Men fan who gets mutant powers, and says to herself, "ok.  I know what to do with these."  It's woke as hell, with an incredible range of characters from bisexual to gender nonbinary to asexual to everything.  It's an absolute rainbow of a novel, and I mean that in a good way

To be frank, there are a lot of things here that might normally turn me off of a novel.  The main character is a bit of a Mary Sue author-insert (I mean, an X-Men fan who gets mutant powers . . . yeah), but to be honest that's straight up called out in one of the spinoff novels from another character's perspective ("oh my god, you are cool and have a great mutant power and everything always works out for you, how can you still be so insecure and complain-y?" <- paraphrasing, but basically that).  It is aggressively YA, taking place at a highschool and absurdly full of meme references and teenspeak.  Not even kidding, it starts with, "My name is Dylan Taylor, human incarnation of the burning dumpster gif, and this is my life."

And yet, it all works, it really does.  Because while Dylan can be frustration, it's a frustration born of love.  Because we all know what it's like to feel alone in highschool, to feel like everyone secretly hates you, to dream of getting superpowers because dammit then at least people would like you, maybe?  We all just want to give Dylan a hug, and then watch her go kick some ass (there's a scene in Book 2 that is so badass I had to flip back to reread it as soon as it was over)

There’s an X-Men book called New Mutants about a team of teenage superheroes who are all misfits but end up brought together by their powers. I’ve read it so many times the book fell apart. Being part of a group of people somewhere between friends and family is something I used to dream of, but it always seemed even less realistic than the mutant powers. In this half-awake time it seems that I’m perched on the edge of it, except it’s a void that I can’t bring any tangible shape to. A failure of imagination. I can’t imagine having a group of friends like that.

tags:  Queer Lit, Series (ongoing), Superhero

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And so, another year, a whole lot of books read.  See you all next year

I loved these books!