Some Books I Loved

 **A ridiculous, preposterous, insane grab bag of genres.  Does it work?  I think it does, and it ends as one of the most fun and inclusive novels I've read in a while** Ok, so Is this a story about a trans girl moving on from abuse and rejection, finding her identity and her courage through music? Is this a story about a celebrated performer who sold her soul to the Devil and the terrible things she will need to do to keep it? Is this a story about intergalactic soldiers, stranded on Earth and trying to find a way to rejoin the war that has already taken its toll on them? Is it a story about a struggling immigrant-run small business?  Is it a story about the very special community in the San Gabriel Valley?  Is it a Coming-of-Age story?  Is it a story about an older person finding love when they thought they'd given up? Yes.  All of the above.  This novel is ridiculous, and I love it so much In this story we meet Katrina, a trans girl who has bee...

Hi everyone!  Sorry the blog has been on hiatus while I'm traveling.  But at the very least, let me get this up.  It's been a fantastic year of reading for me, I hope for you all as well 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 * * * "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013) I always feel like I have to put out a weird explanation of, "I don't only  read speculative fiction.  Just mostly," whenever I want to talk about a book that's more "serious" literature.  But yes, although not in line with much of what I read, "Americanah" was not only one of the best books I read this year, it's the one of the best books I can recommend, period.  It is without question a masterpiece This book is a portrait of the immigrant experience, from Nigeria to bo...

 **Fantasy adventure, maximum snarkiness.  What's not to like?** “Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.” “My ideas never are. But my execution is flawless.” - Aelis de Lenti un Tirraval is kind of my hero Credit to Daniel M. Ford, he knows exactly what he's doing and this book knows exactly what it is.  It's just plain fun, no need to overthink it. It's a very well-constructed world, post-Tolkien (similarly, you could say it has a heavy D&D vibe) to the point that any even casual consumer of fantasy will find comfortable ground on which to stand.  Humans are plucky but physically outmatched, elves are wise and graceful, orcs and strong and angry, dwarves enjoy tinkering and ale ("we have enough sense to turn all grains, corn, barley, oats, and wheat into something to drink.") To this, Ford has mixed in plenty of original ideas.  Magic is taught in separate colleges, and mages have affinity for one or some but not all of them, which leads to nice variety (an...

 **A masterpiece of supernatural horror.  You're not going to totally understand what's happening, but you're going to know that whatever it is, it's viscerally uncomfortable in the best way** (note, I read the original publisher's translation by Megan McDowell, released 2023.  I think that's the only translation so far) Ok, elephant in the room:  This is a tome .  600+ pages, and more importantly than that it's one of those books where you're deliberately kept in the dark for much of it.  Oh and it's basically five different novellas combined with each other, with more than four different viewpoint characters and five different time periods (plus a few short story length bits from random viewpoint characters that fit into the gaps).  Even by the end of it, there are still so many unanswered questions.  So if you're looking for a linear, single-viewpoint, clear narrative . . . uh, this is not any of those things.  And if that's not your jam, ...

*A wonderful and personal novel about returning to your childhood home and maybe searching for some of the magic that was once there* Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said “I love you” with a mixtape Moreno-Garcia is the current darling of the Hispanic specfic scene, and for good reason. Her world-building is great, she does an amazing job of drawing on Latin American culture and bringing it to Western audiences. For me personally she’s a bit hit and miss, I actually thought that “Mexican Gothic” didn’t quite click for me, whereas “Certain Dark Things” I absolutely adored. As for “Signal to Noise”? Easily my favorite work of hers so far (amusingly, it's her first novel--more on that later) This is the story of Meche, a woman who left her hometown of Mexico City basically as soon as she was old enough to do so.  She's back in town for her father's funeral, and in a series of flashbacks we learn the story of exactly why she left town (I'm a sucker for a ...

 **A retelling of one of Lovecraft's stories, honoring Lovecraft while also showing how much better he could have been** This post is going to be about the fantastic novella "The Ballad of Black Tom" by Victor LaValle, but I actually want to start out with a passage taken from Matt Ruff's also excellent novel, "Lovecraft Country".  Specifically, this is actually from the Author's Afterword, where Ruff addresses H. P. Lovecraft's complicated legacy: The story that best sums up Lovecraft for me is “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” It’s about a New England coastal town whose inhabitants have made an unholy alliance with aliens who live in the sea. A tourist comes to Innsmouth for the day, sees too much, and ends up running for his life.  All of Lovecraft’s worst traits are on display in the story: Besides the standard racist worldview, “Shadow” offers a thinly veiled allegory about the evils of miscegenation (the aliens are mating with the townspeople). But ...

 **Asian-American, feminist, queer, but more than anything else just a badass dark fantasy about what you can do when they refuse to let you into your club.  You can make them let you in** If you're friends with me, you probably already know how much I love this author.  I will read any- and everything that Nghi Vo writes, and you can count on more of her books showing up on this blog in the future.  Every world she creates, she imbues with magic--not the hard-and-fast system of magic that a Sanderson writes, but a magic that permeates the entire story.  Her books rarely have people throwing fireballs or summoning eldritch horrors.  Instead, the magic of her stories flickers on the edge of sight and disappears when you turn your head; it's a hum, constant and quiet, that you quickly forget is there until you put the book down and realize its absence in this boring, mundane world.  She never loredumps the system of magic, because for her, magic isn't so...