Some Books I Loved

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...

 **Chubby nerd becomes secret agent, hilarity ensues; basically "Chuck" but with scifi and aliens and amusing historical Easter Eggs** Ok so, the setup is that there are aliens called Quasing that have inhabited this planet for millennia upon millennia.  Unable to survive in Earth's atmosphere, they must inhabit living creatures as "hosts", and in this capacity (speaking to their hosts) they have secretly guided all of human history.  Like, actually, all of human history, at one point a Quasing remarks, "To this day, an argument still rages about whether the Neanderthal or the Cro-Magnon was worthier of being raised."  The endgame of course is to get humanity up to the level of interstellar travel, so that the Quasing can finally go home During the Middle Ages (the exact incident is a plot point, I won't spoil it), the Quasing split into two factions:  The Genjix (bad guys) who believe in the Conflict Doctrine, the idea that manipulating humanity i...

 **A thought-provoking magical realism backdrop, but in the end just the story of one woman's life** This the first novel I've read by Cecelia Ahern, more notable for her romance novels such as "PS, I Love You".  Amusingly, it seems like it got mixed reviews from her fans, probably because it's not a romance novel at all.  Rather, it's a character study, the story of one woman's life, and it feels deep and real and honest in a fascinating way The twist, as it were, is that our main character Alice can sense the emotions of others.  Some of the characters in-novel refer to it as synesthesia, although she herself dismisses that as a vast understatement.  You can read this book as a metaphor, or as magical realism, or as a frikkin' superpower (I'm tagging this book "Superhero" and you all can't stop me, it's my blog, if you don't like it start your own).  But the point is, this is the story of a woman who has no choice but to fee...

**In which a generation of female comic book characters killed off as part of a male character's backstory finally get to tell their side** Ok, to start with, let's talk about the "Women in Refrigerators" trope.  If you already know what that is, I'll wave down below and you can skip there In short, [edit: I wrote "in short" but then the explanation turned out not to be very short, including multiple tangents and a full indented quote, oops sorry] the term "Women in refrigerators" was first coined in 1999 by Gail Simone.  At the time, Simone was just a comic book fan, but amazingly she's since become one of the more well-known writers for the "Big 2" American comics companies (DC and Marvel).  Incidentally, she's kind of a badass, and there are multiple examples of her on twitter weighing in on a discussion only to have some asshole guy see a woman's name and avatar and say, "uhh what do you know???"  At which po...

**X-Men but make it queer.  Erm.  More queer.  Explicitly queer, I guess?  X-Men but make it explicitly queer.  So damn queer** I already wrote about this for my year-end list, but I feel like this series is deserving of a post of its own, because there is a whole lot going on here 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 an X-Men fan who gets mutant powers, and says to herself, "ok.  I know what to do with these." [note, I'm tagging this both "Series (concluded)" and "Series (ongoing)", because the main storyline Whitby set out to tell goes through the first 5 books and the first spinoff, which takes places between Books 4 and 5.  But there's been more since then!] Let's get one thing out of the way right off the bat:  This series is woke as fuck.  There are characters who are homos...

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 * * * "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 ...