Category: reading year

JANUARY 2024

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Oh hi hello here’s what I read during the month of January.

Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson. I observed the Twelve Days of Christmas by reading one story from this for the past, well, twelve days. It’s my first Winterson book, but it certainly won’t be the last, as I just fell absolutely head-over-heels in love with her writing. In this immaculate, gorgeous collection, Winterson runs through the gamut of the Christmas spectrum: from traditional ghost stories to whimsical fables to mawkish, sickly-sweet declarations of love — she writes it all with a poetic aplomb that I found irresistible. This extends even to her cooking instructions. In fact, a lot of the passages that affected me the most came not from the proper fictional stories themselves, but from the lengthy personal anecdotes that preceded the recipes included here (a notion that’s become something of a cultural meme, but in Winterson’s deft hands, it simply becomes another space in which to write another magical thing). Just a stunning, beautiful piece of work that I can easily see myself revisiting each year as part of my own personal Twelvetide tradition.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. The coziest way to start the new year. Wrote about this here.

Amphigorey / Ascending Peculiarity by Edward Gorey. Gorey was a wonderful weirdo and I love him. Also wrote about this one.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. I love reading about creative peoples’ creative habits and this was a delightful collection.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins. Already wrote about my experiences with this one. I miss Terry.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. Wrote about this too. I really, really miss Terry.

My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt. Heart-wrenching story about fathers and writing and obsession. One of the most fascinating memoirs I’ve ever read.

I also read some short stories:

“The Beautiful People” by Robert Bloch I enjoyed mostly because at times it read like a particularly weird episode of Mad Men. An entertaining little shocker of a story, though. Nothing mind-blowing, but Bloch’s writing is effortless, making for the smoothest of reads.

“Selfies” by Lavie Tidhar had a great and creepy concept but was also entirely too short.

And that’s it. This was the best reading month I’ve had since last October. Which is surprising because January is usually a very uneven, slow period for me, characterized by reading slumps and just general exhaustion after the holiday season. But not only did I manage to read quite a bit this time around, I also ended up loving pretty much everything I picked up. It’s a nice change of pace. And a hell of a start to my reading year.

THE WEE FREE MEN by Terry Pratchett

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the wee free men by terry pratchettI had to check. The Wee Free Men is the first Terry Pratchett book I’ve picked up in nearly eight years. I honestly couldn’t tell you why it’s been so long, because I adore Pratchett’s writing. Maybe somewhere deep down I feel I should deprive myself of wonderful things. I don’t know. In any case, Rob Wilkins’s wonderful biography shook me out of this foolish reverie, and I can only be grateful, because of course I ended up loving Tiffany Aching’s first outing, in the fiercest of ways.

“Fierce” is the appropriate word. Because while ostensibly a children’s book, Wee Free Men is also a sterling showcase of how Pratchett channeled his famous anger. An anger that stemmed not from malice or pettiness, but from a place of deep empathy. He took note of the myriad of ridiculous ways people could be awful to one another, how easily we can slip into selfish, sinister roles. He witnessed, in short, the injustice of the world, and he raged righteously and furiously against it. Thus: Tiffany Aching, an angry character if there ever was one — and one of the finest protagonists I’ve ever come across.

Like Terry, Tiffany chooses to be pragmatic with her rage. She may come from a small, sometimes infuriatingly closed-minded community, but it is her home. Her parents may not exactly pay much attention to her, but she knows she is cherished and cared for all the same. She has a little brother, who is often as sticky as he is annoying. She’s not entirely sure she loves him, not really, but she figures that doesn’t matter — he is her duty and her responsibility. So when outside forces threaten the safety of these things Tiffany considers her own, well, she just won’t stand for it. She will, indeed, fight back (with the help of some particularly aggressive and devoted blue-skinned pictsies). And it is a glorious and beautiful thing to behold.

The Wee Free Men is a story about family and duty; freedom and rebellion; the magic of the mundane. About how vital and important it is to take care of one another, not just because of sentimental reasons, but simply because that is how the flock carries on, forever and ever, wold without end. It is one of the finest things Pratchett ever wrote.

TERRY PRATCHETT: A LIFE WITH FOOTNOTES by Rob Wilkins

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terry pratchett by rob wilkinsI laughed. I cried. I cried while laughing and I laughed while crying. Reading Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, Rob Wilkins’s biography of his deceased employer slash mentor slash partner was a beautiful emotional journey.

Usually I prefer my biographies to be a bit more impartial towards their subjects. A healthy distance, I find, makes for a clearer, more cohesive profile. Wilkins was literally unable to do that, so instead he delivered a profoundly intimate portrayal of a beloved friend – and the book is all the better for it, which goes to show how much I know.

It is also an exceptionally candid account, which surprised me to no end. These sorts of biographies tend to be written with rose-colored glasses on the author’s face, with the most unpleasant aspects of a person’s life either glossed over or simply not dwelled upon. Wilkins doesn’t shy away from the uncouth, churlish aspects of his relationship with the writer, who could be flighty and temperamental in the best of times, and a cantankerous, capricious bastard at the worst. It’s a refreshingly raw and honest approach, and it makes the more heartfelt, touching moments which abound in this book all the more pointed and impactful.

And it’s a remarkably funny book – as it damn well should be. Terry would be ineffably proud of his personal assistant.

But in the end the best possible thing I could say about this biographical tome is that it made me pick up a Pratchett book immediately after finishing it. Terry’s novels are, after all, small miracles, as Neil Gaiman sagely observed. Rob Wilkins tells us exactly why.

AMPHIGOREY by Edward Gorey

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I got the first Amphigorey volume last year after finishing Mark Dery’s biography of Edward Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous. I finally picked it back up almost a full year later, and have been cheerfully reading a book from it every other day.

Until this lovely, lugubrious collection, The Gashlycrumb Tinies was the only proper Gorey book I had ever read. Which is wild even to me, considering how much love I have for the man’s art and style. This veritable beast of a volume boasts books like The Unstrung Harp, The Doubtful Guest, The Object-Lesson, The Willowdale Handcar, and The Westing Wing, however — stories that are regarded among Gorey’s best, so I very much feel as if I dove right into the deep end of bibliography.

The aforementioned books are all brilliant, but it’s The Unstrung Harp that in particular called out to, with its magnificently farcical and melodramatic portrayal of an author’s life. One surprising thing I learned from Dery’s book is that Gorey actually thought of himself foremost as a writer, and then as an artist — a notion that is clearly evident in this story.

It still stands that the man’s art often spoke louder than words, though, so I figured it pertinent to include some of my preferred pieces in this post.

BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST by Travis Baldree

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I enjoy books far more than I do coffee, so it’s a bit funny that I liked Bookshops & Bonedust a little less than I did Legends & Lattes. But that’s only because Lattes felt like such a breath of fresh air, whereas Bonedust feels much more familiar. Still welcoming, to be sure, but somewhat less spellbinding.

Even so, I found that this worked well as a companion piece to the first novel, further elaborating on its themes of found families and fresh starts while navigating its own motif established by the book’s epigraph: “Because the right things happen at the wrong time.” In Bonedust we find a Viv that is not only comfortable in her current circumstances, but thriving. Then when something happens which puts that life on hold, she’s understandably despondent. But the incident places her in the appropriate position to reconsider her prospects, and with the help of new companions — new perspectives — Viv begins to realize that her life will probably not always look the same, but that that may not be such a bad thing after all. Could, in fact, one day be desirable. And thus a foundation is laid.

I love the world Travis Baldree has conjured up for this series, but even more so, I love the characters he’s populated it with — these larger than life personalities full of wisdom and warmth. I will gladly revisit any time we are invited back.

YEAR IN REVIEW ○ 2023

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I don’t think I have much to say about my reading life this year that’s different from years past. I come to the same conclusions every turn around the sun: to have more fun with my reading; to not worry so much about always having something to say about what I read; to trust and welcome my whims and flights of fancy. And at the start of every year, I forget these lessons, and have to spend the following twelve months trying to learn them again. 

So I guess my only hope and resolution for my reading life the coming year would be this: to relearn my lessons early, so that I can better appreciate the stories to come.

Here are some of the stories I appreciated the most in 2023:

THESE FLEETING SHADOWS by Kate Alice Marshall

Read this with my friend Ally near the beginning of the year. It was an amusing experience in that we both went into it expecting wildly different things: a new adult mystery in my case, a middle grade affair in Ally’s. Neither of us expected a Young Adult horror story of madness, psychedelia, and eldritch oddities. But that was part of the fun. This is one of the few books I’ve ever read where the tone shifts suddenly and unexpectedly and instead of hurting the story it complements it. Great, delightfully chaotic read.

A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING by Dan Santat

This was a painful read but only because author/artist Dan Santat portrays the middle school experience in such a brutally honest way that it managed to dredge up some painful memories from my own school days. (As one character points out: the best thing about being a teenager is that you only get to do it once.)

I have a tendency to romanticize the past, to wax nostalgic about the simplicity and innocence of childhood. This served as a good reminder that it’s necessary to confront and accept all the unsavory moments, too, because, for better or worse, they helped shape who I grew up to be.

Santat’s art is brilliant and bold and beautiful. His portrayals of awkward teenage interactions are as nuanced and detailed as his depictions of the intricate and lush landscapes of Europe. A wonderful, important work.

FOREVER AND A DAY by Anthony Horowitz
FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE / DR. NO by Ian Fleming

Every year, some time after the holiday season, I seem to hit a particularly bad reading slump that I only manage to break by picking up old school thrillers featuring outdated views and equally outdated, stereotypically masculine protagonists. Last year, it was the Parker books by Richard Stark a.k.a. Donald Westlake. This year, it was Bond. James Bond.  

I have no idea what this says about me, other than I enjoy reading about people doing their work in a ruthlessly efficient fashion. (I’m sure it was Westlake who said that all his novels were really about people going about their jobs, and it was only that their jobs involved committing crimes and pulling off capers.)

Probably the most fun I had reading all year. From Russia, with Love and Dr. No were my favorites from Fleming’s one golden typewriter (I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Fleming’s writing — the man could write a mean, muscular sentence), but Anthony Horowitz’s Forever and a Day (a prequel to Casino Royale) was a great standout.

I complemented my reading by watching a bunch of the films, too. I had never seen one all the way through before (indeed, before all this my only real experience with the character was through the GoldenEye 007 game which I spent many happy hours playing as a child). But I also had a tremendous amount of fun watching these preposterous movies and anyway I want to be Pierce Brosnan when I grow up and also marry Daniel Craig that is all thank you.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD by Quentin Tarantino

Essentially Quentin Tarantino’s overindulgent expansion of the already overindulgent world of his film and I ate absolutely every word of it. Tarantino’s dialogue is the main reason I’m a fan of his movies and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is just as sparkling in prose form.

Can’t really think of another way to describe this book/story other than as absolute vibe.

IN THE DREAM HOUSE by Carmen Maria Machado

I don’t think a book has ever left me as stunned and speechless as this one did. Which is actually appropriate considering its central conceit of trying to provide a language and a vocabulary with which to talk about harrowing, devastating experiences. Just an absolutely remarkable work that is just as much an academic dissertation of abuse in queer relationships as it is an intensely intimate and brutal piece of personal history and memoir. One of the most powerful things I’ve ever read and it will stay with me for a long time.

CACKLE by Rachel Harrison

Hallowe’en is, as it must be evident by now, my best reading season. I’m happy to say that this past one was among the best, with nearly every story picked up being an absolute banger, as the kids say. And it was kicked off by this absolutely delicious, cozy, spooky, heartwarming treasure of a book. A thoroughly modern fable of identity and independence, featuring two of the strangest protagonists I’ve come across recently. Loved every moment I spent in this world.

A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll

Simply: I adore Emily Carroll and will pick up anything and everything she puts out. Her work is obscenely good and this most atmospheric and visceral of graphic novels is no different. Glorious, stunning stuff.

THE SKULL by Jon Klassen

A work of pure story. Klassen doesn’t waste a single word or drawn line in this spooky, morbidly funny (it made me laugh several times out of sheer, shocked delight) little tale about loyalty, friendship, and affection. Lovely, lovely stuff.

(Also I love the titular Skull so much I kind of want to get a tattoo of him.)

THE HACIENDA by Isabel Cañas

Full of ominous atmosphere and surprisingly intense set pieces. This delivered the claustrophobic and menacing vibes I always look for in a haunted house tale. Another favorite read from the Hallowe’en season.

EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS by Peter Swanson

I read this one in a single day. It then made me read two other Swanson books that I finished just as fast and with equal gusto. Guess you could say it turned me into a fan. It’s exactly the sort of murder mystery I enjoy the most: self aware and slightly meta (again, Knives Out is my lode star), bookish, cozy but with more than a healthy dash of thriller elements. Absolutely great, gripping stuff.

You know, if you were to ask me just a couple of weeks ago how my reading went this year I probably would have only said, “Fine.” It always takes doing this retrospective for me to realize and appreciate just how good it’s actually been. And it has.

Here’s to hopefully another year of excellent stories.

See you in the next one.

📖

A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens

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A Christmas Carol is, I think, one of our most human stories. You could take away all its festive fittings and pious peculiarities and it will still remain just as impactful, this story about redemption and restitution. This story that, from the very start, implores us to have empathy for others. This story that practically begs us to not shun away from humanity, lest we lose our own.

People are a cyclical lot. We have a frustrating tendency to forget our lessons and repeat our mistakes. It’s part of why we write stories. To remind ourselves that we can and must be better; that what is lost can be found again; that there is always hope, should we have the courage to change.

Charles Dickens’ ghost story of Christmas is 180 years old, and remains one of our very best, most unequivocal reminders.

Happy holidays, everyone.

THE HALLOWEEN MOON by Joseph Fink

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13-year-old Esther Gold loves Halloween. She plans her entire year around it. She has the best routes for trick-or-treating mapped out well in advance. She keeps a selection of seasonally-appropriate horror movies always at hand. At her school’s annual costume contest, her varied, elaborate ensembles always get her the top prize. She lives and breathes the haunted holiday. She’s fine with others not enjoying it as much. She appreciates Halloween enough for everybody else.

Which is why it comes as a shock when her parents forbid her from trick-or-treating on the sacred night. She is too old, they insist. Practically an adult, even, having had her bat mitzvah. They don’t want her daughter to stop enjoying Halloween — they just want her to find different ways of doing so. Esther is baffled and offended. For one thing, she still considers herself a long way off from being an actual adult. For another, it’s not that she even likes all the candy she collects. She doesn’t even really eat any. It’s an essential, unchangeable part of the ritual and it must be performed. It’s what Esther loves most about Halloween. Life may be an ever-changing, chaotic current that insists on carrying her along — but Halloween, with all its vested, hallowed customs, is eternal.

So of course Esther makes a plan to sneak out and do her routine anyway, dragging her best friend along for the ride. Agustín is more alibi than accomplice, since he doesn’t even really like the holiday, preferring to spend the night watching movies with a hard-working mom he rarely gets to see.

But an increasingly weird mood conspires to sabotage both Esther’s enthusiasm and her carefully laid plans. Doors remain unanswered. The streets and sidewalks seem strangely vacant. Other than the odd, unescorted group of trick-or-treaters shambling along in tattered costumes, and the curiously creepy vans driving about, they don’t see many people out in the streets. And, of course, there’s the giant, ominous moon glowing orange in the night sky, a Halloween harbinger of the very thing Esther seems to fear the most: change.

🎃

I really enjoyed Joseph Fink’s The Halloween Moon. It couldn’t be helped. Like our main character Esther, I’m a devotee of the deeply-ingrained and often odd-but-charming customs that tend to attach themselves, like barnacles on a ship’s hull, to holidays. Like the opening chapters suggest, I may not go as hardcore on the holiday as its protagonist, but I’m still a huge proponent of peculiar practices, particularly of the personal sort. To the point where — again, much like Esther — I often get irked and discouraged whenever things don’t go as originally planned. A lesson I ought to have learned by now: a cursory glance through my seasonal summaries over the years will show just how often I wish for things to have run a bit more smoothly; for the things I read and watched and did to have been slightly better.

This year has been no different. But why should it be? Life is nothing but a constant, churning current of chaos. Things rarely go as planned. It’s annoying as anything, to be sure, but at the end of the day, like the Serenity Prayer reminds us, it’s better to accept it all as an inherent part of the seasons. Hallowe’en in particular, which has always felt like the most ephemeral, harum-scarum of holidays, anyway.

This fixation on circumstances beyond one’s control informs the central conceit in Halloween Moon, with Esther’s fears and frustrations acting as the driving forces of the story. It’s the major theme of the book, but Fink show’s admirable restraint and respect towards his middle grade audience by not belaboring, hammering the point home only at the end, making for a satisfying and emotionally cathartic conclusion.

It’s that last act that won me over. Halloween Moon has a promising beginning and a great ending, but the middle is a bit muddled, suffering from a sudden surge of needlessly complicated lore and some seriously overwrought exposition. The story sputters and stumbles here enough to lose me for a while. But then the concluding chapters made me cry, a redeeming quality for any book, in my eyes. It helps that the characters are so well realized, too. People being more than what they seem is another theme in this book, and it’s perfectly embodied by this most charming of casts.

Also, it’s just fun. True to the promise of its title, this book is bursting at the seams with Halloween. From centuries-old customs to the more modern trappings of the holiday like horror movie marathons and extravagantly decorated houses, Fink writes about it all with the same kind of enthusiasm and fervor shared by his protagonist —  and it’s nothing short of infectious.

Halloween Moon is a lovely, surprisingly mature meditation on change and growing up. And also just a joyous, thoughtful tribute to Halloween, that odd and curious celebration we all cherish and love.

BALTIMORE by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden

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The Great War on a cold autumn night.  Captain Henry Baltimore is charged with a suicidal mission: to somehow lead his battalion across the notoriously impassable No man’s land. Indeed, they barely make any headway before being ambushed by the hidden Hessians. Later, Baltimore awakes atop a mountain of his massacred companions, with carrion-scavengers already circling overhead. Baltimore quickly realizes these are no ordinary birds of prey, but monstrous bat-like beings. He manages to wound one of them while trying to escape, but not before the creature mangles one of his legs, breathing into it a pestilent substance that soon renders it useless.

The brief encounter between man and monster ends up changing the course of not only Baltimore’s life, but the world’s. As the war comes to a close, a mysterious plague begins to spread all across Europe, leaving ghost towns in its wake.

It is to one of these ghost towns that Lord Henry Baltimore summons three of his acquaintances. They meet inside a ramshackle inn. The men do not know one another, the absent Baltimore seemingly being the only thread connecting them. While waiting for their associate, and lacking anything better to do in the drab, run-down place, they begin to tell stories, specifically about how they each came to be acquainted with the now nomadic nobleman. Stories that tell of Baltimore’s many losses. Of the man’s belief that he had awakened something sinister and supernatural during the war. Of his slow, painstaking transformation into a cold, ruthless warrior, fighting shadows in plague-ridden places.

And they tell their own stories in turn. Of the odd, ghastly events witnessed over the course of their lives. Of the experiences that led each of them to believe, unequivocally, in Lord Baltimore.

🎃

Well, I enjoyed the hell out of this.

Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden is one of those stories I tend to think of as “damn good yarns” upon finishing. Written in the same style and spirit of the Victorian era literature that has shaped and influenced much of Mignola’s work, Baltimore is a baroque, thoroughly Gothic tale that revels in its ornate, ostentatious nature. Like many of its purple predecessors, it exudes atmosphere in abundance, and, as a reader for whom this quality often reigns supreme, this book managed to hit all the right spots for me.

As the lengthy alternate title suggests, Baltimore is a re-imagining of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Mignola and co-author Christopher Golden wisely preserve that story’s melancholic poignancy, making it the beating heart of their own tin soldier, while at the same time decking the rest of the story out in somber, funereal vestments. Instead of paper ballerinas, there is a dead spouse. And instead of a goblin jack-in-the-box, there are vampires.

Ironically, it’s those two elements that end up slightly hindering the book. Baltimore is very much a boy’s tale, with women featured in only the most peripheral of ways. It would have benefitted the story to give at least Elowen, Baltimore’s wife, an expanded role, considering she is his primary motivation. Instead, much like the ballerina in the original tale, her characterization is mostly paper-thin.

As for the vampires, I just found the lore around them muddled and lacking. You get the sense that Golden and Mignola wanted to go the Our Vampires are Different route, which is commendable, but given that most of this book — from the themes to the style in which it is written — adheres fairly strictly to traditional approach, makes this a somewhat odd choice.

But the appeal for me ultimately lies in the storytelling, at which this book spectacularly succeeds. Most of Baltimore is told as a nested narrative, courtesy of our three protagonists, who pass the time by telling stories, with each tale showcasing just how memorable and varied weird fiction can be. The story within a story is a device I particularly love, so of course this was the aspect of the book I enjoyed the most.

Nearly all of the pages boast woodcut-like illustrations, drawn by Mignola in his distinctive, striking style. They’re a little plain, but Mignola’s art has had a huge influence on me over the years, so it’s always a joy to see.

A damn good yarn, indeed.

THE SKULL by Jon Klassen

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Otilla ran away from home. She runs deep into the snow-blanketed forest. Eventually, she finds a very large house. Inside the house is a skull. He lets Otilla in.

Otilla and the skull become fast friends. She helps the skull with things that have become difficult for him, like eating fruit or having tea by the fireside. Otilla doesn’t want to return to wherever she came from; she wants to stay. The skull lets her, but he warns her of the headless skeleton that comes every night looking for him. If the skeleton manages to catch the skull, it will probably go very badly for him.

And so Otilla decides to help her new friend.

🎃

The Skull by Jon Klassen is just a deliciously dark delight of a book. The illustrations are, of course, centerpiece, stunning in their stark simplicity, and the muted palette paints a gloriously gloomy but still inviting, comfortable atmosphere. It’s bewitching, in the very best sense of the word. Klassen’s trademark deadpan humor is also very much present, making for some great page turns that genuinely made me laugh out loud. 

Really enjoyed the writing, as well. Lyrical, eerie, economical. Like all the best fairy tales, what we are given is only pure story, with not a single word wasted. It makes for a perfect companion to the wistful, dusky artwork.

The Skull, as the subtitle declares, is a retelling of an old Tyrolean folktale. In a particularly fascinating author’s note, Klassen recalls randomly coming across it in a library in Alaska some time ago. The story with him, but when, some years later, with the help of some librarians, he managed to get his hands on it again, he found that the original story wasn’t the one he had been thinking about for so long. Or rather, it was, but it had changed over time, his mind subconsciously transforming it into the version we find in this book. Which, he goes on to write, is how fairy tales evolved in the first palace. Originating as oral tradition meant that these stories were reimagined, in some way, every time they were retold, shaped and altered by the storyteller’s emotions and experiences. Klassen concludes by wishing the same thing happens to his interpretation down the line, which is really what every writer hopes for, deep down.

A lovely, slightly macabre tale of friendship and affection. I loved everything about this weird little story.