The 10 best books I read last year … and all the others, too
These are the 10 best books I read this year, followed by a list of all the other books I read for the first time this year. (I don’t keep track of what I re-read.) Except for the first and the last, the order doesn’t imply anything.
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison: Text I sent a friend, “Mike Bloomfield was the hot shot American electric guitarist in the early 60s. In ’67 he saw Hendrix play and didn't want to pick up his guitar for a year. So, I'm reading Song of Solomon...”
Troubles, JG Farrell: Ireland, 1919. A formerly grand resort hotel in a small town. Britain is fighting to keep Ireland a colony. The troubles get closer and closer while the ruling-class English in the hotel go crazy. Funny, strange, heartbreaking. In a class with the greatest colonial/post-colonial novels, like Midnight’s Children, A Bend in the River, Things Fall Apart, Lord Jim, Kim.
Just Kids, Patti Smith: More than deserving of all the praise it has received. A story of love, friendship, what it means to be an artist. It is set in the 1970s/80s NYC, the NYC that is home to my soul – dirty and run-down enough that it had space for people to experiment and create and fail and now and then succeed. Full disclosure: I didn’t read the last chapter, about Maplethorpe’s death from AIDS. I lost so many friends to it that even 40 years on it hurts too much to revisit.
Epic of Gilgamesh, Benjamin R. Foster (Translator): Like most people, I do not typically read epic poetry (the last time was The Aeneid in 1982 for a college class). I cannot express the joy I felt reading this. The rhythms, the repetitions, the story, the characters. I read it aloud to myself because it was calling for that. It is 4000 years old and still utterly unexpected.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: Selected Stories of Nikolai Leskov: Picked this up at a used-book store mostly because of the publisher, New York Review Books, which has put out many of my favorite books (like JG Farrell’s Trouble). I don’t usually read short stories but… Wonderful tales pre-Revolution Russia of peasants, Old Believers, faith, and strangeness, all told in a relaxed and amusing way. One, “Painted Angel,” opened up both the passion and technique of painting to me.
Born Standing Up, Steve Martin: I heard a lot of comedians talk about this while I was listening to Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out and Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcasts. A charming and engrossing story of how and why Martin developed into a such a unique stand-up comedian and why he walked away from it.
Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, Craig Brown: I don’t know why I picked this up or even how I heard of it. I have no interest in Britain’s Royals, very little knowledge of the times and history this documents, and I was engrossed from the start. It is a biography of a fascinating and not very likeable person, whom I wound up feeling sympathy for. I was left wishing I could have spent some time at one of her parties and glad I hadn’t.
Mike Nichols: A Life, Mark Harris: And speaking of unlikeable people … Early on no one could stand Nichols – brilliant comedian with Elaine May, renowned stage and movie director (The Graduate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Silkwood, Working Girl, Postcards from the Edge, etc., etc.) – and, to his credit, he agreed with them. Thankfully, he changed with time. What never changed was his incredible abilities as a director. Watch Who’s Afraid … and you’ll see Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton give their greatest performances, the last ones before they became the definition of camp. This is a book I will re-read.
The City We Became, N.K. Jemesin: Our generation’s Octavia Butler. Jemesin has that type of brilliance, insight, and writing ability. Totally different than her magnificent Broken World series. Set in our contemporary world where cities can become people. It is a love letter to all of NYC – including its most fucked up and awful parts.
The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel: In the ‘80s and ‘90s I would grab our local queer weekly newspapers as soon as they came out to read Bechdel’s latest Dykes to Watch Out For strip. Two greatest graphic novels ever are Bechdel’s Fun Home and Maus by Art Spiegelman. (And the musical of Fun Home is great, too.) Hard to sum up Superhuman Strength so I’ll use someone else’s description: a “memoir that explores the intersection of physical fitness, literature of the spirit, mindfulness and meditation, and nature.” That doesn’t do it justice but it’s a start.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo: Fantasy and Science Fiction are in a Golden Age thanks to writers who once would have been excluded because they and/or their stories were of the “wrong” ethnicity/skin color/sexual preference and more. Vo is a prime example. You could read this simply because it’s a fantasy novel in an Asian setting with queer characters that no one else has told. You could also read it simply because it’s a superb novel.
A History of What Comes Next, Sylvain Neuvel: I can’t come up with a description that does it justice. Alt-history SF with aliens and complex moral issues. When’s the next one coming out?
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T Kingfisher: Sweet and funny.
Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway: Art and Trash in American Popular Music, Colin Escott: Recommended by Tyler Mahan Coe who creates my favorite podcast, Cocaine and Rhinestones. Escott is a historian who writes about American music and musicians and tells great stories. He made me give a damn about Perry Como. I didn’t think that was possible.
Driftwood, Marie Brennan: Fascinating novel set in a place where failing empires/kingdoms/nations are pulled and eventually disappear into a sort of magic black hole – and that’s just for starters. Great characters, too.
Bone Ships trilogy, RJ Barker: High fantasy done in an utterly original way. Great stuff.
The Once and Future Witches, Alix Harrow: Three sisters, magic, the suffrage movement, the labor movement, messed up family stuff. Excellent book by a damn good writer.
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir: File this under Very Good Book That’s Not for Me. I loved the world and the characters but wasn’t crazy about the denouement. Glad I read it.
The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley: This belongs to a sub-genre of SF I invented called Children of Forever War, Joe Haldeman’s brilliant 1974 allegory of the Vietnam War. There are echoes of Forever War in this, but it tells an utterly original story. An allegory of sorts about our own forever wars but also a great deal more.
Dominion of the Fallen trilogy, Aliette de Bodard: Fantasy. I’ll read anything de Bodard writes. This one is set in a post-magic-apocalypse Paris and that’s all I’m gonna say for fear of spoiling it. You should also read her Obsidian and Blood trilogy which is Aztec noir. Let me say that again, Aztec noir.
Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century, Ivan Musicant: The Spanko-Yanko War, as Mr. Dooley called it, is forgotten today but at the time sparked a fierce debate over whether the US should become an empire, the first time in our history that there were significant protests over going to war. It’s how we wound up with Teddy Roosevelt and Gunboat Diplomacy and our habit of invading everyone in the Caribbean and South and Central America. It also led to the even more forgotten US-Philippine War, the only time the US has ever prosecuted one of its own generals as a war criminal. This is a solid book and well written. A better starting point is Year One of The Empire.
Notes from the Burning Age, Claire North: I have read everything by Claire North (aka Catherine Webb) and will continue to do so. This is set several centuries after the full effects of climate change have devastated the world (total fiction, that could never happen. Right?). There are echoes of Walter Miller’s superb A Canticle For Liebowitz, Burning Age goes for dark, gripping adventure instead of Canticle’s satire.
Network Effect, Martha Wells: I LOVE ALL OF THE MURDERBOT BOOKS!!!
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour, James D. Hornfischer: In my youth, when mammoths still roamed the earth, I read a lot about World War II. (In 8th grade I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, twice. I invite you to guess at my emotional state at the time.) I read so much that it is very, very hard to get myself to read anything on topic now. This is a standard history in many ways, but it is about an incident I knew little about, and it is incredibly well researched and told.
The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie: Leckie’s first fantasy novel. It’s as good as her SF (Ancillary Justice series) and her SF is great.
The Last Supper Before Ragnarök, Cassandra Khaw: Pretty sure I bought this for the title and was glad I did. It’s the last book in the series and I’m sorry I didn’t get to start at the beginning.
By Force Alone, Lavie Tidhar: A wonderful, original, dark re-telling of the King Arthur. Tidhar is a fine, fine writer.
The Wisdom of Crowds and The Trouble with Peace, Joe Abercrombie: While a lot of fantasy offers a vision of bucolic, pre-industrial, agrarian times, Abercrombie chooses to show a much grittier world. It is one where war is brutal, people die from infection because they don’t know any better, the feudal system is much closer to the one from history than the one with gallant knights and heroic kings. Great, great stuff.
Embers of War trilogy, Gareth L. Powell: The first book is great and each following one is worse. I really don’t know why I finished the third one, it read like notes for a novel.