Recommended Reading
Favorite Reads From The Plague Year.
Just got sprung from work for a month or so, and I thought I'd write up some of my favorite reads of the year. I'll post one here every day or so until we all get tired of it. Happy holidays!
Just got sprung from work for a month or so, and I thought I'd write up some of my favorite reads of the year. I'll post one here every day or so until we all get tired of it. Happy holidays!
I figured I better pick up the pace here or I'll never get down the books I enjoyed. Here are some more. Will add a few to this over the next days and then a list of the ones I'm looking forward to.
Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger -- Thesiger lived with the Bedu and explored a place known as The Empty Quarter on the Arabian Peninsula. You have to have some patience with this book, but if you do, it will reward you with a glimpse of a fascinating culture, incredible geographical place, adventures, treachery, exploration. Worth the long, slow journey across the sands.
Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeir -- This novel is a trip and a half. One of the most rewardingly errant stories I've ever encountered and I do seek them out. It's the story of a plague (how fitting). It's about the places people go after they die, and it's about a woman trapped in the arctic because everyone who could possibly come and rescue her is dead. Wild imagination, cool clear writing, an otherworldly experience. This book came out years ago, and the copy I have I bought back then, but never read it. Somehow it was the perfect book for the perfect time when I picked it up to finally open it.
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories -- I remember reading this book last Christmas into New Year. Wonderful stories by my favorites from Japan -- Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Kawabata, Murakami, Yoshimoto, Ogawa, etc. For starters, this book has "The Hell Screen," by Akutagawa. If you haven't read this yet, and you have any interest at all in fantasy and horror, this is a great piece. There are a bunch of creepy, fantastic, surreal stories in here. If you pick this up, read "Kudan." It's in a long line of Japanese tales that have at their center a cow that is born with the face or other attributes of a human. I wrote a story like this during 2018, before learning of the tradition from a note in this book. It was published in conjunctions online magazine. Dick Shook, by Jeffrey Ford | Conjunctions — The forum for innovative writing In any event, this is a great collection of Japanese fiction.
Reincarnation Stories By Kim Deitch -- Combine some of the best writing in comics/graphic novels with an idiosyncratic style blending elements of early animation (Fleischer Brothers, etc.) and the alternative comics of the 60's onward, and you get a whirling, swirling masterpiece by a master of the form. Old Hollywood cowboys, a near forgotten screen writer, Frank Sinatra, the Monkey God, Waldo -- the story whips these ingredients together and the reader is immediately sucked in. The tale remains clear and engaging throughout. Check this one out and then get Boulevard of Broken Dreams and all the rest of Deitch's work.
Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews -- Yikes. A really effective and affecting novel. This book is like a car wreck you can't look away from. Compelling writing about a grim existence of certain mobile home dwellers during the great rattlesnake round-up. Southern creepy. Found the writing in this one as great as in his book, Childhood.
The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin -- This book is crazy in the best possible way. Think Kafka's "Country Doctor," it's dreamlike atmosphere, it's long journey in a blizzard to rescue a suffering patient. This story is similar in that respect. There is a doctor and he is trying to reach a village where people are turning into zombies. It's a long trek and the roads are out so he must take a carriage sled pulled by a team of very small horses which remain hidden from view under a kind of hood. The time of this book is both contemporary and 19th century brilliantly fused together. Along the way there are the real adventures of dealing with the horrible storm, but then they run into a group who collects pyramids they find under the snow and use to initiate psychedelic hallucinations. There are other strange wonders that intercede between the doctor and the completion of his mission. Did I mention the giant? Forget I said anything about it. This one's a beauty of a book. A relatively short read and great description of the natural world lashed by the storm. Also read by Sorokin this year, Day of the Oprichnik, also good but not as good as The Blizzard. Kind of a vision of the world that Trump would like to rule. Both these books were suggested to me by the illustrator, Sveta Dorosheva.
Station Eleven by Hillary St. John Mandel -- This is also another plague story I wandered into without being aware. The aftermath of a plague and those survivors who are making their stand at an airport. There are competing bands of survivors, and the one that is focused on is a traveling orchestra, which is a really cool idea. The writing in this book is lovely, really engaging. I enjoyed it but it wasn't as good as the Brockmeir. In fact it seemed to have been influenced by The Brief History of the Dead. One of the themes in it I very much appreciated was the idea of how art can save you in difficult times.
Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley -- Saw the author Priya Sharma mention this book online and because I like her fiction I went and checked it out. The good weird. Pagan nature forces poking through from the past and haunting the present. Great writing in this. Also it has one of the strangest plot points that's so blatantly laid out and left for the reader to deal with. Creepy as can be. The thing with the hare -- it makes no sense but it's wildly integral to the storyline. Can't say more about this without wrecking it. A terrific read for horror readers and writers.
Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger -- Thesiger lived with the Bedu and explored a place known as The Empty Quarter on the Arabian Peninsula. You have to have some patience with this book, but if you do, it will reward you with a glimpse of a fascinating culture, incredible geographical place, adventures, treachery, exploration. Worth the long, slow journey across the sands.
Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeir -- This novel is a trip and a half. One of the most rewardingly errant stories I've ever encountered and I do seek them out. It's the story of a plague (how fitting). It's about the places people go after they die, and it's about a woman trapped in the arctic because everyone who could possibly come and rescue her is dead. Wild imagination, cool clear writing, an otherworldly experience. This book came out years ago, and the copy I have I bought back then, but never read it. Somehow it was the perfect book for the perfect time when I picked it up to finally open it.
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories -- I remember reading this book last Christmas into New Year. Wonderful stories by my favorites from Japan -- Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Kawabata, Murakami, Yoshimoto, Ogawa, etc. For starters, this book has "The Hell Screen," by Akutagawa. If you haven't read this yet, and you have any interest at all in fantasy and horror, this is a great piece. There are a bunch of creepy, fantastic, surreal stories in here. If you pick this up, read "Kudan." It's in a long line of Japanese tales that have at their center a cow that is born with the face or other attributes of a human. I wrote a story like this during 2018, before learning of the tradition from a note in this book. It was published in conjunctions online magazine. Dick Shook, by Jeffrey Ford | Conjunctions — The forum for innovative writing In any event, this is a great collection of Japanese fiction.
Reincarnation Stories By Kim Deitch -- Combine some of the best writing in comics/graphic novels with an idiosyncratic style blending elements of early animation (Fleischer Brothers, etc.) and the alternative comics of the 60's onward, and you get a whirling, swirling masterpiece by a master of the form. Old Hollywood cowboys, a near forgotten screen writer, Frank Sinatra, the Monkey God, Waldo -- the story whips these ingredients together and the reader is immediately sucked in. The tale remains clear and engaging throughout. Check this one out and then get Boulevard of Broken Dreams and all the rest of Deitch's work.
Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews -- Yikes. A really effective and affecting novel. This book is like a car wreck you can't look away from. Compelling writing about a grim existence of certain mobile home dwellers during the great rattlesnake round-up. Southern creepy. Found the writing in this one as great as in his book, Childhood.
The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin -- This book is crazy in the best possible way. Think Kafka's "Country Doctor," it's dreamlike atmosphere, it's long journey in a blizzard to rescue a suffering patient. This story is similar in that respect. There is a doctor and he is trying to reach a village where people are turning into zombies. It's a long trek and the roads are out so he must take a carriage sled pulled by a team of very small horses which remain hidden from view under a kind of hood. The time of this book is both contemporary and 19th century brilliantly fused together. Along the way there are the real adventures of dealing with the horrible storm, but then they run into a group who collects pyramids they find under the snow and use to initiate psychedelic hallucinations. There are other strange wonders that intercede between the doctor and the completion of his mission. Did I mention the giant? Forget I said anything about it. This one's a beauty of a book. A relatively short read and great description of the natural world lashed by the storm. Also read by Sorokin this year, Day of the Oprichnik, also good but not as good as The Blizzard. Kind of a vision of the world that Trump would like to rule. Both these books were suggested to me by the illustrator, Sveta Dorosheva.
Station Eleven by Hillary St. John Mandel -- This is also another plague story I wandered into without being aware. The aftermath of a plague and those survivors who are making their stand at an airport. There are competing bands of survivors, and the one that is focused on is a traveling orchestra, which is a really cool idea. The writing in this book is lovely, really engaging. I enjoyed it but it wasn't as good as the Brockmeir. In fact it seemed to have been influenced by The Brief History of the Dead. One of the themes in it I very much appreciated was the idea of how art can save you in difficult times.
Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley -- Saw the author Priya Sharma mention this book online and because I like her fiction I went and checked it out. The good weird. Pagan nature forces poking through from the past and haunting the present. Great writing in this. Also it has one of the strangest plot points that's so blatantly laid out and left for the reader to deal with. Creepy as can be. The thing with the hare -- it makes no sense but it's wildly integral to the storyline. Can't say more about this without wrecking it. A terrific read for horror readers and writers.
Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes won't be out until March of 2021, but I got a chance to read it early. This was my summary quote of the book -- "Brilliant tales of enviable imagination, gracefully written, and with a strong feminist center. One of the best collections I’ve come across in recent years." And I mean every word of it. I've been following this writer's work since her earliest stories have appeared, and I'm always entranced by the beauty of the writing and the fantastic, often dark, imagination that brings them to life. Grim historical realities wrapped in fairy tale cloaks, a horror story, "Phosphorus," that doesn't need any confabulated demon, a tale about a young Polish/Jewish woman learning to become a witch and to protect her family from persecution, a retelling of the legend of Bloody Mary. This remarkable collection of 13 stories will be coming from Tor.com. Check it out.
We All Hear Stories In The Dark
Short story writers, readers, lovers, should all offer a tip of the hat to Shearman for this amazing 3 volume collection (with wonderful illustrations throughout from Reggie Oliver) that had been in the works for 10 years. 101 never before seen stories, like a contemporary Scheherazade -- humor, horror, fantasy, fairy tale, mythic, every day stories, and heady blends of many and all those different genres. And the pieces are terrific, so clearly written, and many so heartfelt. I've not yet read even half of these pieces, as I've been dipping in and out along the line. As it turns out, that's the idea for how Shearman wanted readers to go through, to pick their journey. I didn't know that till recently since I initially ignored the intro and just picked it up and started reading in the middle somewhere. My favorite collections are like that -- like Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling. Often, you land on one you'd read before and instead of being disappointed, you welcome it like an old friend. Robert Shearman wrote for Dr. Who and a number of radio plays for the BBC, but the only way I know his writing is as a short story writer and a great one. I imagine I'll be exploring this treasure trove for years to come. PS in the UK is the publisher, but you can get at least the paperback editions through US booksellers. Do yourself a favor and grab these while it's still possible. Shearman has mastered one of the toughest skills for fiction writers and that's the patience to see an impossible creation through to its realization. Like I said, hats off. Check it out.
Short story writers, readers, lovers, should all offer a tip of the hat to Shearman for this amazing 3 volume collection (with wonderful illustrations throughout from Reggie Oliver) that had been in the works for 10 years. 101 never before seen stories, like a contemporary Scheherazade -- humor, horror, fantasy, fairy tale, mythic, every day stories, and heady blends of many and all those different genres. And the pieces are terrific, so clearly written, and many so heartfelt. I've not yet read even half of these pieces, as I've been dipping in and out along the line. As it turns out, that's the idea for how Shearman wanted readers to go through, to pick their journey. I didn't know that till recently since I initially ignored the intro and just picked it up and started reading in the middle somewhere. My favorite collections are like that -- like Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling. Often, you land on one you'd read before and instead of being disappointed, you welcome it like an old friend. Robert Shearman wrote for Dr. Who and a number of radio plays for the BBC, but the only way I know his writing is as a short story writer and a great one. I imagine I'll be exploring this treasure trove for years to come. PS in the UK is the publisher, but you can get at least the paperback editions through US booksellers. Do yourself a favor and grab these while it's still possible. Shearman has mastered one of the toughest skills for fiction writers and that's the patience to see an impossible creation through to its realization. Like I said, hats off. Check it out.
Afro Puffs Are The Antennae Of The Universe, Zig Zag Claybourne's new novel, a companion to his earlier, The Brothers Jet Stream: Leviathan, is an ingenious work. I've been trying to come up with a metaphor to describe the elegance with which the author keeps all the book's many conceits and concerns aloft. I thought of spinning plates, but it's more cohesive than that, way more intuitive. It's a real alchemy of genres -- from space opera to cosmic vision, to early Pam Grier movies. It's a thrilling romp, but there are moments in the hoopla where the author gracefully reveals the individual characters of Desiree Quicho and her all female crew and their group strength, and the reader is enchanted by their ass kicking prowess, their humanity, their adventure, their individuality. The movement of the story is dynamic, and there are intersecting channels of ideas and images and speculations happening at once, but the telling is always clear and the amalgamation of the different story threads always seems organic. Best of all, the book has a great sense of humor in its language and story, and that might be its most brilliant aspect. There's a cultural fluidity to it that grabs references from comic books and politics and film and music (totally check out the author's play list that accompanies the book), and effortlessly and seamlessly absorbs them. This was my favorite book of the year in 2020. Although a visionary fantasy, it somehow saw straight to the heart of this wicked year. Check it out.