Books Read - 2023

• Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang

DNF 75%, ouch. I was hesitant about this for awhile, despite the awesome premise (language magic, historical setting, dark academia!), because I simply do not like R. F. Kuang's writing. I did not enjoy Poppy War, but I did finish that one back in the day, and it was tough. Again, a good premise, but infantile delivery. This one was fun for the first 30% or so, maybe even more. Something drained me from enjoying it, however. It got boring. The big "oh shit" wasn't that big and it happened too late. There was NOT ENOUGH MAGIC! So much of it was the same time and place as this alternative world, following the same historical events, all with the very powerful magic not really having an effect at all. Zzz. I tried.

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab

On the whole I enjoyed this book, the speculative bit was fun and I liked going through time periods with Addie. I read this because I have previously enjoyed Schwab's work, though consistently in a "3-star" capacity, and this book was no different. The writing style got me in the end, and it was tough to finish. It was far too whimsical and repetitive. There were lists. Lists, and lists, lists, lists, and lists. It had a musical quality to it, sure, it worked for a while, but if I keep hearing the same refrain over and over, well, it gets boring. Annoying. Amateurish, dare I say.

I had already guessed the ending by the midpoint, something I am not well known to do (for some reason my brain simply does not register story beats and turns while I am reading or watching movies - I am consistently surprised at the dumbest of plot moves). There went the tension, and it was more or less a race to see it unfold so I could put this away and go on to the next book.

I did read this also because I'm currently drafting a novel with a vaguely similar premise: a deal with the devil (or an entity of some sort, anyway -- I did like that about this book. The morals and "spirituality" was all very gray and realistic). In that sense, I got what I came here for, and more: I did enjoy it, and I will read more Schwab, expecting 3 stars and happy to add more to my review next time.

• Yumi And The Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

I've long since thrown out my snobbish distaste for Sanderson's fantasy and accepted my fate: I enjoy his stuff. Is he good on the line level, where I really fall in love with books? No. Can I stop reading his work, does it ever stop being entertaining and page-turnery? No. So. Soo.. I picked up his new one-shot set in the "Cosmere" a.k.a. the universe he has threaded behind all of his novels. Cool idea. This book was full of fun asides that only readers of multiples of his books would get, but takes nothing from someone who hasn't read anything else. I think that was my favorite part: watching how big the Cosmere is building to, and how more arrogantly and powerfully he's using those crossover connections to tell stories. Otherwise, this wasn't a super hit for me, but it was "ok." It was very manga/anime, chock full of typical tropes (I say typical having watched very few anime and read zero manga, but whatever). Gender/bodyswap. Isekai-like world hopping. Tits. Tits in tight shirts, soaked in water. Yumi at one point (well, her body) even jumps to watch them bounce. C'mon. It was gross, and the entire thing was male-dominated storytelling. The premise was OK, and then the ending went haywire, cranked up the 'telling' to 400 and went so fast that the narrator had to confess it was bad writing and give it to us straight, outside of the story itself.

But its Sanderson. I expected nothing more or less and kept on reading. Typical. I give it a positive 2 stars. Usually a 2 star is a bad book for me. This was OK. Maybe I should implement half stars.

• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Review pending book club meet.

• The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

Not for me. I haven't been enjoying scifi in ages (I tend to go through phases of more-fantasy, more-scifi) and decided to roll the dice on this novella mystery. Oh, right, I don't like mystery. Well, what about the writing? Nope. The POV is first person, nestled in the highly scientific, matter-of-fact, autistim-coded main character Pleiti. I didn't like Pleiti, I didn't like the high technical writing. Nothing insane (some great 12$ words were used, however), but difficult to parse. Made this novella feel like a doorstopper. And I didn't like the setting. Now, the voice was actually done incredibly well, so if anyone is reading this and sees that as a knock, don't you dare. Just wasn't for me. (Infomocracy wasn't either - maybe I'm just not a fan of Older. I liked her brother's shit though, years back!)

• Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Finishing up a novella kick with this one. Dark, "visceral" (as quoted as a review word three times on the jacket, lol) and grim. Gay "Black Mirror" sci-fi about connection and, more so, lack-there-of. 4-stars for the wriitng quality, clear, strong, rarely musical and, when so, done just right.

• Piranesi by Susanna Clark

This was a re-read for me. I'm not a re-reader by nature; every sentence I read I think, "I've been here before..." but I make some exceptions. I've read Vandermeer's Annhilation like 3 times. It takes a good book, one of my "non-pareils" (the elusive 5 star review). Piranesi was one such book. I read it when it came out a few years ago, 2020. I was stuck on what to read next and load onto my Kindle for my wedding road trip (7 cumulative days in the passenger seat), so I stuck this banger on my device and dived in. Hell. Yes. I loved and still love this one. It is delicious for me on every page. M.C Escher mystery, labrinthine, dreamy, all marble and alabaster... Full of fictional documents and histories. All of my favorite things. I read this right after Mister Magic and that found-footage kind of magical fictional history shit is just *chefs kiss* right now. I'm in my horror era - it IS October! This was a nice, soft introduction - something that doesn't jump scare you, but certainly unsettles you, especially as everything is revealed toward the end. I wish I wrote this book.

• Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig

Perfect weather, perfect fall season for this one! I read this on the road back from getting married in Michigan, and the full fall foliage carried me all the way back to Washington while I was totally under the spell of this book. I blitzed through it. Solid writing, though sometimes a little too "funny" or "modern" but I could forgive that. VERY Stephen King - but in a way that felt inspired, not derivative. The premise, for one, would absolutely be something King cooked up. We even get a few references to Maine. And the deeply first POV (I called it "subdermal first" in a description of this trick to my now-wife) was incredibly reminiscent of King, those
(too honest, creepy, haunted)
asides. I'll definitely be checking out some more Wendig works. I was a fan of his blog at one point, and checked out some of his articles on writing. I guess October is my horror month. I'm on to a Wendig recommendation, Eric LaRocca next. Stay spooky.

• Everything The Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

I'm almost afraid to write a review for this. It seems poorly received on Goodreads because of the poor handling of sexual assault and disability. I'm afraid to say it, but I didn't really mind it... but I haven't experienced sexual assault trauma, nor am I disabled, nor know anyone who is, in this case, blind. So... I'll leave those parts of a review to those who may know better than me. But one thing many people seemed irritated by that I didn't mind was LaRocca's love affair with similies. It is totally overboard! I kinda like it! I didn't find it detracted from the story; that's where we got all the vibe, all the horror, the feeling, and voice. They were good similies. I can see myself describing some in the future as "a very LaRoccan similie" or something. On the whole, I liked the writing, which is probably 80% of what I want in a reading experience. Story? It was okay. The ending sucked. Those LaRoccan similies disappeared as he chased the deus-ex-machina wrap up, seemingly tired with his own creation; yes, we all were. It was boring, improbable, and tonally discordant. A good handful of this story felt improbable. I guess the decent writing coaxed me on to suspend disbelief, but there was some eye-rolling. I was also told there was "extreme violence" here and am expecting that of LaRocca. Maybe I'm desensitized from the internet, but there was, well, some violence. Terrible stuff, but not too much of it. So... on the whole, mixed feelings here. But not the kind of hate it's getting elsewhere from me.

• Sundial by Catriona Ward

Not a bad thriller-esque novel. The writing was servicable, but no sentence stunned me; on a line-level, it was very pedestrian. (I only note this in such seemingly harsh terms because I am a sucker for line-level beauty, sometimes above story itself). There was a long-unraveling twist that kept me reading. Part of it was eventually surprising, but it was interesting from the get-go, even when I thought it was just about some terrible relationship and a haunted daughter. It grows much larger, delving through time and generations of terror and trauma. There were in-world novel excerpts, written by the protagonist, that I eventually skipped over on the last few chapters. I didn't see they added much of anything, and neither did the plot point of her being a novelist. One thing I must mention that peeved me: the constant use of a certain turn of phrase, of mouths "being open in an 'o'" ... screaming, in shock, in pain. What an odd phrase to clutch! I read this because I'm waiting to read Ward's other, first novel that was highly praised. I will definitely keep reading her, though she's not soon to be a favorite.

• The Employees by Olga Ravn

This thin, quick novel was a great little puzzle. Very Vandermeer / Roadside Picnic in its sci-fi, this kind of Lovecraftian unknown alien lifeforce at the mysterious, unsaid center of the plot. Loved the format of employee recording entries. A lot of themes were played with - no conclusions, but they are sort of conclusion-less ideas like memory, humanity, loss. A worthwhile afternoon book.

• Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

DNF at 75%. There seemed to be a lot of chatter about this book and I kept seeing the cover everywhere. I read The Ten 1000 Doors of January, so I gave it a whirl; the premise sounded great. Portal fiction, but in a metafiction kind of way, ala The Magicians, a book about a book. Footnotes, side histories, secrets in a small town. Started off not bad, was in fact what I signed up for. But then didn't feel like it went anywhere. Predictable turns and the usual story beats at the usual, prescribed times. An unlikely romance. Representation of various identities (queer, Latino, etc.) felt kind of hamfisted. The prose was...fine. Some good metaphors here and there. But I got tired of hearing about how this was a story about a bad luck girl in a bad luck town. SO much naval gazing, so many pages spent in inner monologue telling, telling, telling. To be fair, I didn't love the Ten Thousand Doors either, so I just don't think Harrow is an author for me.

• The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado

Fun! I haven't read a graphic novel in a long while, but I LOVE Carmen and have been meaning to get around to this one. Very Junji Ito, very Twin Peaks. The plot was kind of rushed toward the end, but I forgive a lot when my favorite vibes and themes come up. I'm talking feminism, queerness, BIPOC, uncanny horror realness!!

• The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

I was hoping this book scratched an itch I've been having lately, which is "I wish I have never read Stephen King so I could read his books all over again for the first time." So I picked up something horror and weird by an author I have heard of but haven't tried yet. I see Kingfisher's name everywhere! When I started this book I was SO PLEASED that I found something that was promising to be awesome. The premise and introduction hit super close to home: a young woman cataloging an oddities museum. I did that exact job, down to having a furred trout mount on the wall. Eerie similarities abound. Hell yes. Then we get this super weird SCP-back-rooms-no-clip haunted alternate dimension and I'm eating it up. Then.... I realize I hate the narrator. I hate the humor. I hate the beats. Then we don't really leave the alternate dimension and when we finally do, the end falls flat on its face. It's stupid, honestly. Sorry! The idea might have worked, but the execution was severely lacking for me. Unbelievable beats, the fudged-in "bad knee" bit that felt like a secondary thought like "I need my character to not be so adroit in this last big scene so let me sprinkle in some knee pain for several chapters leading up to it." I felt like I could see through the writing too much. And I was "told" all the scary bits - I did not feel afraid, the narrator jus told me it was scary holy shit oh holy hell scary! Mostly for me it was the style/voice. I wanted to love it, I did start to love it, and felt betrayed. Probably won't try another Kingfisher novel. Would be two stars, but I'll give it three because I really did enjoy the ideas.

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Wow. Its been a long time since I loved a book this much. Nothing about its premise really set me up for loving it. I saw the cool cover, oh yeah video game designers, a kind of saga, might be neat, got a bunch of good reviews, sure. But I was totally hooked from the first chapter, and literally could not put the book down. I was late for work. I brought it into the bath. I stayed up late. I couldn't get enough of these characters and their lives through the years, the development of their relationships, and their work. It made me want to read some of the mentioned books in the back about video game development and indie companies. It also made me love books and writing even more, this idea of worldbuilding, of creating an experience for a reader (or a player). I just so appreciate that feeling of being obsessed with a book, every word and every sentence just totally devoured. It wasn't amazing writing; it wasn't ideas I usually love; I can't say what it was. But it worked for me.

• Mister Magic by Kiersten White

I knew I'd like this book and, yes, I loved it! The premise just felt so juicy. Mandela effect kid's TV show, creepypasta vibes, chapters intercut with fictional Reddit posts, Wikipedia articles, 4chan threads. The idea alone, made to feel so real and genuinely creepy through layered tiny details, let me glaze over some less deftly handled elements: some obvious reveals, lots of "telling" and an inactive main character. I was fully strapped in for the ride from the great set up in the first few chapters. I immediately didn't expect the author capable of landing a great ending on this one, and was proven right, but despite an anticlimatic close, I loved that it was cemented as a Lovecraftian horror. With this novel, ideas won over execution, and the execution wasn't terrible anyway: this is where I'd love to land in my own writing. I don't need to be great, but I want to serve my own ideas well enough to tell a coherent story.

• Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns

DNF. I was excited by the prose from the first few chapters. Sparse but hard-hitting, real in a relatable modern living way. This worked, until the promised plot of the narrator's love interest enters the scene, and she collapses into a bubbling caricature of herself. Talks about her muscles way too much. Boring.

• Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick

This was super fun, kooky in a Douglas Adams way, but coming from that deeply painful philosophical place of Dick's, the place that talks about purpose, cause and effect, meaning/meaninglessness. Toward the end the brightness of detail eroded into slapstick plot-driven pulp. Can't fault Dick for that, his bread and butter... It's been awhile since I read PKD and I was happy to be back in his mind, at times goofy and hilarious and at times building super cool mythologies, very Lovecraftian, this cthonic deity and ancient "Fog-Things" and buried cathedrals lost to time. There was a bit in there about the "black" verison of self, a Doppelganger atemporally haunting everyone in this story world. Very Twin Peaks. There was even a Cathedral and a Black Cathedral (thinking of the White and Black Lodges), the doubling/Doppelganger maybe a direct inspiration for Lynch, especially in the third season.

• My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

I was surprised to really enjoy this one. The surprise came about 20% in when I realized nothing had actually "happened" and I was pretty hooked anyway. The narrative voice was just super compelling, real, and concise. Nothing flowery or extravagant, but full of tiny "real life" detail that sometimes touched a little too close to home, especially if one has ever felt depression, despair, alienation etc., (despite having no particular outside "reason" to feel such things, given privledge, comfort, wealth, and beauty) which are the places the novel takes us to. I got a little fed up with the "nothing happens except nothing on purpose" about 80% in, but then the ending ramps up just in time to keep attention. I was sitting on this one for awhile, drawn in as usual by the cover, then the praise, and I think it lives up to the hype!

• The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

• Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin

Wellll. That was a drag. Dimensionless window into 2000's young adult lifestyles on the crux of millenial nihilism. But like, boring. In a funny way.

• Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan

I DNF'ed this one at 80%... I hate DNF'ing books, and I tried so hard with this one, but it ate up the entire second half of June and the beginning of July as I trudged page by page through, well... boring, plotless, repetitive prose. The premise is cool and I'm into tech/capitalist dystopias right now, so it felt perfect. But it never really sank its teeth into anything, just played out surface details with way too many musical descriptions. I get it, there's drums, techno, jungle. The setting was boringly realistic, an unimaginative and obvious future. Maybe I'm just used to reading more "speculative" in my "speculative fiction." Also, this guy hates IKEA. I GET IT, I GET IT.

• Severance by Ling Ma

I picked this up after reading Ma's short story collection last month ("Bliss Montage", reviewed below). I wasn't as blown away this time, but I think that speaks to the style of writing in shorts vs novels. In shorts, every sentence needs to go hard. In a novel, there's more time to feel around slowly, digesting and composting details instead of inhaling them. Severance was surprisingly not what I thought it would be about, which is a post-apocalyptic world and a journey to a safe-haven in a caravan of survivors. That does happen, but this present moment action is only maybe 30% of the novel. The remaining 70% is actually about being a first generation Chinese American daughter, which was what a lot of "Bliss Montage" was about, too. A lot of themes and specific details threaded through both works. I'm thinking specifically of the "Peking Duck" story. Threading of details is what I enjoyed most here and in "Bliss Montage" ... a great collecting of meaning over time.

• Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

I LOVED THIS COLLECTION. I haven't read Ling Ma before, but I remember seeing an exceprt of Severance in F(r)iction forever ago. I'm reading that next, because I rarely give 5 stars to a book but this is going on my "non-pareils" shelf. Strong, clear, and simple prose guides us through weird-yet-grounded storyworlds, nimbly moving through time and POV. Surreal, lonely, claustrophobic, this collection feels usually terrible and anxious. Ma's ability to deliver that, while exploring ideas of race and gender, gives us another good example of how the lens of the surreal is sometimes the only way to see the clear truth of lived experience.

• Candy House by Jennifer Egan

I went into this novel expecting something speculative, as hinted by the premise of a near-future device that lets one upload their consciousness to a cloud network. I mostly read speculative fic: sci-fi, fantasy, weird, magical realism, etc. So while Candy House definitely spun its story around the Black Mirror-esque device, "Own Your Unconscious", the plots weren't really about that, and I ended up reading the most general-fic novel I've tried in a long time. That said, I really enjoyed it. The format was spectacular, more akin to a series of short stories woven from tenuous common threads. Each chapter showed us a different POV and style as the story snaked through time, friends, families, lovers, and enemies, all collaging into a fully lived-in slice of the world. The meditations on memory, relationships, authenticity were realized through a build-up of perspectives from all angles and opinions, mirroring the complex experience of these facets in our personal lives.

• Evil Flowers by Gunnhild Øyehaug

A beautiful metafictive collection. Surreality reminiscent of Diane Williams in its play of nearly non-sequitor movement within paragraphs. A new Lydia Davis. Totally inspiring... I want to write like this!