The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
How literature saved my life by David Shields
Stealing: Life in America by Michelle Cacho-Negrete ~ read
Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell
spook country by William Gibson
Boom! Voices of the Sixties by Tom Brokaw – DNF
Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole ~ read
The Wrong End of Time by John Brunner – DNF
Invaders from Earth by Robert Silverberg
Music of the Common Tongue by Christopher Small
Self-Consciousness by John Updike
For the first time in so many years, I’m not in utter misery looking into the New Year. 2019 holds great promise and hope for me. As unexpected as that is to say, it comes as a great relief. Books and lists are the great constant. The great coping mechanism of all time, making lists. It was like the sun shone only on me the day I realized I could combine the two and keep my sanity.
One blissful weekend in August when I was hanging out with other geeks and nerds who loved what I did my vague dissatisfaction was temporarily banished. I went to panels about writing, met authors (and a real live astronaut), sat in lines with others and talked about writing. Frequently amused that wherever there was a line, we all had some kind of device out in order to read. My device was dead tree style.
Exhaustion was my companion the entire con, but gods I was happy. Happy? How could that possibly be? When WorldCon 76 San Jose was over, the sticky film of vague unrest returned. Barf, I thought (or words to that effect, anyway). Inklings filtered through my overtaxed, hyperalert brain.
When great ideas hit it can feel like a jolt of lightning, adrenaline flowing through my spine. This idea was quieter. An author I met at WorldCon started posting about teaching writing. And so I asked, “do you have something for me?” His probing questions finally got me to the bottom of my unrest. “I want to learn to read and write about books better.”
And that’s how I found a mentor, and made the last quarter of 2018 happy. Best decision of my life ever. It’s not just the reading and writing which have evolved. Unexpected personal growth came at me like sunshine filtered through open doors. Even on the hardest of hard days when I think I can’t even get out of bed, and the writing is like carving bricks of granite with my bare hands, I know I’ll be good. Discovering the weird joys of LitCrit have given me a new dimension of meaning.
It is nearly impossible to pick just a few great books from 2018, but here’s my attempt at defining the seminal books for me.
2018 Books by the Numbers:
Favorite Reads
Title: The Geek Feminist Revolution
Author: Kameron Hurley
Published: 2016
ISBN-13: 9780765386243
Publisher: Tor
Twitter: @KameronHurley
Publisher’s Blurb: Outspoken and provocative, double Hugo Award-winning essayist Kameron Hurley writes with passion and conviction on feminism, geek culture, the rise of women in science fiction and fantasy, and the diversification of publishing.
The first panel I attended at WorldCon 2018 was M. Todd Gallowglas’ Lit Crit for Geeks. I was enthralled. One of the writers he mentioned was you, as doing some great work in feminism. I dutifully wrote your name down in my journal.
Since then, I’ve lost my job and spend my days reading and writing and thinking. I hash things out a lot in my brain, the one that never shuts up. And then I write stuff for my mentor to read.
One evening after dinner, a friend took me book shopping. Kepler’s is this fabulous indie bookstore whose customers banded together to keep it from closing its doors. There were two names on my list that I knew would go home with me that night, yours and N. K. Jemisin. And since I didn’t know where to start with you, I picked up The Geek Feminist Revolution.
Always a voracious reader, I am inhaling them now. This is my job while I figure out about the day job, I read and write about what I’m reading. Not only does it give me direction for a life which could easily be adrift and and feeding my food addiction, it makes me stronger in so many ways.
Never really shy about self-reflection, I now have the time and space to really look at some of the things coming up right now. And sometimes, it is some scary, sad shit.
“But because my body was coded female, I was never ever assumed to have the kind of knowledge or credibility that a man would have.” (p. 37)
I read the first 38 pages of your book and sobbed. I felt so completely bereft that I had to set it aside for a week or so. Because those pages were my story. The story of being a woman and the rampant sexism which had become so normalized I didn’t see it anymore. I read your story and began to understand that not only was I not alone in this mess, but that there were ways I could raise my voice.
But first I had to reconcile some stuff within myself. Because the stuff that was coming up was more than just re-evaluating my entire life in terms of how I’d been treated because I was female, it was looking at some pretty horrifying events and having the light bulb go off. Which led to, “Well shit, no wonder. I never had a chance.”
And without going into too much detail here, there were new realizations about my parents. Then there was looking at my most recent job and realizing that it had been a put-up job from the day I walked in as a temp until the day I walked out as a no longer employed here type. Things started slamming into place. And it was scary.
I’ve been following you on Twitter and reposting some of your articles on Facebook, because you speak to me in a way that no woman ever has before. And that’s valuable to me. I’ve learned a lot from you.
Taking a deep breath, I picked The Geek Feminist Revolution up again, and only put it down when other, more pressing matters demanded my attention. It made me wish I knew you well enough to take you to dinner and ask you to just tell me stories about your life. To talk about process, and yeah it sucks to have to have a day job for the insurance, and holy shit I hadn’t realized how bad the sexism is.
There are hard truths in your book.
At my last job there was a week when I had to actually go to my manager and explain to him what being a part of the team and having a voice meant. The group admin wouldn’t put me on the meeting agenda because I didn’t have Director in my title. She would only do it if my male manager said it was okay. I was pissed. So pissed I was vibrating. And that I had to explain it several times in very small words just made it worse.
Reading your book gives me such hope. For the first time in my life, at a time when people are looking forward to retirement, I realize I still have time to make change in my world. I have time to rearrange everything I thought I knew about myself and create a different life for myself. The life I want is one which tempers my very emotional responses and allows me to reasonably explain to someone why they’re not allowed to take my voice away.
I get to figure this out, and you have motivated me to keep doing that. To read, and write, for the sheer joy of it. To understand I need a day job for the health insurance benefits, and to pay my bills. And that all of it’s okay and necessary to survive. My writing can be my night job. It doesn’t have to be a binary choice anymore.
If I could go back in time, I’d tell my middle-school self to keep writing, because writing would keep her happy and sane. I would insist she not give it up and not worry about what it looked like or sounded like. I would tell her no matter what, do not quit writing, even if it’s just a sentence about how particularly shitty the bullies were that day. “Keep writing, always,” I would whisper in her ear.
I had so much to heal from, so much to learn, it’s hard to regret it took me this long to realize what I had been keeping from myself. Reading books like yours help so much, and I don’t know how to tell you what an impact you’ve had.
I close this with an open invitation, if our paths cross at any time, dinner is my treat. It’s the least I can do, aside from buying your other books and joining your Patreon once I’m gainfully employed again.
Did I say “thank you?”
Title: River Queens
Author: Alexander Watson
Published: 2018
ISBN 13: 978-1939710-857
Publisher: Orangefrazer Press
Twitter: @riverqueenbook
Publisher’s Blurb: River Queens is at once a romance of men and the river, a fantasy come to life, an unparalleled adventure story, one of the best travel journals around—and a glad picture for our turbulent times.
I received a copy of this book from the author for an honest review. Thank you Alexander Watson!
Alexander Watson’s writing is elegant and the story of River Queens is so compelling I’m having a hard time finding my objectivity. I want to write a fair review without seeming to shill for him. But damn this book was good. It’s one of the better ones I’ve read over the summer.
The book releases mid-October, they haven’t even gotten this one out yet and I’m already asking what he’s working on next. That’s how much I want him to succeed and keep writing great books so I can keep reading them.
Ahem ….
When I was in 6th grade, my family lived in Hannibal, MO. The three things which stand out in my mind all these decades later are the mannequin of Becky Thatcher with ankle long blonde braids, the address at which we lived, and the Mississip’.
We were a nomadic family and so were only in Hannibal for one school year. But the impression that big brown river made on me stays, and makes me homesick for a place I’ve overly romanticized in my childhood memories.
Which is to say, I can relate in some small way to the call of the river. And that is what Alexander and Dale, their spotted dog Doris Faye, and a left for dead 1955 forty-five foot Chris-Craft Corsair answer.
It starts in Texas where Alexander finds the wooden yacht, and ends with a refurbished beauty which they sail to Betty Jane’s home berth in Cleveland.
I was smitten pretty early on. A gay couple is gonna fix up their boat and sail it into unknown territory. In the South. They are going to sail right into the belly of unallayed bigotry, and count on the kindness of strangers to help them along the way.
I knew it was going to be good when Watson relates the story of finding The King & I (later renamed Betty Jane). The man who handles the transaction for the boat tells them, “They think wood boats just sink or break apart … for no reason. That’s bull. They fail ’cause somebody quit lovin’ ’em.”
This is a hard life they’re putting themselves into, and it becomes apparent they have enough love for all concerned. Alexander and Dale go into this knowing it’s going to be one of the hardest things they’ve ever done, and they do it anyway. And they keep doing it, even when it gets harder than anyone could have expected.
Watson does not sugar coat anything. Nor does he dwell on the difficulties. He writes about it all. And there are some heartbreaking moments in this book.
Awkward’s in there too. One that had I been within earshot, I’m not sure I could have looked either of them in the eye afterwards. Watson doesn’t flinch in the telling. Their loud argument has a good reason to be in the story, it’s not there as some sort of nod to, “See? We’re just like straight couples, we argue too.” Nothing in this book is done to make anyone feel Alexander and Dale are other than what they are.
And they are two men who love each other fiercely and work together to rebuild this boat and fulfill their dream. The people they meet along the way, for the most part, are polite and helpful. River folk in the South are friendly and say, “See ya down the river.”
Even when they question what two ho-mo-sex-u-als are doing in their river. And there are several encounters that make me wince for the state of grace which cannot allow people to just be people.
Gods and goddesses what adventures these two have. It makes me want to pay for adult beverages while they regale me with tales and tell me how they got through heartbreaking death, horrifying weather, and the sweltering humidity of life on a boat on a river.
There’s not a whole lot wrong with the way this book is written. It’s elegant in a way that so few books these days are. It’s evident Watson worked hard, and lovingly, on River Queens, but it doesn’t read like hard work at all. It reads smoothly, like a lazy day on the river when all is right with the world.
I am grateful Alexander Watson reached out to me and asked I read his book. And I look forward to reading more of his writing as it becomes available. The country could use a few more gentlemanly intrepid travelers.
Title: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Author: Mary Roach
Published: 2005
ISBN-13: 9780739467298
Publisher: Norton
Twitter: @Mary_Roach
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture
Publisher’s Blurb: “What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?” In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.
This could also be titled Mary Roach Travels the World in Search of an Answer Which Doesn’t Exist. The book starts in India with Roach trailing a doctor collecting anecdotes about reincarnation in search of proof that reincarnation actually exists. It ends in a hospital at University of Virginia with a tablet computer mounted to the ceiling facing away from the operating table beneath it. The researchers hope to prove out of body experiences by having a subject astral project and tell what’s on the computer screen.
Inbetween she travels to England to take classes to learn to be a psychic, gets a cold reading from someone, and discusses spiritualism along the lines of The Witch of Lime Street. Roach’s snobbish tone arrives at the same place we all do, there is no scientific proof for what happens after we die.
Believers gonna believe, skeptics gonna question; ain’t none of us got a lock an answer which makes universal sense. And while I didn’t mind the process Roach used to satisfy (or not) her curiosity, I did mind that while asking her questions, she was not so openly mocking those who believed in something with no proof. That’s why it’s called faith, Mary, it can’t be proven.
My own reading, and conversations, have led me to the same conclusion many have, there may be something bigger than all of us at work (something I choose to believe in), but there’s no definitive answer to what happens next. In the end, it isn’t what one believes or doesn’t, it’s how one behaves in the present that matters. Chances are we won’t know what happens next even as it’s happening.
So good for Mary Roach for getting to go interesting places to ask questions about an interesting topic. If only she’d been willing to set aside her preconceptions for the duration.
Title: When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair
Author: Geneen Roth
Published: 1998
ISBN-13: 9780786885084
Publisher: Hyperion
The connection between eating and emotions is deep and tight. It’s a way we learn to soothe ourselves, to fill the holes in our hearts, and may be one area in which we feel we’re in control.
Geneen Roth’s book is about the ways we trick ourselves into sabotaging ourselves with food, and how to become more aware and stop the damage.
Anyone who has known me for more than five minutes knows that I have issues. Lots and lots of issues which I use food to deal with. Emotional eating is a learned trait, and did I ever learn it well.
I’m not sure why I initially picked up When You Eat the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair, something clearly resonated. Becoming the person you love most in your own life is hard, challenging work. One needs a lot of help to get there.
Roth goes beyond the “just stop eating so much,” or “trade gluten free for x,” form of food talk. In 50 short (2-3 pages) chapters, she writes about the issues emotional eating covers and offers ways to break some of the chains we’ve formed over the years.
Most of them are things I already do, like wearing bright colors. If you haven’t seen my wardrobe, it’s filled with bright pinks and deep purples. But that’s a recent change for me.
When You Eat the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair isn’t about body image or acceptance, it’s about learning to love ourselves as the gems we are, regardless of our looks. It’s about learning to stop tearing ourselves down.
Title: How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
Author: Steven Johnson
Published: 2015
ISBN-13: 9781594633935
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Twitter: @StevenBJohnson
Steven Johnson picked six topics we take for granted in our modern-day lives and explores how these topics became so important. For instance, he tells the story of standardized time by first telling the story of sea trade and railroads and multitudinous time zones until someone had the idea of synchronizing our clocks. Which then led to even greater discoveries and implementations.
I’m a big James Burke fan. My favorite episode of Connections was the one in which he explained how Jacquard weaving patterns led to Hollerith computer cards which led to modern computer programming. I’m also a history nerd and love multi-disciplinary works like Johnson’s.
The topics are relevant and interesting. Johnson’s writing style makes some the complexities easy to understand, and offers up intriguing anecdotes about how things like Clean came to be such a big deal.
One of the best things in this book is Johnson’s reminders that innovations don’t happen on their own. Creativity builds on the work of others, often over many years of trial and error
The Six Topics are:
1. Glass
2. Cold
3. Sound
4. Clean
5. Time
6. Light
Title: Baby You’re a Rich Man: Suing the Beatles for Fun and Profit
Author: Stan Soocher
Published: 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1-61168-380-5
Publisher: ForeEdge
This was a LibraryThing Advance Reading Copy, which I received in exchange for an honest review.
I was looking forward to learning more about behind the scenes Beatles. Reading about the lawsuits against them, and the people who got rich from these suits seemed a fascinating way to go. Not so much.
Stan Soocher’s deeply researched book does tell every single detail (or so it seems) of the convoluted legal world of The Beatles from their first manager, Brian Epstein, to their last, Allen Klein. But after a while, it reads like a laundry list of industry moguls suing each other and The Beatles in a frenzy of mean-spirited greediness. Some of the lawsuits seem to be filed out of spite. Those are just the outsiders. The suits between the members of the group are a reflection of their evolution from young Liverpool lads to mature artists realizing that many of the events happening to them are neither what they expected, nor what they wanted as artists.
The most interesting part was the intertwined lawsuits against John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Not only was J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign to have Lennon expelled from the US for his vocal political views against the Viet Nam war, but Yoko’s ex-husband was playing games with custody of her daughter with him. Lennon and Ono were caught in a Catch-22 of suits which hampered their ability to resolve anything.
The odious Allen Klein looms large for much of the book, finding new and distasteful ways to put more of The Beatles’ money into his own pocket. It was almost a never-ending litany of fleecing his clients by law suit.
Soocher’s detailed writing tends to be dry. Not quite completely boring, but not quite enthralling either.
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