Reading List - 2018
Jan. 1st, 2018 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfireLast year I limped to 16 books. Optimistic I'll break my streak of shit books from last year and do better than that this year.
January
1. Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson So much better than the second one in this trilogy. I might even prefer it to Necromancer. Kumiko was a pointless pointless nothing character and I resented her existence as a fantasy-Japanese-girl-trope and nothing more. Really enjoyed the pace, language and overall plot, such as it was.
2. Saga Volume 8 - Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples Oh god it's so so good. How is anything this good? Read the entire thing on train home from East Croydon, so under 50mins. Glorious. Funny, clever, heartfelt, beautifully drawn, perfectly paced. It's literally perfect.
February
3. The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson I decided I must read this last year when a keynote speaker at the Lesbian Lives conference structured her presentation around it and it appeared to be about everything I wrote my thesis on. It's a willfully and unapologetically intellectual piece and touches on all sorts of bits of theory I read and use which was really engaging. It reminded me a little of Hallucinating Foucault, a little of Written on the Body, and a little of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (all of which I love). It's entirely it's own creature though and really well put together. Very pacey despite it's style and potentially dense content. The final third was the least engaging for me, because I think it veered too much into a more traditional narrative of pregnancy and romance but in all I found it creatively and intellectually inspiring.
4. The Rime of the Modern Mariner - Nick Hayes I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. The illustration is beautiful and the period when the ship is becalmed in the sea of plastic is really compelling - as are the illsutrations of the various animals wrapped into knots with plastic and sea ending in a tangled mess. The thing that let it down was the language - the rich rhythm of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner was utterly lost and occasionally tripped over itself trying to crowbar ill-fitting words into some sort of rhyme. There was also a bit of a nagging thing for me about the uncritical celebration of pastoral life/small scale farming. Because I'm not at all convinced "cities are bad and rural farming life is the solution" actually represents a meaningful environmental critique.
March
5. Playthings - Alex Pheby This was so promising and initially it was really exhilarating but the final third/final quarter really seemed to lack the concluding flourish it needed. In all, it just seemed to fizzle out - not even 'not go anywhere' which well written literary fiction comfortably can - but just not maintain it's own momentum. The claims it explored the "psychological structure of fascism" was massively overstated - or entirely inaccessible to someone without extensive knowledge of psychoanlysis. It was good, but given liberties were already taken with the representation of a real person, there was scope to do something else at the end and it just left me feeling disappointed.
6. Northern Lights - Philip Pullman I'd only read this once but seen the not-very-good film a lot of times and as a result the latter has kind of overtaken my imagination. For that reason, it was really good to go back to the book and rediscover a proper Lyra and a really rich world with complex motivations for different characters. Flew through it and glad to have the whole trilogy as a beautiful hardback to go on to the next book soon.
7. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers Feminist sci-fi! Good feminist sci-fi! Finally! Brilliant! Character driven! Complexity, depth, care, love, family, friendship, enduring bonds! Oh god this was like a warm bath. Loads of queerness, great writing compelling me through, proper conversations that sound like each person is their own person. I loved every second, Corbin's character arc, Sissix's complexity. Dr Chef's warmth and pain. Pei's resolution. Kizzy and Jenks' relationship! Oh god I want to read it again and/or become a Spacer.
April
8. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher I really wanted to love this. And it was an appropriately pithy, easy read for the plane - although sadly much too short for my 7 hour long haul - finished it in a little over an hour. But equally, it was written in such a repetative, conversational way it became a bit infuriating. Given it's on kindle, I could search this but I suspect the number of "well anyway", is truly painful. It reads like transcribed speech - perhaps that's exactly what it is given it was 'adapted' from a play but...blah. Won't be rushing to read anything else, much as I liked the light-touch of philosophy versus anecdote.
May
9. A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky Chambers It's definitely not as good as the first one but the focus on people and relationships still drives it forward with a good pace. The deep dive into questions about the ethics of creating AI and what it means to be human was great and really got me thinking on that stuff - including changing the way I viewed the droids in Solo: A Star Wars Movie.
June
10. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline This is such a good concept totally ruined by that neck beard, women hating, incel mentality. It's so obnoxious. I absolutely believed that Parzival was a projection of Ernest Cline, that's part of where the bad taste that this book leaves you with comes from. It's really pacy, and the fights are written really well. But the world building - the reference points are all media texts made by men, of course - is shoddy, lots of holes in the logic. And it's shot through with a really nasty streak. The characters are largely two dimensional - especially clear in the big 'reveal' about Aech - and Wade is utterly detestable. His 'reward' at the end of the book is so inevitable and so offensive for a book written in 2011.
July
11. Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan I found this weirdly frustrating. Pacing seemed to go in peaks and troughs which is no bad thing, but sometimes it was a slog and sometimes I couldn't put it down so I never got into a good rhythm with it. Fundamentally, I think I hated the world that was built - it was cruel and hard and empty. Something Gibson, for example, never does despite his cyberpunk dystopias being very hard edged. I liked the concept and it was densely plotted. For a first novel, it was pretty impressive. However, I found there were too many characters to keep track of and I kept losing the thread of who was who and why they were significant - I think this is a problem of writing and a need for greater detail in the introductions. I was also left with a bad taste in my mouth over the sexual violence. Even the protagonist [spoiler] gets turned into a woman in order that he can be tortured and we are treated to a truly gratuitous description of her being burned from inside her vagina. The Madonna/whore stuff was, ultimately, pointless and served to reinforce my sense the author had a crummy view of women. Disappointing and a bit of a slog in the end.
12. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix - J.K. Rowling. I wanted something to absord me when I couldn't switch off from work so this was the choice - next in series from last one I read last year. I don't know why I read this one. It makes me so, so sad. Sirius' end is so unfair. The storyline with Hagrid and Grawp is also long and unnecessary in an already very long book. Sirius needn't have died if literally anyone in the order had said to Harry "you need to learn Occulemency so Voldermort won't give you false visions and lure you into a trap". Dumbledore still wouldn't have had to tell him about the prophecy. Sirius needn't have died if Harry had used the goddamn mirror which he gave him when he left for Hogwarts. I am, obviously, hugely compelled by the story and utterly in love wih Sirius and Lupin or these things wouldn't bother me so much but goddamn it Rowling, there is a lot in this story that just seems to be about torturing Harry and punishing Sirius for being a bit of a rebel. I want a version of the story from here out where Sirius, Lupin and Tonks all survive.
13. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling I didn't really want to read this but I couldn't remember how Harry did in his OWLs and, for some reason, it seemed incredibly important to me to find out. It's the weakest book in the series, I think. There's a lot of necessary narrative work and the way Snape is written is really strong and careful. But in all I'm a bit 'meh' about it. Even with the death - and the very relatable grief and depiction of the funeral service.
August
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling I haven't been able to concentrate on anything for a month so I borrowed this from a friend (so much easier to manage in paperback, who knew?!) and ploughed through it in 2 days. It hurts, this book. I always start crying in earnest from the point Harry goes to Dumbledore's office with Snape's memories, through to the point Harry wakes up in Kings Cross. Every time. Can literally not see the page. There are, of course, plotting and pace issues with the series and everyone seems to love pointing these out as though they invalidate the story telling or strength of the core characterisations. And if I see another 'hot take' about how Dumbledore is terrible and Snape is evil and/or a lamb I will absolutely burn the place down - anyone who has read the books carefully sees these things acknowledged and worked through. Characters can be complex. People are broadly good but act cruelly and selfishly, and vice versa. Why is that considered a weakness of these books? It's true of all great books - Jane Eyre? Wuthering Heights? Charie and the Chocolate Factory? Crime and Punishment! 1984, The Outsider....I could go on and on and on. Anyway. Yep. Read it again.
15. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath There was a great documentary on BBC4 about this book which weaved together the personal and fictional and interviewed lots of people close to Plath from her childhood and adolescence. It was super moving and engaging and I thought it was about time I revisited this. I first read it when I was aound 16, I think, and was really into the introspective sadness, as is the nature of teens. I was interested to know whether it would still move me or if it would seem indulgent. I was delighted to find it as compelling as ever and to read it with adult eyes - a perspective Plath herself is applying to that time in her life when she came to write the The Bell Jar. Tremendous, and careful book.
September
16. Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie I picked this up in a splurge in Waterstones - when I also bought number 15, and a fancy hard cover copy of Frankenstein to replace my ancient, heavily annotated copy. I had my 4 day holiday to Salzburg in mind because I find Christie so engaging and easy to read - even if regularly interrupted. I should have paid more attention to the chronological listing of non-series books on the back because this is a late one and like others of her later work, it's really repetative and lacks the complexity and claustrophobia of her best work. It felt like a short story spun out to a full length novel without anything being added. I also didn't really buy the resolution - the original murder for sure, but the later ones made no sense. And that's never happened before. Nevertheless, it occupied me for about 3 hours so good value in that respect.
17. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Unlike most of the English speaking world, I'd never read this! I think one of the lower English sets read this at school but we had longer books in the top set. It's a nice enough novella, very open in structure and style - I can almost hear the school lessons on it, it so clearly lends itself to introductory literary criticism. Bleak as fuck but a good vignette of a very particular time and place.
October
18. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks I read this against my better instincts. Years ago I tried and failed to read Complicity by Banks which was a set text on a literature module I was doing - the opening violence in that book was so disturbing to me I abandoned the attempt entirely. Unfortunately, I found the violence - graphically written and towards both humans and animals - just as distasteful. I've read a lot of really violent books - various hard boiled crime and A Clockwork Orange, being first examples to jump to mind - and I can stomach it if the violence is in service of something. I fail to see what Banks achieves with violence in this (or Complicity) and I actually found myself dreading returning to read it. The 'big twist' I've seen and heard people talking about was nothing of the sort - I had it pegged in the first 50 or less pages. The final few pages after that reveal were so badly written and so fucking self-satisfied (imagine! aren't I a clever author! I've made a big point about masculinity!) whatever shred of goodwill toward the project I had remaining evaporated.
19. Trumpet - Jackie Kay A friend recommended me to this when we were drunkenly discussing books one night and I gushed "omg that sounds amazing". I waited until my drunken expectations had faded and then read it. It's a very uneven book. The first few sections - the first 50 or so pages? - are tremendous. Wonderfully drawn characters and I even cried. Then it turns into a slog. In the sense it's about grief this perhaps isn't a surprise but I think the sort-of-epistolary form interrupted any sort of flow so it is hard to read at the pace you need to manage that sort of content. The final quarter returned to form and we moved satisfyingly to the end. But it went from being "omg, this is one of the best books I've read" to "ugh, I must finish this" to "meh, it was good enough". I wish there had been more of Joss' voice in the book, rather than that final letter, although I suppose it would have lessened the impact of that. In all, disappointing.
20. The Power - Naomi Alderman Ugh. This is a good concept wasted on poor character development, slightly questionable politcs, and a lack of vision. There's so little texture on the world as it changes, there's so little information on or motivations for characters - Margot and Tunde are the only people who have any depth or drive but it's nowhere near enough.The observation and way the news anchors were written was the sole highlight for me. For such a long book, it's very shallow, all it has to say is; "if women had power to inflict pain and death with a touch, they'd all behave like men". It's so on the nose in it's rape/violence/control stuff - it's not clever, it's not subtle, it's no more sophisticated than a moderately popular Tumblr post. Gender is handled so naively and it illuminates nothing. I saw one review that said it was great to finally see a feminist sci fi book where women fight back - but it's not. The reason feminist sci-fi/dystopia/speculative fiction doesn't usually include women-on-man violence is because feminist writers seek to explore something other than a straight reversal of power and brutality, and consider what it means to control or dominate in other ways, or what happens when women are no longer dominated. The vision of Islamic nations versus 'democratic' USA after the change was offensive - women overthrow the government in Saudi and set up a non-religious government, but in the US they just eventually vote in a couple of women? Fuck off. Its poorly thought through, poorly conceived, poorly understood takes on the contemporary world is a waste.
21. Saga Volume 9 - Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples I found this uncharacteristically slow - utterly gorgeous to look at again though. Given how it ended, it became clear why the run up to that had been as it was. I find it amazing they can write The Will as they do - he's a total bastard but I am always rooting for him. The best anti-hero I've ever read?
November
22. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson This was great. Really tense and scary. Great study of a human mind. Wonderful use of setting as a character in and of itself. Subtle commentary on gender roles and domesticity. Like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I found the ending vaguely disappointing. I understood the ending - and I really liked how utterly disorientated I became towards the end of the book and how I only understood what had been happening with the reported speech of other characters at the point Eleanor was leaving the house - but somehow it didn't deliver what I wanted.
23. Riffs and Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy - Stephen Lee Naish I hesitate to pan this as dispassionately as I want to because I contributed some comments on my relationship to the album, and the author kindly sent me a copy when it was published but...the book is about 150 pages long but only 62 pages are dedicated to discussing Know Your Enemy specifically. It doesn't work as a book for someone unfamiliar with the band - there are too many missing details to understand the discussion for that. Given this is true, the lengthy summary of the band's albums before and after KYE is all the more baffling. The structure was incomprehensible to me - there was no systematic handling of the tracks or the events/biography of band surrounding it. There were multiple typographical and grammatical errors. There were a number of factual errors which seem to have been copied over from fan lore and other publications on the Manics. There was no clear central thesis - the claim KYE needs re-examining and appreciating as per the blurb was solid - but there didn't seem to be any sustained argument to that end. There were weird references to the contemp context of the album - the Iraq War was baffling referred to as a "pre-emptive war" - but the political climate, whilst potentially a fascinating lens to understand the album by, was handled unevenly and non-systematically. It felt, ultimately, like a wasted opportunity and I'm sad about that.
December
24. Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie Generally, I really loved this. But I found the use of pronouns (obviously intended to be provocative in prompting reflection on how we construct ideas about characters based on gender markers, and works well to reflect on how different languages have different gender convetions) incredibly frustrating - it made it really challenging to follow who was being refered to when there were more than 2 characters in a scene. Similarly, the naming conventions of characters occasionally meant I struggled to get characters sorted out. I was there by the end but it was really unforgiving in allowing you to acclimatise to those elements. Looking forward to the next two in the series.
25. The Adventure of Black Peter, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons - Arthur Conan Doyle More short stories. I enjoyed the second one particularly. The third was exceptionally easy to predict.
January
1. Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson So much better than the second one in this trilogy. I might even prefer it to Necromancer. Kumiko was a pointless pointless nothing character and I resented her existence as a fantasy-Japanese-girl-trope and nothing more. Really enjoyed the pace, language and overall plot, such as it was.
2. Saga Volume 8 - Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples Oh god it's so so good. How is anything this good? Read the entire thing on train home from East Croydon, so under 50mins. Glorious. Funny, clever, heartfelt, beautifully drawn, perfectly paced. It's literally perfect.
February
3. The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson I decided I must read this last year when a keynote speaker at the Lesbian Lives conference structured her presentation around it and it appeared to be about everything I wrote my thesis on. It's a willfully and unapologetically intellectual piece and touches on all sorts of bits of theory I read and use which was really engaging. It reminded me a little of Hallucinating Foucault, a little of Written on the Body, and a little of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (all of which I love). It's entirely it's own creature though and really well put together. Very pacey despite it's style and potentially dense content. The final third was the least engaging for me, because I think it veered too much into a more traditional narrative of pregnancy and romance but in all I found it creatively and intellectually inspiring.
4. The Rime of the Modern Mariner - Nick Hayes I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. The illustration is beautiful and the period when the ship is becalmed in the sea of plastic is really compelling - as are the illsutrations of the various animals wrapped into knots with plastic and sea ending in a tangled mess. The thing that let it down was the language - the rich rhythm of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner was utterly lost and occasionally tripped over itself trying to crowbar ill-fitting words into some sort of rhyme. There was also a bit of a nagging thing for me about the uncritical celebration of pastoral life/small scale farming. Because I'm not at all convinced "cities are bad and rural farming life is the solution" actually represents a meaningful environmental critique.
March
5. Playthings - Alex Pheby This was so promising and initially it was really exhilarating but the final third/final quarter really seemed to lack the concluding flourish it needed. In all, it just seemed to fizzle out - not even 'not go anywhere' which well written literary fiction comfortably can - but just not maintain it's own momentum. The claims it explored the "psychological structure of fascism" was massively overstated - or entirely inaccessible to someone without extensive knowledge of psychoanlysis. It was good, but given liberties were already taken with the representation of a real person, there was scope to do something else at the end and it just left me feeling disappointed.
6. Northern Lights - Philip Pullman I'd only read this once but seen the not-very-good film a lot of times and as a result the latter has kind of overtaken my imagination. For that reason, it was really good to go back to the book and rediscover a proper Lyra and a really rich world with complex motivations for different characters. Flew through it and glad to have the whole trilogy as a beautiful hardback to go on to the next book soon.
7. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers Feminist sci-fi! Good feminist sci-fi! Finally! Brilliant! Character driven! Complexity, depth, care, love, family, friendship, enduring bonds! Oh god this was like a warm bath. Loads of queerness, great writing compelling me through, proper conversations that sound like each person is their own person. I loved every second, Corbin's character arc, Sissix's complexity. Dr Chef's warmth and pain. Pei's resolution. Kizzy and Jenks' relationship! Oh god I want to read it again and/or become a Spacer.
April
8. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher I really wanted to love this. And it was an appropriately pithy, easy read for the plane - although sadly much too short for my 7 hour long haul - finished it in a little over an hour. But equally, it was written in such a repetative, conversational way it became a bit infuriating. Given it's on kindle, I could search this but I suspect the number of "well anyway", is truly painful. It reads like transcribed speech - perhaps that's exactly what it is given it was 'adapted' from a play but...blah. Won't be rushing to read anything else, much as I liked the light-touch of philosophy versus anecdote.
May
9. A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky Chambers It's definitely not as good as the first one but the focus on people and relationships still drives it forward with a good pace. The deep dive into questions about the ethics of creating AI and what it means to be human was great and really got me thinking on that stuff - including changing the way I viewed the droids in Solo: A Star Wars Movie.
June
10. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline This is such a good concept totally ruined by that neck beard, women hating, incel mentality. It's so obnoxious. I absolutely believed that Parzival was a projection of Ernest Cline, that's part of where the bad taste that this book leaves you with comes from. It's really pacy, and the fights are written really well. But the world building - the reference points are all media texts made by men, of course - is shoddy, lots of holes in the logic. And it's shot through with a really nasty streak. The characters are largely two dimensional - especially clear in the big 'reveal' about Aech - and Wade is utterly detestable. His 'reward' at the end of the book is so inevitable and so offensive for a book written in 2011.
July
11. Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan I found this weirdly frustrating. Pacing seemed to go in peaks and troughs which is no bad thing, but sometimes it was a slog and sometimes I couldn't put it down so I never got into a good rhythm with it. Fundamentally, I think I hated the world that was built - it was cruel and hard and empty. Something Gibson, for example, never does despite his cyberpunk dystopias being very hard edged. I liked the concept and it was densely plotted. For a first novel, it was pretty impressive. However, I found there were too many characters to keep track of and I kept losing the thread of who was who and why they were significant - I think this is a problem of writing and a need for greater detail in the introductions. I was also left with a bad taste in my mouth over the sexual violence. Even the protagonist [spoiler] gets turned into a woman in order that he can be tortured and we are treated to a truly gratuitous description of her being burned from inside her vagina. The Madonna/whore stuff was, ultimately, pointless and served to reinforce my sense the author had a crummy view of women. Disappointing and a bit of a slog in the end.
12. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix - J.K. Rowling. I wanted something to absord me when I couldn't switch off from work so this was the choice - next in series from last one I read last year. I don't know why I read this one. It makes me so, so sad. Sirius' end is so unfair. The storyline with Hagrid and Grawp is also long and unnecessary in an already very long book. Sirius needn't have died if literally anyone in the order had said to Harry "you need to learn Occulemency so Voldermort won't give you false visions and lure you into a trap". Dumbledore still wouldn't have had to tell him about the prophecy. Sirius needn't have died if Harry had used the goddamn mirror which he gave him when he left for Hogwarts. I am, obviously, hugely compelled by the story and utterly in love wih Sirius and Lupin or these things wouldn't bother me so much but goddamn it Rowling, there is a lot in this story that just seems to be about torturing Harry and punishing Sirius for being a bit of a rebel. I want a version of the story from here out where Sirius, Lupin and Tonks all survive.
13. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling I didn't really want to read this but I couldn't remember how Harry did in his OWLs and, for some reason, it seemed incredibly important to me to find out. It's the weakest book in the series, I think. There's a lot of necessary narrative work and the way Snape is written is really strong and careful. But in all I'm a bit 'meh' about it. Even with the death - and the very relatable grief and depiction of the funeral service.
August
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling I haven't been able to concentrate on anything for a month so I borrowed this from a friend (so much easier to manage in paperback, who knew?!) and ploughed through it in 2 days. It hurts, this book. I always start crying in earnest from the point Harry goes to Dumbledore's office with Snape's memories, through to the point Harry wakes up in Kings Cross. Every time. Can literally not see the page. There are, of course, plotting and pace issues with the series and everyone seems to love pointing these out as though they invalidate the story telling or strength of the core characterisations. And if I see another 'hot take' about how Dumbledore is terrible and Snape is evil and/or a lamb I will absolutely burn the place down - anyone who has read the books carefully sees these things acknowledged and worked through. Characters can be complex. People are broadly good but act cruelly and selfishly, and vice versa. Why is that considered a weakness of these books? It's true of all great books - Jane Eyre? Wuthering Heights? Charie and the Chocolate Factory? Crime and Punishment! 1984, The Outsider....I could go on and on and on. Anyway. Yep. Read it again.
15. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath There was a great documentary on BBC4 about this book which weaved together the personal and fictional and interviewed lots of people close to Plath from her childhood and adolescence. It was super moving and engaging and I thought it was about time I revisited this. I first read it when I was aound 16, I think, and was really into the introspective sadness, as is the nature of teens. I was interested to know whether it would still move me or if it would seem indulgent. I was delighted to find it as compelling as ever and to read it with adult eyes - a perspective Plath herself is applying to that time in her life when she came to write the The Bell Jar. Tremendous, and careful book.
September
16. Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie I picked this up in a splurge in Waterstones - when I also bought number 15, and a fancy hard cover copy of Frankenstein to replace my ancient, heavily annotated copy. I had my 4 day holiday to Salzburg in mind because I find Christie so engaging and easy to read - even if regularly interrupted. I should have paid more attention to the chronological listing of non-series books on the back because this is a late one and like others of her later work, it's really repetative and lacks the complexity and claustrophobia of her best work. It felt like a short story spun out to a full length novel without anything being added. I also didn't really buy the resolution - the original murder for sure, but the later ones made no sense. And that's never happened before. Nevertheless, it occupied me for about 3 hours so good value in that respect.
17. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Unlike most of the English speaking world, I'd never read this! I think one of the lower English sets read this at school but we had longer books in the top set. It's a nice enough novella, very open in structure and style - I can almost hear the school lessons on it, it so clearly lends itself to introductory literary criticism. Bleak as fuck but a good vignette of a very particular time and place.
October
18. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks I read this against my better instincts. Years ago I tried and failed to read Complicity by Banks which was a set text on a literature module I was doing - the opening violence in that book was so disturbing to me I abandoned the attempt entirely. Unfortunately, I found the violence - graphically written and towards both humans and animals - just as distasteful. I've read a lot of really violent books - various hard boiled crime and A Clockwork Orange, being first examples to jump to mind - and I can stomach it if the violence is in service of something. I fail to see what Banks achieves with violence in this (or Complicity) and I actually found myself dreading returning to read it. The 'big twist' I've seen and heard people talking about was nothing of the sort - I had it pegged in the first 50 or less pages. The final few pages after that reveal were so badly written and so fucking self-satisfied (imagine! aren't I a clever author! I've made a big point about masculinity!) whatever shred of goodwill toward the project I had remaining evaporated.
19. Trumpet - Jackie Kay A friend recommended me to this when we were drunkenly discussing books one night and I gushed "omg that sounds amazing". I waited until my drunken expectations had faded and then read it. It's a very uneven book. The first few sections - the first 50 or so pages? - are tremendous. Wonderfully drawn characters and I even cried. Then it turns into a slog. In the sense it's about grief this perhaps isn't a surprise but I think the sort-of-epistolary form interrupted any sort of flow so it is hard to read at the pace you need to manage that sort of content. The final quarter returned to form and we moved satisfyingly to the end. But it went from being "omg, this is one of the best books I've read" to "ugh, I must finish this" to "meh, it was good enough". I wish there had been more of Joss' voice in the book, rather than that final letter, although I suppose it would have lessened the impact of that. In all, disappointing.
20. The Power - Naomi Alderman Ugh. This is a good concept wasted on poor character development, slightly questionable politcs, and a lack of vision. There's so little texture on the world as it changes, there's so little information on or motivations for characters - Margot and Tunde are the only people who have any depth or drive but it's nowhere near enough.The observation and way the news anchors were written was the sole highlight for me. For such a long book, it's very shallow, all it has to say is; "if women had power to inflict pain and death with a touch, they'd all behave like men". It's so on the nose in it's rape/violence/control stuff - it's not clever, it's not subtle, it's no more sophisticated than a moderately popular Tumblr post. Gender is handled so naively and it illuminates nothing. I saw one review that said it was great to finally see a feminist sci fi book where women fight back - but it's not. The reason feminist sci-fi/dystopia/speculative fiction doesn't usually include women-on-man violence is because feminist writers seek to explore something other than a straight reversal of power and brutality, and consider what it means to control or dominate in other ways, or what happens when women are no longer dominated. The vision of Islamic nations versus 'democratic' USA after the change was offensive - women overthrow the government in Saudi and set up a non-religious government, but in the US they just eventually vote in a couple of women? Fuck off. Its poorly thought through, poorly conceived, poorly understood takes on the contemporary world is a waste.
21. Saga Volume 9 - Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples I found this uncharacteristically slow - utterly gorgeous to look at again though. Given how it ended, it became clear why the run up to that had been as it was. I find it amazing they can write The Will as they do - he's a total bastard but I am always rooting for him. The best anti-hero I've ever read?
November
22. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson This was great. Really tense and scary. Great study of a human mind. Wonderful use of setting as a character in and of itself. Subtle commentary on gender roles and domesticity. Like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I found the ending vaguely disappointing. I understood the ending - and I really liked how utterly disorientated I became towards the end of the book and how I only understood what had been happening with the reported speech of other characters at the point Eleanor was leaving the house - but somehow it didn't deliver what I wanted.
23. Riffs and Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy - Stephen Lee Naish I hesitate to pan this as dispassionately as I want to because I contributed some comments on my relationship to the album, and the author kindly sent me a copy when it was published but...the book is about 150 pages long but only 62 pages are dedicated to discussing Know Your Enemy specifically. It doesn't work as a book for someone unfamiliar with the band - there are too many missing details to understand the discussion for that. Given this is true, the lengthy summary of the band's albums before and after KYE is all the more baffling. The structure was incomprehensible to me - there was no systematic handling of the tracks or the events/biography of band surrounding it. There were multiple typographical and grammatical errors. There were a number of factual errors which seem to have been copied over from fan lore and other publications on the Manics. There was no clear central thesis - the claim KYE needs re-examining and appreciating as per the blurb was solid - but there didn't seem to be any sustained argument to that end. There were weird references to the contemp context of the album - the Iraq War was baffling referred to as a "pre-emptive war" - but the political climate, whilst potentially a fascinating lens to understand the album by, was handled unevenly and non-systematically. It felt, ultimately, like a wasted opportunity and I'm sad about that.
December
24. Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie Generally, I really loved this. But I found the use of pronouns (obviously intended to be provocative in prompting reflection on how we construct ideas about characters based on gender markers, and works well to reflect on how different languages have different gender convetions) incredibly frustrating - it made it really challenging to follow who was being refered to when there were more than 2 characters in a scene. Similarly, the naming conventions of characters occasionally meant I struggled to get characters sorted out. I was there by the end but it was really unforgiving in allowing you to acclimatise to those elements. Looking forward to the next two in the series.
25. The Adventure of Black Peter, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons - Arthur Conan Doyle More short stories. I enjoyed the second one particularly. The third was exceptionally easy to predict.