Books I Read in 2019

This was not a record-breaking year for me; I still read over 100 books. Many of them were for school - I had three heavy terms in a row, in terms of novels. Spring especially was dense - I had to read a book a week, and they weren't light either. Luckily, I loved so much of what I read this year - I found a bunch of new favorites, and re-confirmed that some of my favorite writers really are as good as I thought.

As per usual, anything with an asterisk is something I've read before. Anything with two was read for school. Three means both.

Favorite works of fiction: The Cabin at the End of the World; Lovecraft Country; The Underground Railroad; Never Let Me Go; The Nickel Boys; The Silence of the Girls; Mantissa; To Say Nothing of the Dog; The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth.

Favorite works of non-fiction: The James Connolly Reader; In the Mountains of Madness: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft; Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin; The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper; No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us; Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

Favorite collections of short fiction: Blood and Water and Other Tales; Too Much Happiness: Stories; Stranger Things Happen; Going to Meet the Man: Stories; Stories of Your Life and Others; The White People and Other Weird Stories.

Favorite re-reads: Rebecca; The Dispossessed; Parable of the Sower; Dubliners.

Favorite read for School: Human Croquet.

The full list is below, along with my thoughts as I finished them.‌‌‌‌

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens*: I don’t think this is one of Dickens’ best; but I still ended up liking it in the end. The sentimentality finally won me over, and it’s all so messily zany. I hate that this novel is so contemptuous of its female characters, though, especially Nicholas’s mother. Dickens seemed to have so much ugly rage at women like her, when she’s pretty harmless. The treatment of Kate is a little better, but all of the female characters are either boring saints or figures of fun.
The White People and Other Weird Stories - Arthur Machen: Machen is a really interesting writer; I’m glad I was introduced to him. I think the title story and “The Novel of the White Powder” were my favorites, they were probably the scariest, but his post-WWI stories are especially interesting. I didn’t love “The Bowman,” but “Out of the Earth” was terrifying and devastating. He’s like a less offensive Lovecraft. And a better stylist.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption - Bryan Stevenson: What a good book about a good person. I needed to put it down for long stretches, however, because there are so many horrible stories and even when things work out they don’t really. The time can’t be won back, the sacrifices of money and health and trauma and community ties can’t ever be made whole. I don’t want it all made right, I want what happened not to have happened, and failing that I want every prison eliminated and everyone set free. This is a book worth reading; it shows you better than theory or hypotheticals ever could how truly broken our system is at everything but locking up poor and black or brown people, torturing them, and making use of their labor. We really are the worst country in the world.
Washington Square - Henry James*** - I admire this book a great deal. I had to re-read it for my modernism class, and it’s an odd one; I’m not sure why we’re starting here but I have some ideas. There’s so much about storytelling, and people thinking they have to act according to type or expecting other people to act according to type. This causes most of the grief; it’s interesting. And so much is about how the characters think of themselves as current, while the narrator speaks of them as historical. It’s an interesting tension.
Walled States, Waning Sovereignty - Wendy Brown: This was really interesting, especially in the times we’re in. I liked the ways she used Freud (both Sigmund and Anna). The central thesis - that states wall themselves off out of weakness, not strength - is hard to argue with.
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*: I love this book so much. I love Du Maurier! Every time I re-read Rebecca I notice new things and am less sure of where the characters stand. Like this time around, I notice that Maxm implies he shot someone else before Rebecca and what??? Everything is so twisty and ambiguous and fucked up, and I’m not sure that any of the people who claimed to understand Rebecca really did. I don’t think any of these idiots knew anything. And the narrator is so deceptive, I don’t think you can trust her narration at all, and her relationship with Maxm is so disturbing and she’s so weird and this book is great!
The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton: This was a Christmas gift from my brother, and not a novel I had heard of before. I’m so glad I got the chance to read it. It’s really, really clever and fun, and it was cool to see the puzzle of the plot fall into place. The worldbuilding is spare, which I liked; you’re never given any exposition except as the character gets it, and he gets it in bits and pieces as he needs it. The pacing is good too; just when something was starting to bother me I would get to another twist or reveal that made it work.
Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang: I really liked these. “Story of Your Life” is probably the most well known, because of Arrival, but even though I knew where it was heading I was still incredibly moved. “Hell is the Absence of God” was also very moving (and sad). I liked the last story, “Like What You See,” quite a bit as well - its format was interesting as well as the idea. It seems like ideas are what drive Chiang’s stories; they’re much harder sci-fi than I typically read. He seems interested in thinking of a concept and teasing out all of its consequences. He’s a very good writer.
A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot in the Houses of Parliament - John Preston: I picked this up after watching the (excellent) miniseries with Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw last year. I’m glad I watched that first, in a way; the performances in it were so good while the real people behave so inexplicably that I needed to remember the performances to remember that they were just people. The British class system is truly wild; the fact that so many people helped Thorpe pull this off when he really gave them nothing in return is a testament to that. A very good read.
The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead: God this was really good. Heartbreakingly good. I cried my eyes out more than once. The central metaphor, turning the railroad into a literal railroad underground like a manifestation of all of the labor of Black people that goes unnoticed and undergirds all of America is such a brilliant touch. It was so hard to have hope for Cora at the end, it’s still America which is still a prison, but she has just enough hope to keep going and we leave her travelling above ground for once, so maybe that’s enough.
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse - edited by John Joseph Adams: This collection did not blow me away. I liked the Stephen King story, and the Octavia Butler, but the only story by a writer I didn’t know that grabbed me was Dave Bailey’s. Maybe I just don’t like post-apocalyptic fiction except under very limited conditions.
The Master - Colm Tóibín**: I read this for class, and liked it quite a bit. It was a long and tough read, however - like many of Henry James’s actual novels. He had a terribly sad life, though he seemed to find some contentment in it which must count for something. And of course he found creative fodder in it.
Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption - Laura Briggs: This was really good. I don’t know that the thesis was new to me, not after reading books like Beggars and Choosers or The Child Catchers, but all of the history was still good to have, especially as these other books relied so much on anecdotes (which are still helpful). It’s so frustrating to see the ways that wealthy, western women’s perceptions of their lack of options turns into incarceration, sterilization, and child-theft for poor women of color. It’s a really, really well-done and very honest book.
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf**: I always feel guilty for not liking Woolf as much as I think I’m supposed to. I admired this book a lot, you can’t not, but I didn’t love it. I don’t think I really got a read on the title character either. Parts were extremely moving, but it’s all so terribly English.
The Hours - Michael Cunningham**: I really liked this, and I’m glad I read it back to back with Woolf. It was fun to see so many connections, which made me appreciate Woolf more. I found it unexpectedly moving, in the end. I’d like to read more Cunningham.
Winter Tide - Ruthanna Emrys: I didn’t like this. I wanted to, the premise is cool, but I don’t think the racial allegory was especially well done. Placing Lovecraftian themes alongside actual politics of the 20th century was done much better by, for instance, David Nickle. Plus this wasn’t scary.
Dubliners - James Joyce***: It was so nice to reread this. It may make me prosaic, but I do love it more than Ulysses. Every story is like a little gem, and I like the way he wrote women quite a bit (wouldn’t call him a feminist of any kind, but he is interested in them and in gendered dynamics and in their relationships with each other). “A Painful Case” is probably the most devastating thing I’ve ever read, still.
The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle: This was a lot of fun; pretty much exactly what a Lovecraft pastiche should be. It was really scary and used “Horror at Red Hook” in a really clever way; exploiting the subtext without grafting anything on. I liked the main character and the way the POV shifted. All together a good read!
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut: What a gift Vonnegut was. I find all of his novels so deeply, desperately sad, and this wasn’t an exception. There’s so much pessimism but you can tell how much he still loved ordinary people. One of the interesting things is how much you can see his training as an anthropologist in this book; the way things are catalogued and explained. It wasn’t my favorite of his, that’ll probably always be Cat’s Cradle, but I liked it a ton.
The Found and The Lost: The Collected Novellas - Ursula K. Le Guinn: This was so good to read. It was great to reread “A Matter of Seggri,” which might be my favorite short piece of hers. But there were so many gems that I hadn’t read before. Le Guinn was such a wonderful writer and was so insightful. I always learn when I read her work.
The Cabin at the End of the World - Paul Tremblay: This book traumatized me. Tremblay is very good at creating children who are smart, sweet-natured, observant, and just a little worried; he immediately endears them to the reader before putting them through the ringer. He’s merciless to his characters. I liked the family at the heart of this story so much, so I didn’t mind the ending which apparently some people found strange or disappointing. I loved it; I wasn’t invested in whether the world ended, but in what these characters were willing to do to and for each other. This is a novel about living, and deciding to go on living, through catastrophe. I kept thinking about Trump and climate change all through it, and I thought of that line from Beckett at the end: “I must go on. I cannot go on. I’ll go on.” So, so, beautifully done. I’ve bought everything else he’s written now.
Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling - Philip Pullman: This was a really fun collection. I’m not sure every piece is essential, as there’s some repetition, but I still enjoyed it. Pullman is one of my favorite writers to read on writing, as he’s always very frank and humble and open. The last piece, on his vision of the Republic of Heaven, was incredibly moving.
Catherine, Called Birdy - Karen Cushman*: It was so nice to re-read this. I loved it so much as a kid, it’s so clever and kind and funny, and I really respect that Cushman trusted the maturity of her young readers enough to know exactly how far she could push the anachronisms; it’s ok to have a rebellious medieval heroine, who is smart and observant and spirited, but you have to be honest about how it would actually work out for her. The happy ending is just happy enough, it’s very fair. And it’s still, despite being for kids, a much more nuanced and realistic depiction of medieval life than anything by George RR Martin.
A God in Ruins - Kate Atkinson: I wanted to love this and didn’t. It’s a companion novel to Life After Life, which I did love, and it wasn’t as engaging or as clever. None of the characters were especially vital, and there was nothing to make me understand why I was reading about this particular person’s life. Well-written, of course, it’s still Atkinson, but ultimately a disappointment.
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner**: I read this for class, and was surprised to like it so much. It was much funnier than I anticipated. The only other Faulkner I’ve read is Go Down Moses, long ago in undergrad, and I didn’t especially care for it. This was quite moving. I don’t know that I’ll go looking for other Faulkner, though.
Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA’s Soul - Kevin Toolis: This was really cool. It’s not quite a history, more of an extended character study of the kind of person who joins and leads the IRA in Northern Ireland, so it’s very valuable as that. The sections with Martin McGuinness are especially interesting, as the book was written a few years before the Good Friday agreement, and McGuinness is not at all presented as someone who would agree to such a deal, nor can Toolis imagine something like the GFA even working. It would be interesting to read what he thinks now, when so much has changed in Northern Ireland and so much seems ready to devolve again if Brexit goes south.
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa: this was definitely different. I really liked parts, but it was essentially reading a well read person’s journal. Just as illuminating, or not as the case may be.
The Great War and Modern Memory - Paul Fussell*: This book is so great. I haven’t read it since high school, and I appreciate it more now. It’s such an interesting way of looking at the war, and war in general, and much like the war it describes it transformed the subsequent scholarship. I can’t think of another book quite like it; maybe some of Scott Poole’s stuff.
The Bell - Iris Murdoch**: I read this for school, and I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t quite this. I liked it a lot, and found myself very invested in the deeply stupid or deluded characters. I’ll look for more of Murdoch’s work.
The House on the Strand - Daphne Du Maurier: What a strange book. Not one of her best, but certainly up there - I’d say Jamaica Inn or The King’s General tier. The ending is killer though, and I was struck by the vague homoerotic undercurrent. Enjoyable.
Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination - David Nickle: I loved the first third and the last third of this; the ending was scary and brave and weird and exactly what I wanted. Nickle is better than many at truly subverting the racist implications of Lovecraftian horror in a way that still acknowledges the power of that horror; I never feel like I’m being told it's wrong to find certain things scary, or that I’m being congratulated for my good politics. It did drag a bit in the middle, but the way it came together at the close made this one, on the whole, a rewarding read.
How Green Was My Valley - Richard Llewellyn*: This was fun to reread. I first read it as a kid, and saw it with a kid’s eyes, so it was interesting to return to it as an adult with more perspective. The sexism bothers me more now, as do some of the flaws in the writing: some characters seem to just drop out of the narrative when Llewellyn gets bored with them. It’s difficult to pin down a real storyline, and the timeline isn’t always clean, and some of the prose borders on purple. Still, much of it is beautifully written and it’s a good treatise on nostalgia, in its way.
The James Connolly Reader - James Connolly, edited by Shaun Harkin: The entire history of Ireland in the 20h century would have been different if he had lived, I really believe that. Connolly was so sensible, and so funny, and so good at seeing how all struggles were connected and so good at explaining that.
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon**: This was for class, and I liked it fine but didn’t love it. Postmodern fiction is always tricky for me; I love a lot of it but when I don’t love it it just makes me so tired, like I’m being lectured. This was beautifully written, but sort of dated in a way that I don’t think Vonnegut, for instance, dates too badly.
The Hunger - Alma Katsu: This was really good, and quite scary. I liked Katsu’s writing style, and I was surprised how much careful character work was done on each of the members of the Donner Party, so we got to know many of them before everything fell apart. It reminded me of the tv-series The Terror in that way (I haven’t read the book). I’ll look for more of Katsu’s work.
Human Croquet - Kate Atkinson**: Wow, I loved this. I’ve read a few Atkinson novels at this point and this is my favorite. I became so invested in the characters and so angry and heartbroken over their suffering, most especially the women.
In The Mean Time - Paul Tremblay: This was a pretty good collection. As always, Tremblay’s treatment of his child characters stands out. He’s very good at getting inside their heads in a convincing way, and he makes them very likable but never overly precocious or unconvincingly slow, either. “It’s Against the Law to Feed the Ducks” and “Rhymes With Jew” were probably my favorites. “The Blog at the End of the World” and “We Will Never Live in the Castle” were clever, too.
Hallucinating Foucault - Patricia Duncker**: I read this for school and didn’t love it. It was interesting, and I’m interested in the idea of “parole” or “the word” in postmodern fiction. In what it says about the order that accompanies (or doesn’t accompany) language. Possible final paper topic.
A House of Gentlefolk - Ivan Turgenev: I did like but didn’t love this. Why do so many of the Russian realists spend so much time discoursing on the true nature of Russianness? That doesn’t appeal so much to me, and the plot of this one didn’t seem to amount to much. I was moved, by the end, but I can’t say I couldn’t live without reading more Turgenev.
In the Mountains of Madness: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft - W. Scott Poole: This was a lot of fun, and helped me put Lovecraft in some context. I like all of Poole’s books - and now I’ve read all but one of them, so I hope he writes more soon! I appreciated that he took Lovecraft seriously, but wasn’t reverent - the brutal fact is that you can’t ignore the racism.
Queer City: Gay London From the Romans to the Present Day - Peter Ackroyd: This was pretty good, but I’m not sure it had much of a point? That is, it reads more like a collection of anecdotes in chronological order than a true history. It was hard to tell where it was all going, and I never got a sense that it added up to a thesis other than “gay people have always been a part of London,” which is certainly true, but there has to be more to say, right? I would have preferred more analysis of what these anecdotes meant, why things changed when and if they did, what the broader trends were and how that compared with the country at large, instead of lots of - admittedly entertaining - gossip. Still a fun read, but not as good as I wanted it to be.
The Blue Heron - Gene Farrington**: This was for school, and written by the professor, which makes it hard to talk about! I liked a lot of things about it, but the style didn’t quite do it for me. Certainly lots of interesting ideas.
The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin: Really really good. I liked how expansive the central premise was, and how many opportunities it provided; it’s a really clever idea. And of course Le Guin is never just about clever ideas, she always remembers that people are people no matter what their environment does to them (though she also remembers that the environment can do quite a lot). I always like her characters so much; The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness are still my favorites, but this is up there for sure.
Lincoln’s Dreams - Connie Willis: I liked this very much but didn’t love it as much as I love the other Willis fiction I’ve read. I don’t think I could get past being asked to sympathize with Robert E. Lee who is, of course, currently sucking cocks in hell. I’m sure he loved his family but he also bought and sold a lot of people who didn’t love their families any less! It always makes me suspicious of a writer who can’t see that, who just ignores all of the ways Lee was evil just because he was nice to other white people. The fact that he was against secession but fought anyway just makes it worse! Anyway, despite that, this was beautifully written and quite moving; it would have been more so if it weren’t riding Lee’s dick quite so relentlessly.
Lovecraft Country - Matt Ruff: Really fun, and very clever. It was more episodic than I expected, but I liked seeing the different perspectives and voices from this extended family. The end was killer, and interestingly ambivalent about where some characters ended up - the fact that Ruby still kept so much from the family and kept using the elixir was troubling. Apparently Jordan Peele is helming a miniseries adaptation; he’ll be great for it.
Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin - Andrea Dworkin: This was brutal, intentionally so of course. I hate Dworkin, I love Dworkin, I hate Dworkin. When I read her I’m caught between thinking that no one has been more right about everything, ever, and sheer frustration over the ways she couldn’t always see over top her own biases. I admire how she found compassion for people like Anita Bryant, but where was that compassion for the feminists who disagreed with her? But of course, where was their compassion for her (an article in the Guardian positing that maybe Andrea Dworkin wasn’t raped, as she claimed, maybe the injuries on her breasts and between her legs were caused by her being fat, somehow - it’s still up on their website, and it’s one of the most vile things from an ostensible feminist that I’ve ever read). There’s a lot to disagree with in this volume; I disagree with a lot. I think her arguments about porn rely too much on just-so stories and tautologies that aren’t backed up by actual data - and maybe the data is there, I’m not an expert, but descriptions of the very worst examples from porn aren’t a substitute. I think the way she talks about women in porn is degrading and insulting, and though I get why she does it that way, she should have been able to understand why women who work in the commercial sex industry don’t like to think of themselves in those terms, and if you’re shot by both sides who cares who’s doing the shooting. But reading her is so bracing, and at bottom I think we should be wary of our initial reactions to her work - because the initial reaction, so often, is “she can’t be right, because I’d feel terrible if she was right.” Dworkin makes you sit in that feeling. It’s awful, but necessary work.
Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice - John Barth: This was fun, but I think I’m going to leave post-modernists behind for a while. Always clever, but always knows it. I like Night Sea Journey a lot, along with the classical references and story-subversions throughout.
Melmoth - Sarah Perry: This was extremely scary. Perry gets the weird gothic tone very right, and the idea of this wandering monster of solitude seems very timely right now. I’ll look for Perry’s other books.
Strangers on a Train: A Queer Film Classic - Jonathan Goldberg: This was fun. I’m not sure how essential it is; I’ve read better and more in depth analyses of Hitchcock’s films, including this one. Still, a good intro.
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne Du Maurier*: I’ve read this book a bunch of times and I love it a lot; definitely my favorite Du Maurier. It’s so twisty and strange and ambiguous and I still don’t know what I think happened! It’s so great.
Going to Meet the Man: Stories - James Baldwin: God this was good. I mean, of course. The title story was incredible (and horrifying), but I was really surprised to love some of the stories I hadn’t heard of. “The Outing” is such a subtle heartbreaker; I have to imagine that Baldwin had a similar experience with a friend growing up. “The Man Child” reminded me of Flannery O’Connor. “Sonny’s Blues” was also really, really good. They’re all good! There’s nobody like Baldwin; I forget about the fiction because I always return to his essays, but there’s a lot here worth reading.
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories - Mark Twain: Twain is always fun for that line-straddling of hilarious and slit-your-wristy. I love him a lot, and I like the title story in this collection very much of course. I wish the rest of it had been up to scratch, but “The Mysterious Stranger” is so good that it makes a volume worth it on its own.
Nightmare Abbey - Thomas Love Peacock**: I had to read this for school, for Romanticism, and I loved it. It was such a surprise, as I hadn’t known much about Peacock going in. It was very funny, but also a genuinely insightful analysis of the romantics. The ribbing was gentle (except for Coleridge). Really fun, and a pretty easy read, so I’ll look for more of Peacock’s work.
Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge - Erica Amstrong Dunbar: This was a great read, and I raced through it. It very effectively pokes holes in the myth of benevolent Washington; he comes off terribly. His wife comes off much worse. I found myself wishing that Ona’s post-slavery life was happier; she experienced so much poverty and pain and loss. But she was always firm that she would still prefer that life, with all its pain, to enslavement. I’m so impressed with her; she was so terribly brave.
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro: I cannot believe this was the first time I’ve read this. Every time I read a book by Ishiguro I think “this is the best book I’ve ever read.” It’s uncanny, his ability to move you. This was technically brilliant too, the way he managed to convey full and complex humanity in these characters while still portraying the tragic and stifling smallness of their lives. And how their lives are just absurd, truncated versions of all of our lives - searching for meaning and reward in systems that just exist to use us until we die. So, so, so good. I love his novels so much.
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen***: It’s so nice to read Austen in an academic setting, I’ve rarely gotten the chance to. I appreciate this more now that I know a little more about the Romantics and the Gothic in general; it’s not my favorite but it’s definitely the funniest one. And obviously Henry Tilney is the only Austen hero you would actually want to marry.
Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study - Orlando Patterson: This was extra good. I didn’t feel entirely prepared for how conceptual and philosophical it was; should probably break down one of these days and reread Hegel and Marx. Still really valuable, and very convincing. It covers such historical breadth, too; it had always been described to me in the context of American slavery but it covers so much.
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro: Well, found an Ishiguro book that’s not one of the best books I’ve ever read. I kid; it’s really good, just not his best. I liked each of these stories very much. I think ‘Nocturne’ was my favorite, it was the most bananas, but I liked “Cellists” too. And “Crooner” was very good and very sad. Still, I can see why he doesn’t write short stories too often; the novel really is his strength.
The Bird’s Nest - Shirley Jackson: I love Shirley Jackson a lot, but this wasn’t great. I’d have liked less of the doctor; I was more interested in the twisty, fucked up relationship between Elizabeth and her Aunt Morgen. The story didn’t really seem to add up to much, in the end, and the ending itself was plain weird. There was stuff to like, but it’s no Hill House, that’s for sure.
Old Man’s War - John Scalzi: I did not love this! Scalzi is a good writer, but the politics of this one left me with an icky feeling. I kept expecting it to get as dark as the premise and plot mechanics required and it never did; really no interrogation of the imperialism and jingoism inherent in this kind of story. I can’t say I’ll read the others in this series.
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde*: This was fun to reread. It was sadder than I remembered; I found Dorian himself to be a pretty poignant character in the end. Of course the novel, like a lot of Wilde’s plays, partly functions as a delivery system for great lines and it’s killer for that.
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper - Hallie Rubenhold: Man was this good; this is a book that needed to be written. I hope it has an impact on Ripperologists going forward and forces them to think about how little these women’s actual lives have been valued by investigators into their deaths, even now. There’s no evidence that three out of five were even sex workers! Everybody just assumed it! Anyway, this was really moving and well-researched and very worth reading.
The Nickel Boys: A Novel - Colson Whitehead: Man, this book. I don’t know what to say. It’s so devastating, devastating, and you steel yourself for one kind of heartbreak and get another instead. My heart is broken wide over these kids. This book is incredible, beautifully written, and so angry. I’m so angry for them.
The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson - Mark Twain: Ooof. I didn’t love this; I was just talking to Bryan about how Twain is so frustrating because he’s a great writer who never really wrote a great book - he wrote 80-90% of a few great books. This is another. I really liked parts of it, it’s smart and complicated and so, so dark - the last line is like a knife. I’m not sure Twain could see past his own racism, though, and it suffers from a typical Twain flaw where he gets bored with his own plots and just starts throwing things in. Worth reading, though.
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us - Rachel Louise Snyder: This was certainly harrowing. I was most unsure about the section dealing with reforming abusers, but I think Snyder dealt with them pretty fairly - they are still just people, but a lot of their justifications are horse shit and manipulative people always say what you want to hear. It is hopeful, at the end, for women, at least in terms of pure harm reduction.
Freddy’s Book - John Gardner: a disappointment, overall. This is only the second Gardner I’ve read, though I only read Grendel once in 7th grade. This one was clever, but a bit dull. Not funny enough.
Sabbath’s Theater - Philip Roth: It’s been years since I read any Roth, and this one reminded me why I stopped reading him. He was always a beautiful writer, and this novel wasn’t an exception. Just on a technical, sentence by sentence level, there’s nobody better, but god does he ever dislike women. He really doesn’t seem to believe, on a very basic level, that we’re people with minds just like his own. It’s staggering.
Stranger Things Happen - Kelly Link: I bought this book ages ago, and only now read it. It was awesome; I really want to read more of Link’s short stories. I think “Travels With the Snow Queen” was my favorite in this collection, though I also loved “Vanishing Act.” But every story was a lovely, surreal, dark little gem. And you never knew what you were going to get with any of them.
The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy - Jesse Walker: This is the book I’ve always wanted to read; an analysis of conspiracy theories in America that examines why certain ones take hold and the broader cultural trends they point to. The first half of the book was especially helpful; Walker provides a framework for talking about even the specific theories he doesn’t get to. And he makes a strong case for the idea that paranoia is the defining facet of American culture. Nearly every part of American life is fodder for a conspiracy theory of some kind. A really fun and exhaustive study, I recommend it.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland - Patrick Radden Keefe: God, this was good. Really exhaustive and empathetic towards everyone, which isn’t easy when it comes to this subject. The only person who doesn’t seem human is Gerry Adams - he seems like a serious sociopath, but maybe only someone so cold could have pushed the peace process forward when he finally did. But Jean McConville was murdered, and Gerry Adams is lying when he says he had nothing to do with it, and her kids suffered all their lives for it, and the people who did take some responsibility for their part were effectively thrown under the bus while Adams took power. And I keep thinking of Brenden Hughes saying that in the end, “not one death was worth it.” This was really worth reading and it will stay with me.
Erewhon - Samuel Butler* - I read this for my Literary Utopias course; I’m excited for the course, and of course you can’t not read this one, but I wish the first full novel had been something a little more exciting. It was still interesting, funny in certain places, and unintentionally bleak in others. I don’t know what Butler’s actual views on eugenics were, but the civilization and the narrator are so pro-eugenics that everything is much more menacing than he probably intended.
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch: This took a while to get going, but I really loved it in the end. Murdoch is very good at finding the poignancy in how people deceive themselves about themselves. She’s ruthless but ultimately, I think, kind.
The Silence of the Girls: A Novel - Pat Barker: Holy hell was this book good. One of the best I’ve read this year, if not the best. It was a story that needed telling, I think, because that’s what war is like for women and girls, still, everywhere and at all times in the world. It’s merciless - by that I mean war and Barker’s book. She’s a hell of a writer. I loved this a lot, I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.
The Testaments - Margaret Atwood: This was good, but it felt inessential. Of course less bleak than The Handmaid’s Tale, and in some ways a kind of corrective - if the first novel was about what women do to each other, this one was about women coming together. I’m glad I read it. It made me wish Atwood was in charge of that damn show, however.
The Scandal of Redemption: When God Liberates the Poor, Saves Sinners, and Heals Nations - Oscar Romero: This was good to read. I’d have liked more, but like Dorothy Day Romero’s genius wasn’t in what he wrote but how he lived. I liked that his diary entries were placed alongside his homilies; that helped but the religion in context with the politics.
Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser: This was very moving, in the end. I think it was cumulatively great but maybe the pieces were less great. Hurswood’s descent into horrible poverty was genuinely devastating, the more so for how slow it was and how crushingly inevitable it felt. And Carrie’s own ending is a heartbreaker, but she’s still there, and though Dreiser might not agree I have hope for her. I think she made the best choices she could. That’s the tragedy of it; she really did the best she could.
Cinema of Cruelty: From Bunuel to Hitchcock - Andre Bazin: Disappointing. I had hoped this would be more in-depth, or develop one thesis about multiple filmmakers, but it’s a collection of reviews and essays and fairly light. Really only fun to read if I also love that director, but otherwise skippable. And the section on Kurosawa is fairly racist.
The Umbrella Man and Other Stories - Roald Dahl: This was a fun collection. Dahl’s stories for adults are all so dark and sick and weird - he had his defects, but it’s so satisfying when cruelty is punished, and he really understood that. I liked each of these - “The Way Up to Heaven” was especially good.
Herland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman**: Well, this was something. One touch I loved was how in the feminist utopia, all articles of clothing had a ton of pockets. They would, wouldn’t they? Of course Gilman could see pretty far, but no farther than her own assumptions. Women are eternally giving and kind and self-sacrificing, but for the nation! They’re true women instead of stifled wives! They never have sex! They’re all very admirable but there’s no passion, no ambition, no ordinary uncomfortableness. No change! No race or class! It is a nice picture on the surface and deeply weird the more you think about it.
The Taker - Alma Katsu: This is not the kind of thing I usually read. I liked The Hunger, the other book by Katsu I read this year, but this was a bit silly. Certainly a page-turner, but I’m not sure it amounted to much beyond that, and I wasn’t engaged enough in the main character to read the rest of the series.
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin**: This was another for school. It was interesting, of course I can see the influence, but I’d rather read Brave New World. The style was a bit florid.
Those Across the River - Christopher Buehlman: Well this was scary. And very bleak. So, so bleak. I kept thinking, in the beginning, that it was odd to spend so much time on the protagonist’s romantic relationship but it paid off in the ending which was genuinely devastating. I’m not sure how I feel about the politics of it, however. I can’t help thinking that the main character’s horror isn’t just because his beloved wife is now a monster, but because of the spectre of interracial sex. And the white people...kind of deserved what they got, and I’m not sure of Buehlman’s position on that, beyond an anodyne “those to whom evil is done do evil in return” sort of thing. But it was really, really scary.
Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye - Paul Tremblay: I was all set to say this wasn’t as good as Tremblay’s other work, but I found it very beautiful and moving in the end. The world building is pretty basic, he’s still better at horror, but the family drama (and the ugly feelings in the family) are typically great. He’s become one of my favorite writers.
The Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin: Well. Much harder sci-fi than I usually read, but very well done. It took a while for me to really get into it, but I was hooked by the end, and the last act was so damn dark and really great. Not sure I’ll read the rest of the series, but I did like this one.
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators - Ronan Farrow: Reading this made me so angry. I knew many of the details already, of course, but not all, and to see it all laid out: how deep everything went, the lengths men go to protect each other. It’s really good though; reads like a thriller.
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin****: I love this book so much, I love Shevek, I’m so glad I got to read this again. It’s hard to know what to say about something this great.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carre*: I’ve read this book before and it’s so good. I suppose I should read more Le Carre, especially more Smiley novels, but I’m almost afraid that I won’t like them as much as this one. It’s so complicated and sad and suspenseful.
Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy**: This was another for school, that I hadn’t read before. It was almost overwhelmingly upsetting and very, very well written. Dated, certainly, and I’m not sure all of the elements of the perfect feminist utopia seem that appealing to me, but the parts with Connie’s own life are so sad and frustrating and well-conveyed.
Mantissa - John Fowles: This was great. Fowles might be my favorite writer, he’s certainly up there. I was glad I went into this with no knowledge, since it was so twisty and weird and funny. Probably the funniest book of his that I’ve read - he really knew how to take the piss out of creative misogynists.
To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis: This was so much fun. I love Willis a lot, the plot was twisty and clever, the romance was low-key and nice, and it was hilarious with just enough high stakes and suspense. I just bought another copy to give to my dad.
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler***: God, this book. This book. I was so glad to be able to read it again for school, and think deeply about it. It’s so much more...plausible than the other dystopias we’ve read, as something that could actually happen to the US. It’s much scarier now than it was when I first read it. But really good. And I like and admire Lauren so much.
Dangerous Visions - edited by Harlan Ellison: I’ve had this collection for years but never read it all the way through. Overall it was disappointing. Most of the writers were male, and it...shows. The entire project is very male in a way that’s hard to define; most of the stories are very aggressive and clinical. I liked a few of them; Ellison’s own was good, and Samuel R Delaney’s. I haven’t read him before and I’ve always meant to.
Too Much Happiness: Stories - Alice Munro: Munro is one of those writers, like Ishiguro, where every time I read them I think “well this person is the best writer alive.” Every story here is lovely, and none of them go where you think they will. I like her work so much. I think “Dimensions” and “Fiction” were my two favorites, but I liked the title story a lot as well. Munro conveys so well the undercurrents you don’t expect to find in the lives of ordinary people.
The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth - Philip Pullman: I wish I was still reading this book; I wish it was three times as long. I have so much affection for Lyra, it’s like I grew up with her, and it’s so wonderful to be back in her world. This volume seems more grown up than the others; appropriately, as Lyra is grown up. But everything is approached with more nuance; there is more shading and ambiguity. The Amber Spyglass will probably always be my favorite but I really loved this one and I’m excited for more. It was especially moving to see Nur Huda al-Wahabi as a character; Pullman obviously took great care to make her a heroine, and a crucial one, and I hope that’s some comfort to the real Nur Huda’s loved ones.
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood***: I’ve re-read this book about a dozen times, but never for school. It’s nice to close the semester with it. I like noticing how Offred plays with language so often; it feels thematically necessary to me though I’m not quite sure how.
Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements - Francesca Polletta: Very interesting, if a bit dry. I liked her emphasis on the way personal relationships, and relationship building, was often both a help and a hindrance to these movements. A useful read, especially for seeing how various movements influenced and fed into each other - would there have been a second wave of feminism without women’s bad experiences with SNCC and SDS? Maybe not.
The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro: Well that’s a bummer; the first Ishiguro novel I’ve read that I didn’t love. It was meandering and odd; I get that was the point, sort of an existential state of man, but it did make it a slog. I can see why it’s not one of the more popular ones.
Blood and Water and Other Tales - Patrick McGrath: These stories ruled. I liked every single one of them and they all surprised me; I don’t think I can even pick a favorite. There’s a strange and surprising kind of compassion at work in McGrath’s fiction, too, for all that his stories tend to be about ugly or horrifying things. Of his work, I’ve only read this collection and a novel, but I want to pick up the rest now. He’s great.
The Water Cure: A Novel - Sophie Mackintosh: I’m not sure about this! I’ll have to keep thinking about it. It’s beautifully written; as beautifully written as anything I’ve read this year. I was fully convinced of the love the women had for each other, and their isolation and the strange, stifling and violent life they led was well-conveyed. But I’m not sure there was much to it beyond the beauty.
The Mind of Thomas Jefferson - Peter S. Onuf: This was good, but I think I’ve finally reached the point where Jefferson books are having diminishing returns for me. There isn’t much I don’t know or haven’t already thought about. I don’t think I’ll read another for a while unless it has a specific hook. Onuf is definitely top tier, of course, but this volume didn’t really tell me anything new.
Physiognomy: Book One of the Well Built City Trilogy - Jeffrey Ford: Good, but not great. I like Ford’s short stories, and I’m intrigued by many of the ideas here, but it was oddly paced and the characters felt a bit underdeveloped. It seemed very much like the first part of a trilogy, but then the end was so final. I’ll read the rest of the trilogy, but I’m not dying to.
What Maisie Knew - Henry James: A very good James. Not my favorite James, which is probably a tie between Portrait of a Lady and Washington Square, but very good and terribly sad (like all of his books). It’s admirable how well he could convey how lonely and frightening it can be to be a little girl who doesn’t matter to people; James was better at writing the stifling passivity that comes out of powerlessness.
Who Fears Death - Nnedi Okorafor: This was good. Very compellingly written; I’ll be interested in the TV series whenever it happens. There’s interesting stuff about how trauma is passed down through generations - but how power does too. I’d like to read more by Okorafor.
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence - Kristen R. Ghodsee: This was light, but fun and well argued. The title is deliberately provocative, I’m sure, and the actual arguments are more complex and wider-ranging. I don’t know that I learned anything new, but this would make a very good introductory text for socialist feminism.
The Woman in Black - Susan Hill: This was good! I’ve seen adaptations, but never read the book before. I don’t know that there was much to it, but it was a cool gothic thriller and satisfyingly spooky. And the ending is really dark and effective.