Book 18: Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas by Alonso Duralde

This is more of a reference book than it is something that you typically read from cover to cover, but I got a lot out of it this December, so I wanted to include it! This book includes capsule reviews for a whole lot of Christmas movies, from the classics to the modern classics to the comedies to the "is this really a Christmas movie" entries. I can get sad after Christmas is over, even though I am a firm believer in celebrating all Twelve Days of Christmas, but reading this and thinking about which ones I may want to try out over the next year leading up to Christmas 2022 made this week a little brighter. 

Grade: B

Book 17: My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

The final book club book of the year! Totally coincidentally, one of my other projects of the year has been to watch a whole bunch of John Carpenter movies for the first time, in order to listen to a podcast I enjoy. As a result, I had so much more context for everything that this book is based around, and I'm so grateful for that. 

The protagonist of this book is a 17-year-old girl named Jade, but she is very clear from the beginning that she's not a Final Girl. But she does quickly begin to believe that her town is in the middle of a slasher movie, and she should know - she's made a study of the entire genre for the past five years. She's half-Native American and lives in a small community on Indian Lake, which is quickly becoming gentrified by a number of rich people who want a lovely place to retreat to, and when bodies start appearing, Jade is convinced she alone knows what needs to happen next. 

The story is both a meta commentary on slasher films (complete with essays she's written to her English teacher throughout her high school) and a horror novel itself, with a whole lot of other stuff thrown in there for good measure. I loved Jade's voice, and while it was at times an emotionally tough read, I'm really glad I read it. 

Grade: A 

Book 16: Regeneration by Pat Barker

A book I have owned forever! I genuinely have no memory of why I decided I needed to buy this, but it has the permanently affixed used book price sticker from my college bookstore, so I have owned it for at least...twenty years. And after finally reading it, I can say: it is very good! 

This is set during World War I in Scotland, at the mental hospital where soldiers and officers are sent when their bodies are well enough to fight but their minds are not. The focus is on fictionalized portrayals of a doctor at the hospital, Dr. Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon, a poet who has been hospitalized for his pacifist views, and Wilfred Owens, a young man who experienced significant shell shock and also begins to write about it with Sassoon's encouragement, as well as a number of fictional characters. It is bracing and infuriating and also it had a really strong resonance for me today; the feeling of being stuck in something terrible and also so much larger than yourself that there's so little you can actually do about any of it is quite familiar! It's a book that I think I would have enjoyed if I had read it when I was in my early twenties, but I don't think I would have gotten the same punch from it. Or maybe I would have: that was just when the U.S. was about to invade Afghanistan, an invasion that has lasted for almost as long as I've owned this book. 

This is the first in a trilogy, and my hope is to read the second and third books at the start of 2022. Here's hoping. 

Grade: A

Book 15: She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Another book club book! A huge percentage of the books I managed to read this year have been book club books, but I've also enjoyed the majority of them, so that's great. And this one was definitely worth reading for any reason. 

This book starts out with a young girl in a family with her father and older brother, trying to survive a famine in a setting reminiscent of 14th century China. When her father and brother both die, she assumes her brother's name (Zhu Chongba) and even more importantly, his foretold destiny. She then goes to a monastery, causes some trouble and makes a friend, and eventually finds herself in the center of, well, everything. 

There's also one of the most fucked up king and lionheart relationships I've ever read, a delightful mistrusted brother figure whose skills aren't valued, and a queer marriage that is somehow straight, lesbian, trans and none of the above, all at once. The political machinations are intense, and it's a harsh world and story that isn't in any way grimdark. It ends at a firm conclusion, but the sequel is going to break apart everything again, and I can't wait. 

Grade: A 

Book 14: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

 A book club book! And one which surprised me a lot, largely in how much I loved it.

This is the second book by Becky Chambers that I've read; the first one was fine, but didn't do much for me personally, and I had sort of expected that her work would remain in the category of "fiction that many people I know love, but that is not for me for whatever reason." But part of what's so nice about being in a book club is that sometimes I get nudged into giving an author or genre or whatever another chance, and in this case I could not be more delighted to have experienced this. 

This is a novella about a monk, who decides that the life they're living no longer works for them, and so they needs to make Big Changes and go out into the world. Do they have a plan? No. Do things immediately work out for them? No. Do they discover a previously unknown talent that makes it all worth it? No. But they get to live, and have an adventure, and go on a completely senseless roadtrip, and along the way they find what makes it worth it. 

The worldbuilding is wonderful, the relationships at the core of the story are so incredibly satisfying, and it's a story about reaching and searching that doesn't arrive at answers that are too easy, but it also doesn't punt on giving us answers the text implicitly promised us. I loved it and want to read it again immediately. 

Grade: A 

Book 13: Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

 If you are looking for a lovely queer women historical novella, with a nice bit of mystery and magical realism, all set within San Francisco's Chinatown in the early 1940s, then boy do I have a book for you. 

The novella starts out with a framing story that it took me a little bit to get into, but once I realized it was only the present day prologue to the main events which took place in the past, I sank into it. And by the end I loved it even more. It's a story about the community of queer people in San Francisco, and the kinds of lives they were able to create to exist as themselves, and it's also about magic, both metaphorical and literal. I don't really want to give away more of the plot than that because of how it slips through your fingers, but it's a love story and it's about taking big chances in order to be how you want to be, and I loved it. 

Grade: A

Book 12: One Life by Megan Rapinoe

 Well! I can't exactly say why I didn't read a single book for over four months this year, but that's what happened. I finally started to get a bit back into reading in August, but I'm still trying to re-establish a habit. Fingers crossed. 

I did enjoy this quite a bit - it's a fairly classic ghost-written autobiography about a public figure I know a lot about, but there was a lot of background fleshing out of various public events that I hadn't known about. And I also just appreciated both Rapinoe laying out her philosophy on public service and being an activist and what it required of her, and fun confirmation of various pieces of soccer gossip that I always suspected (she and Abby Wambach were totally dating!) but had never known for sure. There's not much more to it than that, at least not for someone who's been following her career and personal celebrity for a decade at this point, but it was an enjoyable read. It definitely made me appreciate more her experience between the 2016 Olympics and the 2019 World Cup, and how much she risked and how easily it could have all gone very differently. 

Grade: B

Book 11: Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline

 A book club book! Another one of those where I managed to read the book but missed the actual book club, which is a shame because I think discussing it with others would have helped fix the story in my mind. I am writing this post about four months after I read it, and I had to read a review of it to remind myself of what the story was. But as soon as I did, I could feel the atmosphere of this story, one of loss and grief and of having something taken from a person and a people, under the guise of religion and moving on. 

Joan is First Nations in Ontario, someone who left her home and then came back with her husband Victor, the love of her life. When he disappears after an argument, he is presumed to either be dead or to have left her, but she never believes either. This is borne out when she sees her husband as part of a traveling revival, but her husband is no longer himself. The book is folklore and monsters combined with religion and colonizers, and at the heart of it is Joan's grief and her single-minded obsession with getting her husband back. It's a read that really centers you in her world and her grief, even when the POV shifts in incredibly disorienting and effective ways. Highly recommended. 

Grade: A 

Book 10: The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite

 Listen, are you in the mood for a delightful gay regency romance between a widow who now runs the family printing press with her grown son, and a woman beekeeper who is always just on the right side of polite society? Because if so, hop to it! This is a pleasure to read, a slowburn that's also a really lovely exploration of how queer people carved a space in the world for themselves long before the first stirrings of an open gay rights movement. Agatha is a classic older love interest who isn't sure what her place in the world is after the loss of her husband, and Penelope manages to both seem carefree while actually being incredibly thoughtful and clear-eyed about how her life is possible. A book that is a very nice way to spend an afternoon with something hot to drink. 

Grade: B

Book 9: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy

 This is a Tor novella that is part of a LGBTQ story anthology. I...liked it? Sort of? It's got a Hannibal-esque horror feeling to me, with certain other elements of like myth and gutterpunks and a vaguely post-apocalyptic vibe, but none of the story really stuck with me, and I never felt like I had a good grasp on the protagonist. One of those "I am sure that this story is really for someone, but that someone is not me" books. 

Grade: B

Book 8: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

 The second book in this duology! This one was also great, even if it didn't quite have the delight of Assembling the Gang in Six of Crows. But overall I really enjoyed the story, and how the relationships deepened, and hey a gay romance! Don't mind if I do. The story suffered a tiny bit from the fact that there's an action event mid-book that COULD be the final heist of the story, but because of where it falls in the book, you know it can't be. Part of that is reading a YA novel as an adult who's read stories like this before and understand the narrative formula, but I thought some of the fakeouts could have been concealed slightly more. Overall though it was a delightful conclusion to the first book and I enjoyed it immensely!

Grade: A 

Book 7: Semper Fi by Keira Andrews

Boy I didn't really like this one either! This is a romance between two marines post-WWII, which should be exactly up my Band of Brothers-loving alley. But I didn't like them as individuals or how they were together, and I found the particular brand of homophobia to just not be for me at all. Nope!

Grade: C

Book 6: A Boyfriend for Christmas by Jay Northcote

 Listen. If you're going to give me a gay romance with a title like A Boyfriend for Christmas, I'm going to expect a lot of Christmas romance, not a weird meeting of the classes romance between a rich post-college kid and a motorcycle rider who's not POOR but just isn't fancy that barely involves Christmas at all. This book did not do it for me. 

Grade: C

Book 5: The Station by Keira Andrews

 Another gay romance! This one starts in England in the mid-18th century, and involves a stable master who gets caught having sex with a man and the son of the family both being sent to Australia for buggary. The son, Colin, never actually had sex with a man but he sacrifices himself so that Patrick won't be hanged in a fairly bizarre initial setup. But of course they both have to get onto the boat to Australia together, and over the sea voyage they fall in love, sort of. They continue to be in love, sort of, while they accompany a young widow to the parcel of land her late husband had purchased for them, and they all work together and Colin and Patrick continue to be sort of in love. 

Overall I enjoyed this book, although it suffered quite a bit from conflict between the main couple that was prolonged for no particularly good reason, and "settling Australia" is a complicated story to tell. But it did what a book like it is supposed to do, by and large. 

Grade: B

Book 4: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

 So I FINALLY read this duology and hey guess what: It's great!!! Honestly it is an ideal YA historical urban fantasy with found family and inexplicably young yet hardened by the world thieves. The first book is a perfect getting the gang together of misfits with secret pasts and desires all working together on a big heist that isn't entirely what they or the reader thinks it's going to be, and it ends on a double-cross and then another double-cross and oh no cliffhanger!!!

Kaz is a perfect ringleader, with a fairly ridiculous backstory that fits this sort of story precisely because of how ridiculous it is, and then the other five are all great, with enough unexpected elements to the dynamics that it keeps the standard drama interesting. So basically, if you want to read about teenage thieves in a magical, dark Amsterdam set vaguely during the Dutch Golden Age, do not wait. 

Grade: A

Book 3: Kidnapped by the Pirate by Keira Andrews

This is one of those books where you know everything from the title and the genre that you need to know. Does a m/m romance novel called Kidnapped by the Pirate sound like something you'd enjoy? Then friends, you will like this book. 

Nathaniel Bainbridge, whose father is the governor of a small colony in the New World, is on a ship to join his father and be married off when his ship is attacked by pirates. When the pirate captain Hawk learns he's on board, he takes Nathaniel hostage in order to ransom him. Hawk had been a respectable privateer until Nathaniel's father cheated him out of his plundered Spanish fortune and got him branded a pirate. So ransoming his son is both excellent revenge and a perfect One Last Job for him before he quits the pirate life for good. 

Of course, this plan is complicated when it becomes clear to Hawk that Nathaniel is, uh, intrigued by him, and they end up having about the most consensual start to a sexual relationship that could happen after, you know, the kidnapping. There's the standard back and forth about whether it means anything, both of them suffer injuries that need to be cared for, we have a bunch of noble self-sacrifice, and the required happy ending. 

The book navigates the reality of white Englishmen colonizing islands in the Caribbean about as well as a romance novel like this can. It is also the sort of historical that is determined to have their relationship Known and Accepted by the people they love, which I found a bit much but is also nice in its way. Overall I enjoyed this tremendously, and it was a much needed distraction during this month. 

Grade: A

Book 2: Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

 The final book of the Queen's Thief series!! This one had a lot to live up to by following Thick as Thieves, which I (as predicted by everyone I know who had already read it) absolutely loved. Luckily, Return of the Thief managed to be a completely different kind of book that I ALSO adored. 

I knew things were going to go well when the narrator of RotT was revealed to be a character who, when mentioned in a fairly off-hand way at the end of TaT, I immediately wanted to know more about. Pheris, the youngest attendant to the High King, is an ideal outsider voice to tell the final chapter of the series, which requires the sort of historian overview narrative that I associate with Guy Gavriel Kay books, in particular his books based on similar conflicts in settings that are clearly directly inspired by the same general regions. Pheris being the physically disabled son of one of the main opposing barons of Attolia also adds to that ideal dynamic, where he's close enough to power to understand it, but isn't considered a player himself.

The war that has been steadily building since the first book finally explodes, and all of the various threads in play weave together in a way that's less dependent on the narrator being unreliable and more in that satisfying way of final puzzle pieces finally coming together. We also finally got canon gays, and I will say no more on that topic, other than it is all extremely nice. 

All in all, a lovely end to a series I really, really enjoyed getting to experience over the past couple of months.  

Grade: A

Book 1: Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

We started the new year with a book club book! A book club book about a nonbinary artist named Jebi who somehow finds themselves in the middle of a revolution when really, they just wanted a job.

This story takes place in a speculative version of Japanese-occupied Korea, complete with a mecha dragon and magic derived from art, and secret revolutionaries and unexpected collaborators with the occupation, and no easy answers for anything. But it's also a love story, both between Jebi and the mecha dragon, who they create a telepathic means of communication via painting with inks which have distressing origins, and also between Jebi and a badass duelist. The tone has a lightness to it as well, in large part because Jebi is a delightful kind of unreliable narrator--there's so much of their world that they're clearly just not aware of, or haven't focused on, so they're constantly surprised by events in ways that feel believable, because prior to the narrative of the story, they just accepted the reality of where they lived and did their best not to think about it. 

Their older sister did think about it, a lot, and one of the things Jebi discovers through the novel is how much more involved she is in elements of the revolution. I really liked their relationship, because it was a great example of how two people can love each other and care for each other without truly understanding one another, and accept that distance. 

It's also an interesting book because Jebi's gender is just a fact, it's not notable one way or another, and there's a poly relationship that isn't necessarily socially acceptable, but for reasons beyond the number of people within it. The author is trans, and Korean-American, and I really, really enjoyed his perspective on this world and on this character. 

Grade: A

2021 Master List

We made it to 2021! Allegedly, at least. Last year I succeeded in reading not quite as many books as I had intended to, but I still read more than I had since 2016, which given everything that happened last year is a huge win. 

This year I am starting out with 101 books on the list. This will increase; I now have a separate google doc where I've been adding books that I want to read but that aren't officially on my to be read list, because I don't own them yet, and also haven't requested them from the library. Even without that, this list will still expand no matter what as a result of book club books and new books by authors who I will always read whatever they publish. However! In addition to having the goal of finishing all 101 of the below books this year, I have a more aggressive one, which is to finish them all within the first six months of the year. This is in part because I feel like I should be able to generally, but also because I expect that the first six months of 2021 will still be fairly locked down for me, and I would like to have goals to focus on that I have some amount of control over. Will I succeed? Who knows, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

I think about 25 or so of the books below have been on every Master List I've created since I started this project in 2016; I would really, really like to read all of those, most of which are at the beginning of this list. 

I am also going to be more aggressive this year about putting aside books that are Not For Me after the first hundred pages or so. Reading is an act of pleasure and of learning for me, and if I'm not getting one or the other (or both, of course) then continuing to try to read a book isn't worth my time.

Here is to reading and other nice things in 2021, which already feels like a bit of a tall order, but I'm going to do my best.