Literature

Psaum for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers.

After these, I read all her books this year.

The Thursday Murder Club. Very delightful writing

I really loved The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and Beloved by Toni Morrison.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch put his work on my radar. The premise sounded intriguing and I couldn't put the book down. It led me to Dark Matter, Recursion, Pines, and Abandon, of which only Abandon I opted to quit reading. He went from essentially nobody to me to "Ooo, there's a new book coming out!" in the span of this year.

My other surprising hit was getting back into reading comic books and diving into Radiant Black and the associated Massive-Verse stories. It felt like a blend of superhero and Power Rangers style storytelling and parts of it felt very unique and interesting to me (how they handle the main character and where the power of Radiant Black is in the comics releasing now is really cool, trying to avoid spoilers!). It also comes across as a more realistic version of the stories that superhero/PR tell where there's social media and dialogue that comes across as real speech. I think of it akin to Star Trek vs. The Orville, both great but I see the path of how we get from here to the type of world The Orville embodies but the people on Star Trek don't feel exactly like real people by today's standard and it seems that much farther out.

Some favorites in no particular order:

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Bel Canto and The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

All the books on birds by Jennifer Ackerman

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Nettle & Bone and Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Pet by Catherine Chidgey

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion by Jia Tolentino

My favorite book was The Winners by Fredrik Backman! It felt like a decent conclusion to the trilogy and I really loved living with all the characters again. My second favorite fiction would probably be The Dark Tower, I’m glad to finally have that series wrapped up! I avoided most major spoilers too so it was a satisfying conclusion.

My favorite nonfiction would be I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy narrates her audiobook and that added a lot to the already tragic story.

In very roughly descending order:

Auē by Becky Manawatu

Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson

Open Throat by Henry Hoke‬‬

Autumn by ‪Ali Smith‬

A Tale for the Time Being by ‪Ruth Ozeki‬

Home by ‪Toni Morrison‬

Gnomon by ‪Nick Harkaway

Space Opera by ‪Catherynne M. Valente‬

The Book of M by ‪Peng Shepherd‬

The Book of Strange New Things by ‪Michel Faber

The Overstory by ‪Richard Powers

The Door by ‪Magda Szabó‬

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by ‪Gabrielle Zevin‬

Fire and Blood, by George RR Martin

I love history books, so a long history of the Targaryan dynasty written as a history book just really, really hit with me, though I wish he'd write a novella spelling out Saera Targaryan's story in full.

I'll list two, nonfiction and fiction.

For nonfiction, I'd have to say How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. It's a memoir of a woman who grew up in a strict Rastafari household in Jamaica. Safiya is a poet and she has a beautiful command of language that makes her descriptions lyrical, haunting, or painful as needs be. However, if you generally need content warnings I would highly recommend looking them up for this book because she does not pull any punches.

For fiction, my favorite would probably be Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (Storygraph went down in the middle of me writing this lol, will edit the link in later). It's a lovely fantasy novel set in an alternate Earth where fae are real. You follow a Dryadologist as she works on documenting a rare type of fae while she works on her encyclopaedia of faeries (hence the title lol). I enjoyed being in Emily's head as she worked through the problems presented to her, and as she interacted with her colleague.

Ooooh. This is a good question. Maybe Cory Doctorow Radicalized. I mostly re read stuff ha

I put down The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco and lazily enjoyed Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives.

According to wikipedia it mixes the genres of; Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour, which is quite accurate for a starter IMO.

Go enjoy it geeks!

For non fiction I’d probably say Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt.

A history of the taiping rebellion, it takes a very close eye to some of the more prominent people of the conflict and examines the whole thing in much more detail than you can usually get from English language sources.

For fiction I’m split between The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern. A tragedy focusing on a fictional protest encampment in an alternate present where Al gore won in 2000 rather than bush, and instead of declaring war of terror declared war on climate change. ‘Green tech’ and carbon credits stand ascendent yet the oil refineries are still going strong, and the real cost being put on those least capable of handling it.