Skip to main content

What I read in 2013

I had a kind of mission this year to read at least five books written in 2013. I nearly made it. I'm embarrassed to say I haven't had a chance to pick up the wonderful conclusion of Chris Holm's Collector series, "The Big Reap," which is why is not included below in my five favorites of this year. But, seriously, don't wait on my opinion, pick up the book if you haven't already and read it. Chris is a great story-teller with one hell of an awesome concept in the Big Reap.

Science fiction and fantasy. That's what occupied most of my reading time. And when I say science fiction what I really mean is Kim Stanley Robinson. Green and Blue Mars, 2312, and this year's Shaman, and I've barely scratched the surface on this guy's writing. I can't praise him enough for his ideas and character development and simple inspiring spirit. In a year I rewatched most of Star Trek, this was the fitting literary counter-part. Robinson portrays imperfect, realistically harsh worlds always on the brink of freeing themselves, not with guns or bombs but with the power of ideas and selfless courage.

Fantasy was taken up by the twin Scotts: R Scott Bakker and Scott Lynch. I ran across Bakker in a 'what do I read after Song of Ice and Fire' search. Dark, twisted, steeped in history, these books are fantastic re-imaginings of the Crusades. He doesn't quite pull away from the "Big Bad" motif, there's a dark, sinister, ancient force coming back into the world, but this is a background concern in the first two books of the series and no one comes off as gratingly noble or heroic. 

Scott Lynch also writes about rogues and scoundrels. "Lies of Locke Lamora," is filled with them, as well as great action set-pieces, memorably strange settings, and a pleasingly wry take on the human condition. Locke Lamora is not a nice person. A Robin Hood figure, his schemes cause significant collateral damage to everyone around him, and nearly lead to the death of an entire city. "Lies of Locke Lamora," is a heist tale, basically, but one unafraid to look at the larger damage caused by criminal machinations.

Here are my picks for novels this year.

5) Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Green Mars, just like the first book in the Martian Trilogy is a novel of ideas and characters in precisely that order. Now the ideas are grand: long discussions of the process of turning a dead, frozen dust ball into a breathing, green tundra world; debates on forming a better society around principles of democracy and social justice; revolutions effecting positive changes rather than more ruin and death. This book suffers from the middle child syndrome, neither starting at the right place or avoiding a cliff-hanger, but it's still sharply focused, avoiding the leisurely entropy of its sequel, Blue Mars.

4) R Scott Bakker: The Darkness that Comes Before. Bakker's worlds are meticulous, with echoes of real historical events and personages, mixed with his own elaborate invention. The appendix for The Darkness that Comes before extends for pages, explaining cultures, languages, and ancient events creating a dense fantasy book for history buffs and text annotators. The stories in the book are fantastic, filled with believably greedy, self-absorbed, disturbing individuals that possess unique perspectives and obviously detailed histories. All of the books demand attention, Bakker's prose is difficult and full of poetry. Monsters appear, they're vivid and appalling, but the terror he invests in simple human conversation is what really makes this book special.

3) Scott Lynch: Lies of Locke Lamora. Caper tales depend on two things: one) intricate yet plausible schemes invented by two) amoral yet sympathetic schemers. Locke Lamora is a great character, devious, charming, arrogant, brutal, and yet ultimately human. The world of Camorr City reminds the reader of Renaissance Venice or Naples, albeit ones shadowed by crystal towers created through ancient alchemy. The magic here is very subtle, less fire-balls and conjured demons, and more potions and hypnosis. This fits the themes of the story perfectly, Locke Lamora's elaborate plans take chapters to reach fruition and having spells and wizards everywhere would cheapen that. Keeping a tight rein on overtly supernatural elements gives the ones who do appear more punch, underlining the most audacious magic trick of all, conjuring up a human soul in the heart of a thief.

2) Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman is a genre all to himself. His reliance on fairy tale logic and supernatural contrivances can seem a little cute at times, but not his weary appraisal of human misery. Here a small boy accompanies a friend on trek through 'orange skies,' and cat tail fields to confront an ancient pest, a 'flea,' in the words of the 'youngest' Hempstock, Lettie. Inevitable human weakness causes a chain reaction of threat and menace. Each of the characters are sharply drawn and yet mysterious. The plot of the story is simple, essentially a chase story that could be read in one sitting if the implications of Gaiman's various metaphysics didn't disturb and provoke. It's that disconnect that Gaiman points out, between the lucid dreams of childhood and the somnulent consciousness of adults that really rams the point home. Gaiman's ancient deities are perfectly happy to talk about the 'creation of the moon,' and particle physics, but ultimately it's the simple act of seeing and remembering that brings understanding to individuals. That and the grace of three women in a farmhouse unwilling to let every mistake meet its punishment.


1) Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson. Yeah, I liked this book a lot. For one thing, a realistic look at life in the Upper Paleolithic, complete with spear-throwers, cave-art, and interactions with Neanderthals is going to get my attention. Great gulfs of time stretch between when our modern species evolved and the first written records five and half millennia ago. Entire civilizations of nomads and hunters that we know almost nothing about. What were they like? What did they dream about? And as my students sometimes ask, why didn't they just settle down and start making technology if they were just like us? Shaman isn't really about answering those questions. It's a coming-of-age story, following a young boy in the Wolf Pack as he passes a rite of manhood, and gradually comes to fulfill the role of shaman. Probably my favorite part of this book is that the society of these stone age hunters and gathered is not depicted as being static, but rather a dynamic reaction to the pressures around them. At one point, the pack's old Shaman, Thorn, laments that with his passing all that he knows will pass into the wind, lost except for the stories he's made Loon memorize. It's an incredibly poignant moment, filled with the essential tragedy of our species' early existence, people just like you and I who lacked the means to preserve their discoveries for the next generation. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

With the title World War Z

Early on in the mostly disappointing zombie epidemic thriller World War Z, UN Investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) hides out in a Newark apartment, trying to convince a family living there to flee with him from the hordes of sprinting, chomping maniacs infesting the city. The phrase he uses, drawing from years of experience in the world's troubled war-zones is "movement is life." Ultimately he's unsuccessful, the family barricades their door behind him and they join the ever-swelling ranks of the undead. As far as a guiding philosophy goes for a pop-action thriller like World War Z, 'movement is life,' isn't bad. And for the first half of the movie or so, it follows its own advice. Similar to other recent zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) the warning signs of what the rest of the movie will bring are subtle and buried until all hell is ready to break through. The television mentions 'martial law,' Philadelphia traffic snarl
I’m going to take a slightly abbreviated approach to this year’s best-of lists and mostly focus on movies. It’s not that I didn’t read or listen to music but for whatever reason I feel uninspired to talk about either topic. C’est la vie! So in no particular order are five movies I greatly enjoyed watching this year. Firstly, Avengers: Endgame. Well, I guess there is some order to this list because literally the first thing I thought of in terms of movies I’ve seen is this movie. It is inevitable! This is the one MCU flick it’s hard for me to remember as simply a super-hero film. Although I found its predecessor a bit more more compulsively watchable, I really enjoyed this film. First of all it’s tone, which veered from despair, heist hijinx, parental reconciliation, to epic mega-brawl was never boring. Even the gorgeous mess which is that final fight has its own interior logic and sports some of the best looking cinematography this side of Black Panther. With Endgame MCU found a

Stephen King's 2017

Despite the release of a single novel and a few short stories, 2017 has to rank up there as one of the more Stephen King ascendant years. No less than four movies based on his works appeared, including one of the most successful horror films of all time, the first part of IT. 'The Mist' (Stephen King) by Dementall.deviantart.com Of course, with King, for every high, there are plenty of lows and 2017 also provided a number of examples of how to do his works wrong. But let's start with the good stuff. The movie adaptation of IT, directed by Andres Muschietti and starring a number of talented young actors (including Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things" fame) really captured, for me, a lot of what I liked about the original novel. Being scary certainly helped, but with King, the horror slice is never really the whole cake. What makes King King, at least for me, is the combination of earthy, believable characters with lurid, "Tales from the Crypt&quo