mutterwingwhirr

Booktalk!

For the end of the year, I wanted to do some retrospectives. I think I'll do one for games and movies, but looking back on the books I've read so far this year, I realized I probably have a lot more to say than should be married to an already long post (or, one that will probably be long if we know me). 

So, let's just jump in! A lot to cover. 

I set a reading challenge for 52 books this year, aka one book per week and I accomplished it sometime mid November! (Yay!) It honestly felt like a natural amount for me.  I'd love to read more, but that's always going to be true. In real life, I never felt pressured by it in a negative way. I started the year strong and then anytime I saw the "you are 5 books ahead of schedule" dip any lower I'd reprioritize reading and it always felt like a helpful reminder.

What follows won't be a discussion of every book, just the things I find notable from this list in chronological order. 

The first book I read this year was Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera, an audiobook I saw a friend read and I was excited by the praises they were singing about it. I really enjoyed the narrator, listening to her perspective as the villain in the stories of so many other people and overall the mystery and characters both ended up really hitting for me. 

Then I continued the catch-up I was doing on Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. It's hard to talk any specifics, but let me just note that the series is so close to my heart. Lonely, broken little girls finding hope by any means necessary, even as they're thrust into perilous danger while there are people around them who desperately wish the best for them. Just beautiful work from one of my favorite authors and the two I read here were no different. 

And then I got really into a manga called The Blue Period by Tsubasa Yamaguchi. As someone in her second year of learning art, I've had a lot of good praise of my growth and discussion about all of it from two artists I trust, my partner and one of my best friends. But I never really saw for myself what it's like in art communities. And while I still wouldn't call myself knowledgeable, seeing Tsubasa Yamaguchi's take on art school and what being an artist looks like was a really exciting space. There were many moments I relayed a chapter's main issues to my partner and they responded that it's fairly true to life and many moments learning art when I've gone: Oh, it's like The Blue Period! Which is silly, but really fun. 

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu was a really hard read, but a rewarding one as well. It's essentially an anthology of short stories set in a world taken by an awful virus. Some of the stories are interconnected in surprising ways, but all of them showcase a panoramic view of how human beings might deal with a brutal world. The answer spans the scope of desperate and at times ugly kindness all the way to their own brutality in turn, but the stories stay heart wrenching throughout. 

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones was a wonderful revenge story. It's a slow burn in the way the best Stephen Graham Jones stories can be. You're presented with the world as it is and as it was and watch as the microaggressions telegraph the eventual violence their Civility conceals. Gruesome and beautiful, what a disquieting ride. 

Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games by Eri Ejima was a joy. I'm a girl who's loved fighting games for over a decade and a half and who has been following the pro scene as well as attended a couple tournaments myself. Seeing a manga about girls who were more obsessive than me finding community through it was pure bliss. However, it's really hard to recommend because they involve a level of technical expertise that strives so hard to explain itself that it actually might require expertise to understand. For me though? Perfect and a good reprieve from the last two!

Overgrowth by Seanan McGuire -- Okay, an invasion of plant aliens and an allegory for the autistic experience written with such heartrending accuracy and earnestness? Just beautiful. It left me sitting in the quiet, staring in thought once it was over and I am happy to devote more words to describing how much I love Seanan's work. 

Deadstream by Mar Romasco-Moore -- oh, man a book version of one of my favorite popcorn genres: security cam horror/computer horror. There's a streamer who's haunted but everything about streaming culture and gaming culture really rang true here. Ultimately I don't love the landing, but I mean I rarely do in the movie version of this. If you love movies Unfriended, Searching, and Ratter and can handle Twitch speak, it's definitely worth checking out.

Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho was a fantastic book. It's basically the kind of space opera I wish I could see more of, especially on screen. It's a very character driven story about a hotshot gunslinger/pilot named Ocean, her best friend, a hot politician's son, a death-rite priest in training, and enough fun crewmates to crowd a ship all trying to untangle a huge conspiracy. Just a blast and its sequel also dropped this year, capping off a hell of a duology. 

Neuromancer by William Gibson. Yeah, that one, the original. I hadn't gotten through it after a lifetime of being a sci-fi fan, but honestly I got too bogged down in the details everytime I tried. This time, with the help of Shelved by Genre (a heavy book discussion podcast), I was able to just kind of wade into it and let it all wash over me and found that it was mostly just a really exciting and thoughtful heist story. I'm really eager to finish off the trilogy, hopefully next year. 

Home Sick Pilots by Dan Watters and Caspar Wjingaard. I got into this one largely on its premise: what if a haunted house was a mech? But ultimately I loved the outsider story it told and I loved Caspar's art style throughout. I've spent a lot of this year learning what I want out of stylizing in my art and I took a lot of big lessons from Caspar. 

The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson, first three books. I got into the first book ages ago, nearly a decade. I was taken by it, but also these books aren't just doorstoppers, they're doorcrackers. They're all around 1200 pages and only getting bigger every time you look away and I just didn't have the patience to take on another back then. This year I came to them just wanting some big, fantasy story that would let me get to know characters for ages, so basically the perfect mindset. I really enjoyed seeing Sanderson wrestle with the concept of leadership and heroics and, as a writer, it was wild seeing what he was willing to spend his words on. I mean, it's so hard from the other side. Knowing you can take your time is a novel (~) concept, but this man truly spent hundreds of words discussing how to carry a ladder (reductive, but not untrue). I sound like I'm doing it a disservice, but really I don't think I want to try and get anyone to read 3600 pages of it without having the self-motivation for it and if anything I said sounds interesting, go for it!

That'll do it for this year. I've read more books. I've had more thoughts, felt more things, but I think I did my year justice. Looking forward to the next one~