Favorites
Comics
Taiyo Matsumoto, Ping Pong, Omnibus vol. 1, VIZ Media, 2020. Strange subject matter – high school ping pong – but Matsumoto’s characters and drawings are incredible. On my top 5 artists list.
Fiction
J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (Editor), The Silmarillion, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977. Dense and impenetrable, but once it clicks it’s really great. This thing is pretty amazing especially thinking that Tolkien kind of just wrote it for himself. Some amazing tales in here.
Daniel Mason, North Woods, Random House 2023. Tells the story of a yellow house in the woods of Massachusetts as it moved through time from family to family, from the 1700s to today. Extremely well written. I bounced back and forth between the audiobook and the print version.
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead. Harper, 2022. Fantastic, sad and joyous. The closest thing to the lovely, A Prayer for Owen Meany I’ve read. Hit me right in the heart bone.
Christopher Buehlman, The Daughters’ War, Tor, 2024. Very good. He does a nice mix of horror and fantasy. I liked the “Blacktongue Thief” better, but this is still really good and I am here for more books in this world. The goblins in both of these novels are some epically scary baddies.
Non-Fiction
Chris Miller, Chip War. Scribner, 2022. [27]. A little long but fascinating history of microchips. A little technical, a little geopolitical. Very good read. Learned a lot.
Samantha Irby, Quietly Hostile, essays. Vintage, 2023. hilarious actually. a whole essay on poop. I think Irby may be my spirit animal.
Poetry
Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems, Milkweed Editions, 2022. Very enjoyable collection. A few will stay with me for a bit.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (Editor), The Silmarillion, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977 [33]. Dense and impenetrable, but once it clicks it’s really great. Tried to read this in my 20s and bounced off hard. Accomplished it this year with an amazing audiobook read by Andy Serkis and some actual studying of chapter summaries to help me follow along with all the names, family trees and places. This thing is pretty amazing especially thinking that Tolkien kind of just wrote it for himself. Some amazing tales in here.
- Christopher Buehlman, The Daughters’ War, Tor, 2024 [32]. Very good. He does a nice mix of horror and fantasy. I liked the “Blacktongue Thief” better but this is still really good, and I am here for more books in this world. The goblins in both of these novels are some epically scary baddies.
- Charles Burns, Final Cut, Pantheon, 2024 [31]. Reminds me of some of his older stuff. Some strange characters and enough to keep the pages turning. amazing art and some really nice/fine ink work.
- Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Grand Central Publishing, 2016 [30]. Got on the waiting list for Newports “Digital Minimalism” but this one was available so I took a flyer. Some interesting bits about making time for actual work and not getting distracted by bullshit stuff.
- Eleanor Davis, Why Art?, Fantagraphics Books, 2018. [29]. Davis’ drawings are amazing to me. so easy looking and wonderful. Semi-interesting take on creating art and spins into a little story. I sort of just liked the pictures…
- Kevin Huizenga, Glen Ganges: The River at Night, Drawn and Quarterly, 2019. [28]. I love Huizenga’s comics – he is a wizard at levering the comics form to tell stories that can only be told using comics. This comic follows the main character trying to make himself fall asleep on a long sleepless night. A bit long at 200+ pps but very relatable.
- Chris Miller, Chip War, Scribner, 2022. [27]. A little long but fascinating history of microchips. A little technical, a little geopolitical. Very good read. Learned a lot.
- Cassandra Khaw, The Salt Grows Heavy, Tor Nightfire, 2023. [26]. Horror novella about a mermaid. Almost no water in the book but it’s wonderfully bloody, gooey and gross.
- Camile Dungy, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, Simon & Schuster, 2023 [25]. I heard Dungy on a poetry podcast and thought this book would be a cool intersection of gardening and poems. It was more a commentary on how nature writing generally comes off as divorced from the author’s day-to-day reality. I dunno, maybe that’s because readers want to get away from their day-to-day realities sometimes?
- Daniel Mason, North Woods, Random House, 2023. [24]. Tells the story of a yellow house in the woods of Massachusetts as it moved through time, from family to family, from the 1700s to today. Extremely well written. I bounced back and forth between the audiobook and the print version.
- Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, Metropolitan Books, 2014. [23]. Eye opening, educational and very helpful in thinking about what end of life should look like for our selves and loved ones.
- Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems, Milkweed Editions, 2022. [22]. very enjoyable collection. A few will stay with me for a bit.
- Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds, Riverhead Books, 2023. [21]. Set in Virginia 1610. A girl (“The Girl”) escapes the Jamestown Settlement to go it alone in the wilderness. a bit sad but has some incredible writing in the final chapter.
- Taiyo Matsumoto, Ping Pong, Omnibus vol. 1, VIZ Media, 2020. [20]. Strange subject matter – high school ping pong – but Matsumoto’s characters and drawings are incredible. On my top 5 artists list.
- Neil Gaiman. The Ocean at the End of the Lane. William Morrow, 2013. [19]. Beautiful tale. Magical. Bittersweet. The ending is fantastic – well, the whole thing is. Sticking with me quite a bit.
- Kate Baer. I Hope This Finds You Well: Poems. Harper Perennial, 2021. [18]. Turning mean comments from her blog into poems. Creative. Great way to put up a middle finger to dickheads.
- Billy Collins. Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems. Random House, 2013. [17]. One or two good ones. He has an accessible style but feels formulaic sometimes. Maybe on a mission to prove he can make a poem about anything.
- Barbara Kingsolver. Demon Copperhead. Harper, 2022. [16]. Fantastic, sad and joyous. The closest thing to the lovely, A Prayer for Owen Meany I’ve read. Hit me right in the heart bone.
- S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed. Flatiron Book, 2023. [15]. Decent little serial killer book. creepy.
- Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Two Dollar Radio, 2017. [14]. Short stories about a love of music and growing up black in the mostly white Ohio burbs. Great style. Loved some of the bands he talked about.
- Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah (Dune #2). Ace 2008 (1969). [13]. Loved this when I read it in the early 90s. Hit me a lot different this time. Stone Burners for the win/loss.
- Ann Leckie. Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch, book 2). Orbit (2014). [12] Same great characters but suddenly shrinking the world and doing a local murder mystery. It was fine but I wanted a lot more from this.
- Susumu Higa (Jocelyne Allen, translator). Okinawa (#1-2), Fantagraphics, 2023. [11]. Non-fiction stories of Okinawa centered on the impacts of WW2 from the locals to modern day.
- Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken and Other Poems: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Robert Frost. Penguin, *my dog ate the cover and first few pages so not sure the year this collection was published….but Frost mostly did poetry in the first half of the 20th century. [10]. Loved a handful of these. Lost interest in a bunch as well.
- Matthew Desmond. Poverty by America. Crown, 2023. [9]. Surprised to see work by Mom cited in the references. Proud son. The book was fine. Some good points about the tax code being social welfare for the rich.
- Maria Ressa. How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future. Harper, 2022. [8]. Feels important in our current times. Scary and hopeful in a way.
- Ann Leckie. Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, book 1). Hachette Book Group 2023 (2013). [7]. Good Sci-fi. Great world building with some very cool concepts, good action, tech, violence. Enjoyable.
- Samantha Irby. Quietly Hostile, essays. Vintage, 2023. [6]. hilarious actually. a whole essay on poop. I think Irby may be my spirit animal.
- Clint Smith. Above Ground. Little, Brown and Company, 2023. [5]. Poems mostly about family and being black in America. I loved a few of these very much.
- R.F. Huang, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. Harper Voyager, 2022. [4]. A little long but really cool magic story set in old London and a magic system based on language.
- Ling Ma. Bliss Montage: Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. [3]. Some gems. Loved the one about the professor.
- Ran Walker. Can I Kick It?: Sneaker Microfiction and Poetry. 45 Alternate Press, 2020.[2]. Somewhat forgettable. Mostly read it cause it was available on the Libby app.
- Dan Jones. Essex Dogs. Viking, 2023. [1]. Decent dramatization of a historical thing. Cool characters.