16.) Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James: I wrote a “good, bad and ugly” post on this book, and I’d rather not talk about it again. It sucked the impact out of every other violent thing I read for two months. This was the only truly intolerable book I finished this month. The marketing for this book was absolute scorched earth, and I was shocked to see The Mary Sue, a site for nerd culture for women, advertising this book on Twitter when the narrative is so brutal toward women.
The rest of the books on this list are just splitting hairs over various degrees of goodness and what I happen to be in the mood to read at any given moment.
15.) In The Woods by Tana French: This was a recommendation from my friend Abby during The Great Book Slump of 2018. She said she liked the storyline. My mom read it, too, and said it was "creepy." It was a methodical murder mystery where every detective got drunk and didn't do a great job... doing their job. The murder was eventually solved, but the story didn't grip me immediately. I think it had something to do with the sleazy detective telling the story. I wasn't crazy about him. I don't normally gravitate toward murder mysteries, either. I appreciated reaching for something that was outside of my comfort zone, though!
14.) Cress by Marissa Meyer: Last month, I read “Scarlet,” the second installment in this saga, and this month, I listened to “Cress” on audiobook with my Libby app. It’s Rapunzel… IN SPAAAAAAACE! This book was very emotional, with Crescent (Rapunzel) falling in love with Thorne (kind of a Han Solo type of guy) and having to survive a desert and make it to civilization after her surveillance satellite crashes to earth. I loved it.
13.) Jessica Jones: The Pulse: The Complete Collection by Brian Michael Bendis: I was going to group Alias and The Pulse in the same entry, but The Pulse was so markedly different in tone and content, that I decided to split them up. The Pulse focuses on a press initiative by J. Jonah Jameson of The Daily Bugle to cover the lives of superheroes in the city. Also, it focuses on Jessica and Luke Cage's relationship. It's not as dark as Alias was, and parts of it had crispy, clear art, as opposed to the watery, moody art of Alias. Jessica's personality was really different, too, and not in a good way. I was not as impressed with this iteration of Jessica Jones, and I got the sense that the writers didn't seem to know what to do with her, but she's still my favorite superhero.
12.) The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss: I enjoyed this book for its deep mythos, world building and setting, magical mechanics, and entertaining characters. I’ve already started the second book, "The Wise Man's Fear" in this unfinished trilogy. It reminded me a lot of the writings from one of my favorite fantasy authors, Robin Hobb. I did not enjoy it for its benevolent sexism and casual ill treatment of women. As insurmountable an obstacle it might seem, it is not difficult for men to regard and speak to women like they are equals and real human beings. When women are treated as others, and not seen as people, it is a stepping stone for them to be mistreated more cruelly elsewhere in literature and in real life.
11.) House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig: I received this book from NetGalley and wrote a review of it, and my feelings about fairy tale retellings, here. This was awfully dark, but really quite good.
10.) All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: This book was very well written, but since historical fiction isn’t really my thing, it’s farther down on the list than might be comfortable for some people. It won a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2015. I felt like this book was a little too compassionate to Nazis, especially in the current political climate, which I wrote about here.
9.) Captain Marvel: In Pursuit of Flight by Kelly Sue DeConnick: I read this ahead of the movie to get a sense of what Captain Marvel was all about. The greatest joy I derived from a dour fan who wrote after Issue 2 that he was sad he couldn’t drool over a nonautonomous lady in a swimsuit anymore (this is a vast oversimplification of the tone of his message, which was straight sexist trash garbage.) After subsequent issues, Captain Marvel fans raked him over the coals. I didn’t just like this book, but I loved the Captain Marvel movie. It’s taken time, but Marvel movies have grown on me. I think they just needed to grow beyond origin stories and the subsequent “Do we really need superheroes?” conversations to evolve into something deeper.
8.) "Die"(the first four issues) by Kieron Gillen: I found this series on one of those “100 NEW BOOKS YOU NEED TO READ YESTERDAY” listicles. The easiest way to describe this series is that it’s a cross between Jumanji and D&D. There’s a healthy dose of darkness, adulthood trauma and Lord of the Rings references, which is always a plus. I feel like the first four issues said a lot, but I need to spend more time in the universe to get a feel for whether I like it or not. It seems promising. The compilation of a handful of issues comes out in June, if you prefer that format. I read the first four issues and pre-ordered the fifth.
7.) Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn: Nope, I didn’t have nightmares after reading this, not me! I read Flynn’s “Gone Girl” a couple years ago, which was ultra creepy, but Sharp Objects was even more disturbing. I must have been in the mood for a creepy story, because this one left me dazed and enthralled. I'm going to have nightmares about missing teeth for the next month. I read it because I was curious about the HBO series that was based on this book. The themes reminded me of the real-life news story where a girl planned the death of her mother because she was the victim of Munchausen by proxy.
6.) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: This book is about a Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who moves to America, lives there for a while, and then moves back to Nigeria. This book was A LOT in the very best way. It had a lot of the same conceits as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “We Were Eight Years In Power” (see below,) but also it had a fictional story that covered all the nuances between being African-black and Non-African-black and made observations about racism in America through Ifemelu’s blog posts. On top of all that, it had a romantic story arc that reminded me of something straight out of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” only modernized of course. There was a quote in there about how the word “nuance” is just code for making white people comfortable, ("Nuance means keep people comfortable so everyone is free to think of themselves as individuals and everyone got where they are because of their achievement.") but I felt this book was nuanced in the sense that it gave me more information about the subtleties between black people in a very clear way.
Here’s another quote from “Americanah" that I felt was really pointed:
“You can’t write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it’ll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you’re going to write about race, you have to make sure it’s so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn’t read between the lines won’t even know it’s about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end just leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy.”
5.) Saga Vols. 7-9 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples: Hazel’s monologue at the end of Vol. 7 got me right in the feels. I’m only a little disappointed that the series seems to have backed off the role of the romance novel in causing unrest. The end of Vol. 9 was a big surprise in the most tragic way, but I’m not necessarily buying it. I mean, if The Will is alive to mess things up for the good guys, this most recent development doesn’t really hold, does it? I have hope. And no, I won’t spoil it.
4.) The Vision (Two volumes: “Little Worse Than A Man” and “Little Better Than A Beast”) by Tom King: This story was heartbreaking, but I really loved how it married the superhuman and mundane. It’s difficult to describe, but watching Vision’s family, who are invincible, work through common domestic issues, was the most interesting. If I were a habitual re-reader, I’d probably read this again.
3.) How Long Til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin: I got some Black Mirror vibes, whiffs of fairy tales, and some sharp, calculated social commentary from these short stories. In one of the stories, a king eats the heart of a dragon and learns about the folly of taking and using power that isn’t his. Another one is a “proof of concept” story from the Broken Earth trilogy (my FAVORITE books.) One peculiar tale is called “L’Alchimista,” which is about a demon who plays “Chopped” with a chef. He gives her a sack of weird ingredients, and she makes him food. The way the food is described is the way I talk about books sometimes, which is why I found it charming. Some of these stories were perfect vignettes, but I hope Jemisin uses others as a foundation for a new trilogy because I wanted to know more.
2.) Jessica Jones: Alias Vols. 3 and 4 by Brian Michael Bendis: Jessica Jones is my favorite Marvel superhero because you don’t have to look too hard to find real life in her. I watched the Netflix series first, and I was instantly in love. I read Vol. 1 and 2 of Alias about a year ago, and just got 3 and 4 recently. There’s so much to like about this series: There are illustrative comedic bits where Jessica listens to her clients impassively. She’s dating Ant-Man, the Avengers make appearances and her best friend is a pre-redesign Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel swimsuit-ogglers, eat your heart out.) Her struggle with the Purple Man doesn’t happen until Vol. 4, and I was a little disappointed at how it was resolved compared to how Jessica "defeats" Kilgrave in the Netflix series. (It was still good! No spoilers here.) I’m still drawn to the way Jessica Jones perfectly illustrates how it feels to be in an emotionally abusive relationship (especially the self-blame, the struggle to get out, and people not believing/seeing what you’re seeing.)
1.) We Were Eight Years In Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Facebook post about this book turned into a little mini book club and I was all about it. Good talk, friends. Anyway, this book deeply affected me. I’m not going to go on an anti-racism tirade here, but I have lots of feelings about Coates’ ideas and evaluating my own role in perpetuating white supremacy as a straight white lady, and then actually DOING SOMETHING about racism in America.
UNRANKED
Me and White Supremacy Workbook by Layla F. Saad: I’m not ranking this because it’s personal, and I'm not going to rank it on its literary merits. I'm only mentioning it because if you want to read it, it’s free and the author kindly sends emails about other resources you can use. I learned about this book in the midst of some racist things going on in the knitting community (and now the romance author community.) If you're a white person, you should read it to interrogate your own role in white supremacy privately.
YOU'LL SEE IT NEXT MONTH
Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian
Winter by Marissa Meyer
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
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