The 12+ books I read in October, ranked

This month I finished two audiobooks, two print books, and a massive stack of comic books* I borrowed from my pal, Robert.

It's possible this is one of the last posts of this kind I'll write! It's been fun trying to read as many books as humanly possible in a year, but I think I might take things at a more leisurely pace in 2020. Anyway, here are some books:

12.) Last Tango in Cyberspace by Steven Kotler: This was my one and only DNF in October, and third DNF for the year. The premise of this book sounded fun: Man whose superpower is extreme empathy gets caught up in a murder mystery. The actual book is more like: Man smokes a lot of pot and takes advantage of the amenities in his hotel room. I got a little more than halfway through this one before I had to quit. It was relentlessly stupid.

11.) My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: This little story was kind of interesting. It’s about a woman whose sister inexplicably kills her boyfriends. It shows all the ways the woman enables her sister, and how she is ultimately tethered to her after covering up her crimes.

10.) Paper Girls, Vols. 3 and 4 by Brian K. Vaughan: I really enjoy time travel adventures, but I don’t know if I’ll continue with this series. Four volumes in, and I still don’t know what’s going on.

 9.) Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman: This was a retelling of Snow White, where Snow White is a vampire and everything in her kingdom is supremely messed up. Don’t read this one to your kids.

 8.) Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka: Unlike Paper Girls, where I felt like the story was unfolding almost intolerably slowly, “Batwoman: Elegy” was really good at telling a lot of story in a few pages. And I felt like it was complete after the one volume I read. Very dramatic, and very satisfying.

7.) The Flintstones, Vols. 1 and 2 by Mark Russell: This is a smart take on The Flintstones. It examines social institutions such as marriage and consumerism in a silly, prehistoric town. As someone who questions and overthinks almost everything we do as human beings, I found it quite enjoyable.

 6.) The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead: This is a bleak book with a shocking twist at the end. It is a fictional story based on real events at a boarding school in Tallahassee, and it was on a “recommended reading” list Barack Obama posted on Facebook sometime a couple months ago. I would recommend it too! Thanks, Obama!

5.) Exhalation by Ted Chiang: Another Obama recommendation, this is a series of short stories from the guy who wrote “The Arrival.” Initially I thought the stories would take a much more sinister/dystopian turn, in the style of other near-future-type stories, but I found them neutral and relatively mild. I felt the narratives asked questions, but let the readers figure out the answers for themselves.

4.) The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 2 and 3 by Ryan North: I continue to be amused and delighted by this series. It’s upbeat and has an encouraging tone. I loved the second volume, where Squirrel Girl encounters Ratatoskr, a mischievous squirrel from Norse mythology!

3.) The Unwritten, Vols. 3-9 by Mike Carey: Initially, I really loved this series because I felt it was a good introduction for people who don’t like or don’t read graphic novels to learn to love graphic novels. In vols. 3-9, there’s still a healthy dose of literary allusions, but I feel like the story started to go off the rails a little bit. I still have two more volumes to go, and I hope it ends well for all the time and brainpower I’ve spent on it. I still love it a lot, though, don’t get me wrong.

2.) Rat Queens, Vols. 2-6 by Kurtis J. Wiebe: I’m always in the mood to enjoy this series about female friendships in a whimsical fantasy setting. I’ll be keeping an eye out for Vol. 7, which comes out early next year.

1.) The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang: The best way I can describe this book is “R-rated Final Fantasy.” This novel is gritty and brutal and makes no attempt to soften descriptions of war crimes and other atrocities. It was one of those books where you’re so invested in the characters and the plot, you get a literary hangover by the end. Alas, I think a copy of “The Dragon Republic,” the next book in the series I was supposed to review, got lost in the mail!

I’m 30 books away from reaching my goal of 200 books on the year**. Unless I finish a book every other day for the rest of the year, I probably won’t make it, but I made a valiant effort!

What was your reading goal this year? Are you going to achieve it?

*True happiness is lugging 15 pounds of comic books in your suitcase through the Orlando airport. 

**Goodreads counts every graphic novel volume as a book, and I've said before that I don’t necessarily think that counts, but here we are.

The 6+ books I read in July, ranked

Step up your game, Caryn!

Since my work is changing spaces, I've been working from home, which forces me to get out and explore my community more! I wandered into a used bookstore that's literally across the street from my house! If you follow my personal Facebook or Instagram accounts you might have seen it. Guys!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!

Anyway, we're all going to promise each other to read more books in August, right? And I might write a post about how I get a lot of books for free and/or cheap. Aforementioned used bookstore sort of has something to do with it. Out of the 10 books I read last month, I paid for only 3 of them. No intellectual property law-breaking required!

5. Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty: I waited FOREVER to get this audiobook from my library because a lot of people wanted to read it. It was very suspenseful! But it was ultimately about a bunch of rich, privileged people voluntarily subjecting themselves to weird stuff and suffering the consequences. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! I always feel like I pick up thrillers/mysteries and the conclusion ends up being more mundane than the plot builds it up to be. “Nine Perfect Strangers” ends for the better, but boy does it get weird!

4. There There by Tommy Orange: This book was about 12 Native Americans, spanning from about the 1970s until now, and everything they suffer because of history! It was miserable in a realistic sense – and you know that there are real people in America suffering the exact same things. I'm not going to spoil anything major from this, but I do ask that you read this book and share in my misery! It's an important work, I think.

3. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 1: Squirrel Power by Ryan North and Erica Henderson: I was utterly charmed by this uplifting tale of a superhero with the power of squirrels. In Vol. 1, she defeats Galactus by showing him how delicious and filling nuts are so he doesn’t feel the need to eat worlds. The comic has a confident and empowering tone.

2. American Gods by Neil Gaiman: I wanted to read more Neil Gaiman after I read “The Sandman” back in May. This book follows a guy named Shadow who starts working for a guy named Wednesday after getting out of prison. Amid all of the fantastical happenings that are vital for any Gaiman reading experience, the thing that stuck out to me most about this book was the food. People are constantly eating, and the food, like the gods, is a result of immigrants coming to America with beliefs in their heart and recipes in their head. I was surprised to find no one has written an American Gods cookbook yet! Early in the book, Gaiman describes Shadow’s dead wife Laura’s chili recipe, which calls for things like carrots, dill, beer, wine and a bunch of other stuff that you usually don’t find in chili! I really need the recipe for not just the chili, but the Wisconsin pasties from Mabel’s, the chocolate cream pie that Sam Black Crow eats in a diner the first time she meets Shadow, and the borscht and leathery pot roast from Zorya Vechernayaya. I got the sense that Gaiman was just as fascinated with American food as he was with the idea that old gods live in America because immigrants have brought them here.

1. The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross: Ok, I tried to explain this graphic novel to a few people and it didn’t end so well. It’s a story about stories, and the stories are a source of world-altering power. And it’s a story about a man who can shape and control the power of stories using a doorknob and… that was the end of the second volume. There are literary allusions galore, so if you’re a book nerd, but not really into graphic novels, read THIS. I really want to read more of it to see what happens!

A/some book(s) I forgot about last month! 

Invincible Iron Man: Ironheart, Vol. 1: Riri Williams and Vol. 2: Choices by Brian Michael Bendis: This was recommended to me by Alex, a fellow volunteer at the Humane Society. I knew nothing about Iron Man before I saw the movies, and then I saw the movies and hated him! This iteration of Iron Man is about a young girl who takes up the mantle of Iron Man after Tony Stark dies. Her name is Riri Williams, and she’s so smart her parents need to force her to interact with other children so she doesn’t get lost in her science work and mechanical tinkering and turn into a psychopath! After she puts on the Iron Man suit, she calls herself Ironheart. This is a fresh take on a confident supergenius becoming a superhero. It was one of the best books I read in June, but Goodreads didn’t put it in my “Read in 2019” queue, so I completely forgot about it when it came time to write my June blog post.

Unranked

I picked up plenty of sponsored review books from City Book Review this month. I can’t talk about these because my opinions on them need to be approved by the author first. The only thing I can say so far is that I read them.

Between Wild and Ruin by Jennifer G. Edelson

Moon Over Madness Essential For Love by VW Sheperd

Echoes: Incarnation by Sammie Dhillon

The 14+ books I read in May, ranked

Well this month I did some traveling and had some extra time off work to pick up books that I've been meaning to read for a while that I just haven't. Some of these have much older publication dates. I lightened my reading load with City Book Review and got to work on a massive pile of library books and other unread literature that was flopping around my house.

Mmmm, look at all of those dark covers. I love how "Once & Future" and "Space Opera" had similar color schemes. Maybe I should write a post comparing them?

14.) “The Strain, Volume 1” by David Lapham, Mike Huddleston and Sierra Hahn: This was a graphic novel adaptation of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain,” in which a mysterious disease turns people into zombie/alien/vampires. The art was kind of generic and the story wasn’t that great. I would have much rather read the novel itself.

13.) “Fear” by Bob Woodward: I did not have the best attitude going into this book, but it’s not because of what you might think. For one, I’m not a huge nonfiction person. Since I work at a news organization, I get more than my fair share of nonfiction regularly. Second, I don’t like current event books in particular because they’re out of date within months. Just read the news if you want current events. (SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR LOCAL PAPER!) The third thing I didn’t enjoy about this book was that none of it was surprising, but it wasn’t really out to change anyone’s mind. If you dislike how the current administration is handling other countries’ leaders, you won’t be surprised to hear that according to the people interviewed in the book, the president approaches foreign policy with all of the sleek subtlety of a sledgehammer. If you’re a Trump supporter, you’ll chalk it up to “fake news” and not read it anyway. I read it because Bob Woodward is a respected journalist and I was interested in what he found in his research. I won’t make the mistake of reading a book like this again.

12.) “Ash Princess” by Laura Sebastian: I couldn't help but think the objective around this book was to construct a love triangle and every other plot element was just fodder to wrap around the heroine and her two love interests. I got the same vibes as when I read Victoria Aveyard's "Red Queen" last year. The indiscriminately evil despot was just a McGuffin, and the ultimate goal was pretty dresses and forbidden kissing. I’d really be interested in a more solid motivation for the big bad, and I think YA readers deserve more from their stories.

11.) “Protect the Prince” by Jennifer Estep: I had mostly enjoyed the first book in this series, but I found this second installment to be insufferable, mostly because the main character had somehow grown whiny and ill-tempered in between books. Somehow I was supposed to care that people were trying to kill her. I did not care.

10.) “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft: This is a short story written during a time when it was perfectly acceptable to be blindingly, unabashedly racist. Lovecraft was one of those science-y racists who seemed to rank people’s intelligence based on skin color. “The Call of Cthulhu” is about a man who investigates a cult that worships an old god, Cthulhu. Cthulhu has fallen to earth from the stars and lives in a cave in the Pacific Ocean. He’s grotesque and smelly and the people who encounter him go mad with terror. The prose itself was beautiful, and reminded me of works written about the same time, such as Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.” There’s the same theme of unknown malevolence that binds together all of those works in my mind. If you want to read some gothy old stuff, pick up one of these books. If you’re looking for cosmic horror, specifically, go somewhere else because The Call of Cthulhu’s narrative foundations are preposterously racist.

 9.) “Harold in the Name of Love” by Chris Malone: This is the part of my list that begins the varying shades of good books I read in May. This indie book pleasantly surprised me. A former coworker, Hafiz, sent his author friend Chris my way for a book review, and I enjoyed it! This book had a lot to say about love, loss and moving on. Nancy’s character was just a little one-dimensional. She could have used a little more development. After I wrote my review on Goodreads, Chris tweeted, “Nancy was a tough character to crack, and given 100 more opportunities, I still don't think I'd ever get it right.” I think the biggest thing with Nancy was that she didn’t seem to evolve as a person over time, while Harold and Damon, the other two major characters, changed dramatically. I really loved how the friendship between Harold and Damon blossomed. It was a solid and unique plot with some dark comedic moments. Initially I was reminded of Fredrik Backman’s “A Man Called Ove,” but this was a much different story. I would recommend reading it.

8.) “Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet” by Ta-Nehisi Coates: This volume had a lot of plot threads that took some getting used to. I want to read the second volume to try to tie some of them together in my mind. The more I read volumes of comic books, the more I’m realizing that one volume that encompasses about five issues isn’t really ever enough to form an opinion on the series. There have only been a few exceptions to this.

7.) “Once & Future” by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy: This is a gender-bending sci-fi retelling of Arthurian legend. Happy Pride Month! The premise is that King Arthur is regenerated every so often to write the wrongs of humanity. This time around, the evil Mercer Corporation has monetized almost every facet of the galaxy, and only two planets are in revolt. Merlin, who ages in reverse through the years, comes back as a teenager to help the first female King Arthur, Ari, defeat evil for good. This book has hints of Doctor Who and Star Wars!!! I read Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in high school, and OF COURSE it was, dry, boring, heteronormative and patriarchal! It was written in the 1400s! Sometimes I think retellings like this are made only partly to drum up interest in the source material among teens. In this case, I’d rather be reading this book. You should experience at least a detailed synopsis of Arthurian legend because its plots and themes are a foundation for A LOT of literature through the ages.

6.) “The Kiss Quotient” by Helen Hoang: This is a romance novel about how a woman with Autism Spectrum Disorder finds love by calling up an escort service to learn about sex and romantic relationships. It won a Goodreads Choice award for romance in 2018. I don’t read a lot of romance novels anymore (this is the first I’ve read in a while,) but I thought this was funny and romantic! One of the tropes in romance is that either one or both of the main characters are so disgustingly wealthy that they never have to worry about money throughout the course of the story. I think it helps to keep the focus on the development of the romance. Anyway, in this story, the heroine, Stella, as a dorky econometrician, is the breadwinner in the relationship, and I found that empowering. The other heroine in this story is Carly Robins, the woman who read the audiobook I listened to.

5.) “Shadow and Bone” and “Siege and Storm” by Leigh Bardugo: After the first book in this trilogy, I was interested in exploring this world more. The main character, Alina, finds out she’s a sun summoner, and that The Darkling wants to harness her power to widen the Shadow Fold and bring the adjacent countries to heel. I was late to the party on this, as Bardugo has several books now that are built in this universe, affectionately called “The Grishaverse,” and YA Twitter seems to really like it. I liked “Shadow and Bone” much better than “Siege and Storm,” as the second book had the sophomoric tendency to drag just a bit.

4.) “Uprooted” by Naomi Novik: At first glance, I thought this book was going to be a “Beauty and the Beast” retelling, but it goes so far beyond that and makes itself into something entirely fresh and new. “Uprooted” has hints of Russian fairy tales, but also a dollop of “Stranger Things.” I felt the heroine, Agnieszka, was empowering, considering her circumstances. The way magic is portrayed in this book is really cool. Right now I'm reading Novik's other book, "Spinning Silver," that has been nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards this year. It is very good so far.

3.) “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler: This part of the list until the end is MANDATORY READING. We're all going to check back with each other at the end of next month to make sure we've read everything, right? HOLY MACARONI. This book was published in 1993 and takes place in 2025. I picked it up from the library because I heard there are some similarities between Butler’s writing and NK Jemisin’s writing. Parable of the Sower just blew my mind. It’s the diary of a teenage girl, Lauren Olamina, written over 3 years in a post-apocalyptic America. It’s supposed to be a bleak look at a near-future, but it includes themes of a drug crisis, global warming and extreme privatization of resources that are too close to reality today than mere hyperbole. The survivalist plot is super violent and visceral. How did I go so long without reading this?

 2.) “The Sandman” by Neil Gaiman (Vols. 1-10): I wrote about my experience reading one of the greatest comic book series of all time here. The separate post is mainly to spare you from having to scroll through all of my truly insufferable literature snob thoughts about it. They are embarrassingly dorky, and I could have said much, much more. Halfway through May, this was the best book (errr, collection of books) I had read, and I thought it would stay that way, but it was overcome by…

1.) “Space Opera” by Catherynne M. Valente: This book is so earnestly joyful and dire at the same time. The author drew inspiration from Douglas Adams, David Bowie and Eurovision, and improves on all of it. If you’re one of those book snobs who think a writer’s style only belongs to them and no one can imitate it, you might take it personally that this novel has strong whiffs of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” I think the added themes of corruption, gentrification and modern-day corporatization freshens the Adams random sense of humor into something more coherent, enduring and meaningful.

Road to 200 

According to Goodreads, I finished my 100th book this month. It’s a little deceptive because that counts five single issues of “Die” by Kieron Gillen and seven single issues of “Captain America” by Ta-Nehisi Coates from earlier in the year. I read them both twice. Still, if those two things were lumped into books on their own, I’d still be hovering around 90 books, and that’s nothing to sneeze at, I suppose. How did I get there? I've tried to either listen to an hour of an audio book OR read 150 pages of a book every day. My commute to work alone is about 30 minutes long, so it hasn't been difficult to do.

 My favorite book podcast 

Here's a link to my favorite book podcast, "372 pages we'll never get back." It's hosted by Conor Lastowka and Michael J. Nelson from MST3K and Rifftrax. They pick books they anticipate they won't like and make fun of them. Beyond the usual roasting, they write skits, respond to reader feedback, hold meme contests and other general silliness. Their first episodes were about "Ready Player One," one of my least favorite books, and right now they're reading "The Mister" by E.L. James. It's funny and enlightening to hear two men talk about their experiences reading their first romance novel.

 Do you have a favorite book podcast?