An Analysis of the Books I Read in 2013 aka Nerd Alert VI

Books read: 63

• Average # of books read/month: 5.25
• Non-fiction: 12 (19%)
• Fiction:  51 (81%)
• YA Fiction: 4 (6%)
• Books by male authors: 35 (55%)
• Books by female authors: 27 (43%)
• Disliked (0-2 out of 5): 14 (22%)
• Ambivalent about/sort of liked (2.5-3 out of 5): 13 (20%)
• Actively enjoyed (3.5-5 out of 5): 36 (57%)
• Re-reads: 5

By Genre:

• Sci-Fi/Fantasy: 10
• Apocalyptic/Post-Apocalypse/Dystopia: 7
• Horror: 9
• Graphic novels: 3
• Mystery/Thriller: 8
• Poetry: 0
• Historical Fiction: 0
• Western: 1
• Short story collections/Anthologies: 4
• Contemporary fiction: 2
• Politics: 0
• Science/Medical: 1
• History: 0
• Humor: 2
• True Crime: 0
• Religion: 0
• Psychology: 0
• Biography/Autobiography/Memoir: 4
• Classics: 0
• Romance/Shitty Erotica: 2

Books that got a Perfect Score:

• Them by Jon Ronson
• The Age of Miracles by Karen Walker Thompson
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• As I Am by Patricia Neal
• The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Compared to 2012:

• 5 more books read than last year! Aiming for at least 70 in 2014. What else am I going to do, have a baby?! LAY OFF, MOM! 
• I read way less non-fiction this year, but the true stories I did pick up I really enjoyed. Quality over quantity? 
• I read twice as much YA fiction - which truthfully makes less & less sense as a category these days. I've read YA stories that were much more sophisticated than the average novel "for adults," and plenty of contemporary novels explore the rich themes of adolescence. Basically, what I'm saying is: don't label me, man! I reject your box! Fight the patriarchy & save the whales. 
• I disliked way more books - womp womp. But I had a lot of 5s & 4.5s as well, many of them unexpected. What surprised me this year was how much I didn't like some books that got rave reviews & hype, like The Shining Girls & Divergent. Can't everybody just love the books that I love? Where is the three-movie adaptation of Lonesome Dove starring Jennifer Lawrence as Lorena and Zac Efron as Jake Spoon?* 
• I re-read a ton of books this year. I turned 30 and sought out the comforts of my past. And/or I was just a little lazy. 
• This is truly a year befitting of a nerd alert: I mostly read genre fiction. If you don't have a dragon, I'm not interested. Fun fact: that was also my pick-up line in college. HEY-OH!

Notes & Superlatives:

• Repeated authors: Jon Ronson, Scott Lynch, Michael Crichton, Leigh Bardugo, Stephen King. Should Stephen King just get some sort of Repeated Author Emeritus status so I don't have to keep repeating him? Michael Crichton's were all re-reads, because I saw Jurassic Park when it came back into theaters and DINOSAURS. 
• Authors I discovered this year and will be checking out further: Scott Lynch**, Leigh Bardugo, Kate Atkinson, Adam Johnston, & Robert Sheckley. I got my eyes on you, people! Don't disappoint me. Well, Sheckley is dead...but the rest of you - PRODUCE.
• Favorite book of 2013 (Fiction): Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. A beautiful & epic doorstop of a novel. Someone please make me a t-shirt that says "Gus McCrae is my Homeboy" so I can honor this wonderful masterwork the only way my generation knows how: a pre-shrunk poly-cotton blend. Very close runner-up would be The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnston. If Lonesome Dove is the Great American Novel, we can call it the Great North Korean Novel (Dear Leader may object, but tough beans).
• Favorite book of 2013 (Non-Fiction): Them by Jon Ronson. Jon Ronson could write about the history of the loom*** and it would be fascinating, so it's no surprise he wrote an interesting book about people who think the world is run by disguised lizard people, among other oddballs. 
• Least Favorite book of 2013: R.L. Stine, let's go back to Fear Street, far far away from the laughable evil ghost Irish laser-eyed children of Red Rain. The sex scenes you wrote in this, your first and hopefully last book for adults, were deeply uncomfortable. I truly hated this book, the recipient of the sole 0 rating I gave all year. Let us never speak of it again.
• Most Fun Book of 2013: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Capers! Cons! Derring-do! SO much derring done. This book has everything: hybrid fruits, sexy shark fighters, and false mustaches.  Everything. 
• Author I read in 2013 that I Most Want to Hang Out With: Patricia Neal, please come back to life and call me up. We can dish about G. Coops and that asshole Roald Dahl, and we can drink dry martinis and you can tell me funny stories about your early days in theatre (pronounced "the-ah-TUH," naturally). You are a delight.
• Saddest book of 2013: Wave, by Sonali Deraniyagala. The kind of sad story that is almost unfathomable to process. Kiss your loved ones right this minute. Honorable mention goes to the story "Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter, because it came out of nowhere and floored me with the feels. 
• Scariest book of 2013: None of the myriad horror books I read or re-read this year really creeped me out. And TWO of them involved torturing/murdering little kids! What's wrong with me? I'm on a list somewhere, aren't I? Anyway, instead of those logical choices, the story I keep coming back to is "Law of Survival," by Nancy Kress. There was something so deeply unsettling about her tale of mysterious, unknowable alien invaders and their demands of the protagonist and her charges. Aliens, dude. I want to believe...but I don't, you know? 

I am about to embark on a trip that involves roughly 50 hours of plane travel, so I will do my best to tear away from the in-flight entertainment (they have ALL of the Toy Story movies on demand! I am a child) and chomp into the first books I have queued up for 2014. Every year I write this wrap-up and I remember the experiences I had reading and it's amazing how rich they are - I remember discussions I had about the books, feelings & memories they brought up, ideas they sparked, and even where I was and what was happening in my life when I read certain passages. I truly cannot imagine a life without reading, and I can honestly say that people who get by without it puzzle and confound me. So here's hoping for dozens of indelible experiences in 2014, each one a signpost helping to fix a fleeting moment. Take a look, it's in a book. Seriously. It's ALL IN A BOOK, PEOPLE. ALL OF IT. 

Cheers & luvs. 

*This would make a billion dollars! Why is no one making this? 

**I love you, Locke Lamora. Oh my god: another character to be played by Zac Efron! I have mentioned Zac Efron too much, haven't I? Noted.

***Don't worry, I looked it up and I am now aware that the history of the loom is actually mildly interesting. Stop writing your angry emails. 

Tenth of December and Store of the Worlds: A Surreal Stories Twofer

 

I feel like the question authors dread the most is “where do you get your ideas?” because a) there’s not, like, a box somewhere and b) it always has this weird subtext of “tell us the secretsss please precious secretsss we wants to work from home too pleeeease.” Also, for tons of authors, it’s pretty obvious where they get their ideas: from the news, or from their lives, or from scanning the best-seller list. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – some of the most amazing books have their magic in the way the story is told, not necessarily the premise or plot twists.

But sometimes you just got to go to another place – you don’t want to read about sad suburbia or ripped-from-the-headlines mystery & crime or another goddamned paranormal romance. You want something ORIGINAL, baby! Something that will actually make you shake the book and say “where did you get these ideas you weird little fuckers?!”

For those moments, try George Saunders or the late, great Robert Sheckley. In Saunders’ 10^th of December, there are so many visions of an absurdist yet completely possible future America that I vacillated between being amused (“ha! Can you imagine?”) to terrified (“Oh god I can imagine…is this real life???”). I predictably loved the most ‘out-there’ stories, like “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” about a father trying to ‘keep up with the Jones’ and their living lawn ornaments.  The other tales, like the title story, were more realistic, but no less engrossing. Disappointment and failed potential and middle-class longing seemed to be big themes. Yet somehow I emerged un-depressed - Saunders has a way with words that can make you laugh through the tears.

Sheckley’s work has a similar sense of humor – he used his super-powered imagination to ask "what if?" and followed the trail wherever it took him. This was my first introduction to his work, and I’ll definitely be checking out more. He turns all of the stale conventions of science-fiction & fantasy on their heads in smart, witty stories about government sanctioned cat & mouse games and "land races," alien worlds with killer winds, well-intentioned but bumbling "first contact" teams, spaceships made of self-aware specialized components, resurrected soldiers...etc, etc, etc. The potential Twilight Zone scenarios go on & on. Sci-fi & speculative fiction can sometimes fall back on predictable tropes, but Sheckley feels sharp and fresh. For stories written in the 1950s, that's no small feat.

Saunders & Sheckley in 2016. Step into something new...with BOOKS! Doo doo doo DOO.

Tenth of December: 3.5 ml of Vivistif out of 5.

Store of the Worlds: 4 minutes in an alternate non-nuclear winter earth out of 5. 

Alien Contact

Look, I *don't* want to believe. At all. Aliens are terrifying. Unfortunately I've seen the videos (okay, yes, just this one video. And yes, if you are my friend - it's the one I've made you watch. Also if you are my co-worker. ALSO if you're that person I sat next to on the train once. Sorry).

So I thought I would read this book to get a little perspective on our little green friends and it really helped. Marvel at the obnoxious, but ultimately humanity advancing, aliens in George Alec Effinger's "The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything"! Wonder at the dog-faced aliens and the many different paths intelligent societies can take in Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken"! Sit quietly with a cup of tea and ponder the meaning of a friendship between a bag lady and a disembodied alien claw robot in Pat Murphy's "Recycling Strategies for the Inner City"!

There were also some scary stories in here - "Law of Survival" by Nancy Kress, featuring a starving earth and a mysterious alien race looking to train stray dogs, being a notable one (it doesn't sound that scary, I guess...but why would aliens want well-behaved dogs? Think about it - only evil can come of this). But ultimately, my feelings about the aliens who are surely already living among us are now much more well-rounded. This was a growth experience for me. Also the last story in the book, "Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter, is completely heartbreaking and moved me in a way I did not expect ("Are you crying? Reading that ALIEN BOOK?" - my fiance).

Oh GOD WHY did I write so many words for this review???? What is the point. If you are a huge nerd, read this book if you haven't already, it's got some great stories. If you are not a huge nerd, who are we kidding? You are not going to pick up a book with an alien/man riff on the "Creation of Adam" lit by a weird green glow on the cover. But it's your loss! Also I have a video you should watch...

4 statues of Zefram Cochrane out of 5.

After the Apocalypse

I have definitely crafted an apocalypse survival plan with a few people ("you get the guns, I'll get the cans - we make our way north and rendezvous at my parent's cottage in Nova Scotia where we can seal off the only road onto the island.") But if zombies *actually* happened I would probably be caught wearing impractical high heels, ignore the warnings, and get taken down within the first 10 minutes while standing in line for an iced coffee.

We all think we're much more heroic and resourceful than we really are, and it's easy to picture ourselves rising from the ashes, the demise of processed food finally helping us sculpt some wicked abs, which we display at all times while wielding a machete and scavenging for supplies like a warrior princess (No? Just my daydreams? Cool). Maureen F. McHugh's nine stories, all set in some sort of post-apocalypse or dystopian future (those pesky zombies, dirty bomb attacks, economic depression, drought), immerse you in stories that feel much more realistic and more raw than those found in most end of the world dramas. There's nothing glossy or cartoonish about a resentful mother dragging her whiny teenager through a starving America, or a Mad Cow-like illness infecting the chicken nugget supply and damning a generation to a slow, paralyzing dementia. It would all be really, really depressing if it wasn't such a breath of fresh air in what can admittedly be a somewhat stagnant genre.

4 death-dealing processed nuggets out of 5! That is probably the way we're all going to go out, actually.

The Panic Hand

These stories - so great. So WEIRD. They zig and zag all over the place but you always end up somewhere awesome. The story "Friend's Best Man" won the World Fantasy Award and stars a dog that can predict the future. A magic dog! Look, I can't even go into all the details beyond the psychic dog, the story with God as a housekeeper, the imaginary friend who is alive...it's all good. Kelly Link and Aimee Bender owe some big debts to Carroll - if you enjoyed their short stories I would definitely pick this up if you can find a copy.

Friend's Best Man = 5 magic Jack Russell terriers out of 5.

The rest of the book = 3.5 raging World Fantasy Awards after-parties out of 5.