Reading Round-Up: January 2018

Reinstating what I intend to be a monthly summary of everything I’ve read, since I’m not reviewing every single book or story the way I used to try to do on Livejournal. Here’s what I read in January of 2018:

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in ebook format as “books.” I read or listened to 14 books in January: 11 in print, 2 in audio, and 1 in ebook format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #92 (January 2018 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories and novellas. This month’s favorites for me were Catherynne M. Valente’s “Golabush, Or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy,” Sarah Pinsker’s “The Court Magician,” and José Pablo Iriarte’s “The Substance of My Lives, The Accident of Our Birth.”

2.       Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz.  A wonderful first-person gay coming-of-age story about two Latino boys in the Southwest in the 80s, endearingly read on audio by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I didn’t quite get the sense that Ari was as angry as the cover-copy made him out to be (conflicted yes, over-the-top angry not so much).

3.       Wonder Woman ’77 Meets the Bionic Woman, by Andy Mangels, Judit Tondora and others. Fun, fun, fun team-up between two of my favorite 70s TV icons. Mangels skillfully melds bad-guys from both shows into a formidable menace, and there are lots of great nods to both shows’ supporting casts (especially the female members). But there’s also an sub-plot that’s never resolved, indicating Mangels expected there to be a sequel mini-series/trade paperback. And Judit Tondora’s art is just wonderful to look at.

4.       Beneath The Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3), by Seanan McGuire.  The story of the portal-children at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children continue, this time with a quest into a Wonderland-like candy world that could have dire consequences for several members of the cast. What I love about these novellas is that you don’t have to have read the previous installments at all: McGuire tells you everything you need to know in each installment. But of course, reading them (in or out of order) gives you a much bigger picture to absorb.

5.       Sherlock Holmes and the Green Lama: Heir Apparent, by Adam Lance Garcia. Love Holmes pastiches, love the “modern pulp movement.” Not overly familiar with the pulp history of The Green Lama, but that didn’t affect my enjoyment of this crossover which draws on both the Lama’s and Holme’s overlapping experiences in Tibet. The tension is well-spooled-out, the action sequences well-done. I’m sure I missed some of the nods towards other pulp characters and settings.

6.       The Squirrel on the Train (Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries #2), by Kevin Hearne.  Another fun novella in the Iron Druid Chronicles narrated by everyone’s favorite Irish wolfhound, Oberon. The IDC novels and short stories told from the human characters’ perspectives are fun and exciting, but the voice Hearne gives Oberon is more endearing and intimate and just plain joyful.

7.       Binti: The Night Masquerage (Binti #3), by Nnedi Okorafor. The Binti trilogy of novellas concludes as solidly as it started: with amazing poetic prose, beautiful descriptions of people and places, action propelled by characterization, and at least one story twist I personally did not see coming. Folks whose first exposure to Afrofuturism was the Marvel movie Black Panther really need to check out this series.

8.       Lumberjanes Vol. 7: A Bird’s Eye View, by Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Carey Pietsch, Ayme Sotuyo, Maarta Laiho. After a couple of volumes where I felt the story had slowed or the art wasn’t quite up to the standard of the first few, I feel like Volume 7 is both a return to form and a departure, with several new interesting supporting characters introduced and other supporting characters returning and being given more depth – all without shirking development for the core cast. I hear there might me a television version in development, and I hope none of the spark and strength of these girls is lost in adaptation.

9.       Ironcastle, by Philip Jose Farmer, adapting J.H. Rosny Aine.  It’s taken me way too long to get around to reading this Farmer classic. I enjoyed it. There will be a longer review sometime next week, since this is one of the books I read to meet this year’s To Be Read Challenge, which requires an individual review to be posted.

10.   Superman: The Phantom Zone, by Steve Gerber, Gene Colan, Tony DeZuniga, Rick Veitch, Bob Smith and others.  I loved this four-issue mini-series when it was published in the early 80s, before DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, as goofy as the story is. Gerber told a great story (although the follow-up story in DC Comics Presents was a bit more convoluted upon re-reading than I remembered). Colan’s art here is not necessarily his best compared to Tomb of Dracula, or even the Silverblade and Nathaniel Dusk minis he was drawing for DC around the same time, but it’s still fun. The man was a master of shadow and fluidity of movement.

11.   Kiss Me Like A Stranger, by Gene Wilder.  I can’t believe I haven’t read Wilder’s memoir before now. It’s become my habit to listen to, rather than read, memoirs if they’re read by the author, and I feel like I got a better sense of what Gene was trying to say (and what he was shying away from saying) by listening to him. I think, especially when it comes to the estrangement from his adopted daughter, he had blinders on as to what the problem actually was, but then again it’s very easy to judge from the outside things that aren’t as obvious when you’re in the middle. And his love for Gilda as well as the woman he married after her passing are very very strong and clear.

12.   Iceman Volume 1: Thawing Out, by Sina Grace, Alessandro Vitti, Edgar Salazer, and others.  I really intend to write a longer blog-post about this eventually. As I said on Twitter, I felt like Grace really captures the act of coming out “later in life” (a subjective term, to be sure, but I think Bobby Drake coming out as gay in his late 20s, after having “come out” as a mutant in his teens, qualifies), and the different pressures and roadblocks that come with it. Bobby’s journey in these few issues very much matches my own coming out in my late twenties after years of trying to convince myself I was straight and having lots of failed relationships with otherwise wonderful women, many of whom are still good friends.

13.   Cry Your Way Home, by Damien Angelica Walters. A wonderful short story collection by one of my favorite authors, about which I don’t want to say too much here because my full review will be forthcoming at Strange Horizons in about a month.

14.   The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 3), by Rick Riordan.  I have not been as captivated by the Magnus Chase books as I have by the Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles series, but this concluding volume of the first trilogy (which features a short guest spot by everyone’s favorite son of Poseidon as well as Magnus’ cousin Annabeth) grabbed me. A slightly slow start gives way to a fast-paced adventure that resolves all of the extant main and sub-plots and gives us more depth to the supporting cast of Magnus’ hotel-mates.

So fourteen books in January, which Goodreads told me was a few ahead of goal for the month/year. Ironcastle is the first book read for the 2018 To Be Read Challenge. Four graphic novels meets my “one graphic novel per week” reading challenge, while nothing I read in January helped meet any of the “Complete the Series” challenges, nor the “Bustle Reading Challenge.”  Those Reading Challenges were described HERE.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “The Streets of Babel” by Adam-Troy Castro, from Lightspeed Magazine #92 (January 2018 issued), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Golabush, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy” by Catherynne M. Valente

3.       “The Eyes of the Flood” by Susan Jane Bigelow

4.       “Someday” by James Patrick Kelly

5.       “Auburn” by Joanna Ruocco

6.       “The Substance of My Lives, the Accident of Our Births” by Jose Pablo Iriarte

7.       “Divine Madness” by Roger Zelazny

8.       “The Court Magician” by Sarah Pinsker

9.       “A Thousand Nights Till Morning” by Will McIntosh

10.   “Written in Water” by Seanan McGuire, a Patrick-and-Dianda story, on the author’s Patreon page.

11.   “Guerilla Marketing” by Sanjay Agnihotri, from One Story #236, edited by Will Allison

12.   “Our New Lives” by Helen Coats, from One Teen Story #53, edited by Patrick Ryan

13.   “Trouble Comes” by Neal Bailey, stand-alone ebook available on Kindle

14.   “Tooth, Tongue and Claw” by Damien Angelica Walters, from her collection Cry Your Way Home, edited by Leslie Connor.

15.   “Deep Within the Marrow, Hidden In My Smile” by Damien Angelica Walters

16.   “On The Other Side of The Door, Everything Changes” by Damien Angelica Walters

17.   “This Is The Way I Die” by Damien Angelica Walters

18.   “The Hands That Hold, The Lies That Bind” by Damien Angelica Walters

19.   “Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant’s Tale” by Damien Angelica Walters

20.   “The Judas Child” by Damien Angelica Walters

21.   “S Is For Soliloquy” by Damien Angelica Walters

22.   “The Floating Girls: A Documentary” by Damien Angelica Walters

23.   “Take A Walk In The Night, My Love” by Damien Angelica Walters

24.   “Falling Under, Through the Dark” by Damien Angelica Walters

25.   “The Serial Killer’s Astronaut Daughter” by Damien Angelica Walters

26.   “Umbilicus” by Damien Angelica Walters

27.   “A Lie You Give, And Thus I Take” by Damien Angelica Walters

28.   “Little Girl Blue, Come Cry Your Way Home” by Damien Angelica Walters

29.   “Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice” by Damien Angelica Walters

30.   “In The Spaces Where You Lived” by Damien Angelica Walters

31.   “How The Marquis Got His Coat Back” by Neil Gaiman, the full-cast BBC Audio production available on Audible.

32.   “The Way Home” by Seanan McGuire, an Alice Healey /Tom Price “Incryptid” story, on the author’s website

33.   “The Lay of The Land” by Seanan McGuire

34.   “Target Practice” by Seanan McGuire

So that’s 34 short stories in January, more than one per day, putting  me exactly on schedule for the year so far.

Review of Donald E. Westlake's Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

TITLE: Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

AUTHOR: Donald Westlake

255 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785656828

Publication Date: February 13, 2018 (I received an uncorrected proof ARC in exchange for an honest review), trade paperback, $9.95

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): JAILED FOR A JOKE

It isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters - so jail is where Harold Künt landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates' plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it's too late; he's in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose...

HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER is Donald E. Westlake at his funniest and his most ingenious, a rediscovered crime classic from the MWA Grand Master returning to stores for the first time in three decades.

MY RATING: Five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: I admit I haven’t read a lot of Donald E. Westlake. Some short stories, maybe a Parker novel back in my ill-remembered high school days at the behest of a friend, and last year’s Hard Case Crime release of Westlake’s previously-unpublished novel Forever And A Death. Despite multiple people telling me how comedic Westlake could be, everything I’ve read by him has been on the more serious/adventure side of things. Those books had funny scenes interspersed, but weren’t wholly comedic tales.

I’ve now experienced Westlake’s full comedic prowess, and I’m hooked. Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner is a fast, funny romp of a story, virtually “unputdownable.” There’s a catchy turn of phrase, or a crackling bit of dialogue, or a tongue-in-cheek wink at the reader, on almost every page that should bring a chuckle, if not an outright laugh (and I did actually laugh out loud at least four times), to any reader with at least a moderate sense of humor. I suspect there are people who will not find Westlake’s wordplay or the main character’s antics funny – those people are the real life versions of characters Warden Gadmore and guard Fred Stoon – but I really enjoyed the book.

It can be hard to make humor based on mispronunciations work in print, but Westlake pulls it off on the first page. Our narrator has a name people have been saying wrong his entire life: Harry Künt (“with an umlaut,” he repeatedly tells people). He never quiet spells out exactly how people are mispronouncing his name, but the reader can guess pretty easily. This becomes a running joke throughout the book, and serves as character motivation for why Harry became a practical joker early in life. (Okay, it might be thin character motivation, but it works as a launching point.)

The entire book really is a comedy of errors, as Harry gets further and further in over his head. But it’s a comedy of errors that never quite veers into farce despite some of the stock characters Harry finds himself surrounded by (the officious and humorless warden; the threatening gang leader who just won’t give up the plan; the fellow in-mate who gets a little too lost in the character he’s playing outside the jail walls). In a way, it reminds me of classic episodes of The Simpsons or the Dick Van Dyke show: just when you think you know where the story is heading and what the punchline is going to be, Westlake adds a new complication to poor Harry’s life. And this includes the titular sub-plot: someone else in the prison is pranking the warden by having the title phrase pop up in unusual places; we know from the start this is one practical joke Harry is innocent of, but of course the warden, head-guard and other officials think it must be him because that’s what he got sent in for.

The author also seamlessly blends in the other genres he’s famous for (and some he's not): it’s a jail-break caper, a bank robbery caper, a feel-good prison-buddy story (Harry bonds with a fellow prisoner who is in charge of all the gardening), a military-base escapade, a romance. The comedy works because Westlake knows the tropes of all of these genres and tweaks them just enough to make each scene funny without losing the tension (the military-base scene in particular is equal parts Lee Marvin movie and M*A*S*H). I have no doubt that, had he wanted to, Westlake could have written this as a straight-up thriller and the story would have hung together just as well.

(Side-note: I’m actually surprised this has never been adapted to film. It’s an ideal vehicle for someone with an everyman look and solid comic timing, surrounded by character actors with the right mixture of menace and buffoonery.)

As seen above, Hard Case Crime’s re-release of this 30 year old long out-of-print Westlake classic comes with an equally humorous cover painting by Paul Mann that simply and expertly captures the mood of the book without being cartoony or too cutesy. This is the eighth Westlake novel HCC has released, following 361, The Comedy Is Finished, The Cutie, Memory, Somebody Owes Me Money, Forever and A Death, and Lemons Never Lie, (under Westlake’s Richard Stark pseudonym).

Fans of loving send-ups of classic genres, written by authors who know those genres well, really should check out Help I Am Being Held A Prisoner. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

2017 Reading By The Numbers

In which I analyze exactly what I read, in what formats and genres and such-like. (I like my personal counts to match my Goodreads page, so I count fully-read magazine issues and individually-published short stories and novellas as “books.”)

BOOKS

I exceeded my Goodreads initial goal of 100 books, and my updated Goodreads goal of 125. I did not attempt “To Be Read” Challenge this year.

TOTAL READ: 139

FICTION: 131

·         Anthologies: 8

o   Horror: 1

o   Christmas: 1

o   Weird West: 1

o   Transgender Spec Fic: 1

o   Pulp Adventure: 1

o   Science Fiction 2

o   Crime: 1

·         Chapbooks: 2 (both pulp adventure)

·         Single-Author Story Collections: 10

o   Horror: 1

o   Christmas: 1

o   Crime: 1

o   Mystery: 5

o   Science Fiction: 1

o   Mythology: 1

·         Graphic Novels: 37

o   Super-Heroes: 17

o   Horror: 8

o   Crime: 2

o   Comedy: 1

o   Fantasy: 2

o   Urban Fantasy: 2

o   YA Urban Fantasy: 3

o   YA Comedy: 1

o   Pulp Adventure: 1

·         Magazines: 12 (all Lightspeed)

·         Novels: 38

o   Alt-History Fantasy: 2

o   Christmas: 2

o   Fantasy: 8

o   YA Fantasy: 2

o   Urban Fantasy: 4

o   Historical Fantasy: 1

o   Steampunk: 2

o   Science Fiction: 5

o   YA Science Fiction: 1

o   Crime/Mystery: 5

o   Super-Heroes: 1

o   Horror: 3

o   Adventure: 1

o   YA Literary: 1

·         Novellas: 19

o   Christmas: 2

o   Alt-History Fantasy/Romance: 1

o   Science Fiction 5

o   Fantasy: 3

o   Mystery: 2

o   Horror: 2

o   Urban Fantasy: 3

o   Historical Fantasy: 1

·         Short Stories: 5

o   Romance: 1

o   Pulp Adventure: 1

o   Urban Fantasy: 2

o   Alt-History Fantasy/Romance: 1

NON-FICTION: 8

·         Memoirs: 7

o   Alison Arngrim

o   Carrie Fisher (x2)

o   Debbie Reynolds

o   Joel Grey

o   William Daniels

o   Dick Van Dyke

·         Book of Essays: 1 (Neil Gaiman)

OTHER DATA:

# OF AUTHORS/EDITORS/ARTISTS: roughly 107

SHORTEST READS: 20 pages (A Very Merry Blue Christmas; Caesar’s Children; In Sea-Salt Tears)

LONGEST READ: 459 (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor)

FIRST BOOK READ IN 2017: Locke & Key Vol 1: Welcome to Lovecraft, by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez & others

FINAL BOOK READ IN 2017: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

TOTAL # OF PAGES READ: 26, 987

AVERAGE # OF PAGES PER BOOK: 197

FORMAT SUMMARY:

·         Audio:27

·         Ebook: 26

·         Hardcover: 21

·         Softcover: 65

STORIES

I exceeded my goal of 365 short stories. I did not really track how many in each genre this year.

TOTAL READ: 380

# OF AUTHORS: 212

SOURCES:

·         Anthologies: 14

·         Single Author Collections: 9

·         Magazines: 10

·         Author Websites/Patreon/Self-Pubbed: 17

First Story Read in 2017: “Rate of Change” by James S.E. Corey, in Lightspeed #79

Final Story Read in 2017: “Pups” by Kate Folk, in One Story #235

Sunday Shorts, Tuesday Edition: Christmas

The Legion of Santas, 2017 Edition, only one of whom is reading....

It’s no secret that I love the stories and music of the Christmas season. I mean, I wrote and self-published (and will re-self-publish in 2018)  a short children’s book, THE FIRFLAKE, about the first snowflake of winter and how the elves met Santa; and I wrote, but haven’t published, a YA Christmas story about a young boy dealing with the unexpected death of his older brother and whether ghosts really do visit us on Christmas Eve; and yet a third story idea is percolating in the back of my brain. And every year I send an original holiday poem to my family and friends and anyone else who wants one.

Every year I re-read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and always get some new enjoyment out of it. But my shelf is full of Christmas books: kids books, novels, factual tomes, short story collections… so this year I decided to choose a couple of stories from as many different anthologies as I could and supplement them with never ebook and online holiday tales, spanning genres from science fiction to fantasy to mystery to romance.  And now, as the month draws to a close, I’m sharing that list with you!

·         “Dolph” by ‘Nathan Burgione (available in Just Another Winter’s Tale or at the author’s website https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/dolph/), a queer retelling of Rudolph.

·         “Frost” by ‘Nathan Burgoine (available in Wilde Stories 2017 or at https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/frost/), a queer retelling of Frosty.

·         “Reflection” by ‘Nathan Burgoine) (available at https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/reflection/)

·         “A Christmas Hex” by Jordan L. Hawk, a fun, sexy entry in her alt-history,  witches-and-familiars “Hexworld” series

·         “How The Supervillian Stole Christmas” by Charles Payseur (e-book), hey, even supervillains need love.

·         THE TWELVE WAYS OF CHRISTMAS by Sanda M. Odell. I read one story a day for 12 days before Christmas, each one themed for a part of the song:

o   “Home For Christmas”

o   “Tourterelle Des Bois”

o   “A Free-Range Panic at Alanda Farms”

o   “To Speak of Metal Men and Birds of War”

o   “T’is the Season”

o   “Good for the Gander”

o   “But Calm, White Calm, was Born into a Swan”

o   “A Milk of Human Kindness”

o   “Oh, How She Danced”

o   “Git Along Little Dogies”

o   “Re: Pete”

o   “Nor Tap in Time at School”

·         “The Kwanzaa Kid” by Maurice Broaddus, in the anthology “Naughty or Nice”

·         “He Knows When You’re Awake” by Cat Rambo, in “Naughty or Nice”

·         “The Toymaker’s Joy” by Lucy A. Snyder, in “Naughty or Nice” (This one definitely is NOT for kids!)

·         “On The Hills and Everywhere” by Manly Wade Wellman, in “A Cosmic Christmas”

·         “Angels in Flight” by Sarah A. Hoyt, a story about not belonging in “A Cosmic Christmas”

·         “Roads” by Seabury Quinn, in “A Cosmic Christmas” (HOW HAVE I NEVER READ THIS BEFORE?)

·         “Dyke The Halls” by Michael Thomas Ford, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” by Gene Hult, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “Snowflake Time: A Christmas Tale” by Laura Lippman, this year’s free chapbook from Otto Penzler to customers at The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC

·         “Klacky the Christmas Dragon” by Paul Magrs, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “Pawprints in the Snow” by Roy Gill, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “By Chance, in the Dark” by Matthew Bright, a queer retelling of Scrooge, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “The Moving Wallpaper” by Nicholas M. Campbell, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” by Damon Runyon, in “Murder For Christmas” (GUYS AND DOLLS, PEOPLE!)

·         “If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Calm and Clear” by Ken Scholes, in “Seasons of Wonder” (what future holidays and versions of the Santa legend might be celebrated?)

·         “Dulce Domum” by Ellen Kushner in “Seasons of Wonder” (Not everyone wants to go home again)

·         “As Dark As Christmas Gets” by Lawrence Block, in “Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop” (a perennial fave, Chip Harrison and Leo Haig investigate the theft of a Cornell Woolrich manuscript)

·         “Cold Reading” by Charles Ardai, in “Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop” (what is it with the Bookshop and found manuscripts?)

·         “Sock It To Me, Santa” by Madison Parker (e-book), a cute high school Secret-Santa-coming-out tale

·         “A Very Merry Blue Christmas” by Linda Poitevin, a short romantic holiday interlude in her “Ever After” romance series

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

‘Tis The Season…

To be thankful for the love, support, and safe

Harbors given me this year. You are

Always in my thoughts, whether

Near or far, whether

Kin by blood or Kin of the heart. You’ve sent

So much love, boundless and reverberating.

Always in my heart, I pray that the

Light and warmth of the season bring you

Love, Hope, Peace and Prosperity.

MERRY CHRISTMAS,

HAPPY HANNUKAH,

JOYOUS SOLSTICE,

AND A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

(Illustration by the amazing Don Cornue, from my Christmas book THE FIRFLAKE)

2018 Reading Challenges

Young me circa 1974 says "So much to read, so little time...."

Last week, I posted my list of planned reads for RoofbeamReader’s 2018 “TBR Challenge.” But I always set myself more than one reading challenge a year. Some carry over from year to year, and some are new. Some are broad and some are themed. And in many cases, books read will help me meet more than one challenge.

365 SHORT STORIES CHALLENGE

Every year, I challenge myself to read one short story per day. Some years I keep the pace pretty well, and some years I fall behind and then scramble to catch up (and some years, I catch up and fall behind again). I used to post thoughts on each individual story over on my now-largely-defunct Livejournal; this year I plan to review a story or two in-depth each Sunday and then do a monthly “round-up” of all stories read that month. I’m defining “short story” as anything from flash fiction to novella-length. If a story/novella is published as a stand-alone book (ebook or otherwise), that story will also count towards my annual Goodreads “Books Read Challenge.”

GOODREADS CHALLENGE

Goodreads allows members to set a challenge. In 2017 I set the same 100 book challenge as previous years. I blew past that in mid-fall and decided to increase it to 125, and managed over 130 books. So for 2018, I’m going to start out planning on 125 books and see where we go. Goodreads also counts magazines and individually-published short stories as “books,” so I count them for this challenge as well. Of course, any book read for the TBR Challenge, or the challenges mentioned below, count towards this one.

GRAPHIC NOVEL CHALLENGE

I own far more graphic novels and trade paperback collections of classic comics than I’ve read. In 2017 I started trying to turn that around, and I’m setting a goal in 2018 of reading one graphic novel per week. I may start a separate post tracking these, or I may just come back and update numbers here.

“BUSTLE” CHALLENGE (adapted from 2017)

A co-worker pointed me to the Bustle.com 2017 reading challenge near the end of 2016, and while I had every initial intent of working on the challenge because it would foster reading outside of my comfort zone (non-fiction in general is something I really need to challenge myself to read), I dropped the ball on it. So I’m challenging myself to do it in 2018, and adding one category to the 20 of the original challenge. For some of the categories, I’ve already decided what I want to read (and already own the books in question), while for some I’m leaving myself room to pick something after I gather recommendations).  I plan to come back to this post and add “date completed” for each category, and links to reviews where appropriate. Here are the categories (and the books already chosen):

1.       BY A WOMAN UNDER 25: I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

2.       ABOUT NON-WESTERN HISTORY: A History of the Philippines From Indios Bravos to Filipinos by Luis. H. Francia

3.       A BOOK OF ESSAYS: Teenagers From The Future, edited by Tim Callaghan COMPLETED FEBRUARY 2018

4.       ABOUT INDIGENOUS CULTURE: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz

5.       BEFORE YOU SEE THE MOVIE: The Lady Vanishes / The Spiral Staircase, by Ethel White (believe it or not, I’ve never seen the classic noir movies based on these books)

6.       YOUNG ADULT BY AN AUTHOR OF COLOR: Shadowhouse Falls by Daniel Jose Older

7.       SET IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Solacers, by Arion Galmanaki

8.       ABOUT WOMEN IN WAR:

9.       A GRAPHIC NOVEL BY A WOMAN: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

10.   BY AN IMMIGRANT/REFUGEE TO THE US:

11.   CHILDREN’S BOOK (READ ALOUD):

12.   REREAD A CHILDHOOD FAVORITE: A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle COMPLETED MARCH 2018

13.   AN LGBTQIA MEMOIR: To The Stars by George Takei READ APRIL 2018

14.   POST-APOCALYPTIC FICTION BY A WOMAN: Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor

15.   FEMINIST SF NOVEL:

16.   FIRST BOOK IN A NEW SERIES: Velveteen Vs. The Junior Super-Patriots, by Seanan McGuire

17.   SET IN AFRICA, BY AN AFRICAN AUTHOR: Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe COMPLETED FEBRUARY 2018

18.   TRANSLATED BOOK: Invisible Planets, edited and translated by Ken Liu

19.   CONTEMPORARY POET: Lies, Mistruths and Perception by Kate Fox

20.   BY A MODERNIST WOMAN WRITER: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

21.   BY A MAN UNDER 25: A Lite Too Bright by Samuel Miller (to be published May, 2018)

COMPLETE THE SERIES CHALLENGE

In previous years I’ve challenged myself to come “up to date” on series I’d started but fallen behind on. This year, I’m challenging myself to also read one series that I own but have not read. Titles that I have read in each series are indicated with (re-read).  I plan to come back to this post and add “date completed” for each book individually and for each series as a whole, and give links to reviews where appropriate.

THE VELVETEEN SERIES by Seanan McGuire

1.       Velveteen Vs. The Junior Super-Patriots

2.       Velveteen Vs. The Multiverse

3.       Velveteen Vs. The Seasons

LAWRENCE BLOCK’S CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY

1.       After The First Death

2.       Deadly Honeymoon

3.       Grifter’s Game (re-read)

4.       The Girl with the Long Green Beret

5.       The Specialists (re-read)

6.       The Triumph of Evil

7.       Such Men Are Dangerous

8.       Not Comin’ Home to You

9.       Lucky at Cards

10.   Killing Casto (re-read)

11.   A Diet of Treacle

12.   You Could Call It Murder

13.   Coward’s Kiss

14.   Cinderella Sims

15.   Passport to Peril

16.   Ariel

VANTAGE BOOKS MOVIE CLASSICS (Themed Set by PenguinRandomHouse, 2014-2015)

1.       Showboat by Edna Ferber (re-read)

2.       Cimarron by Edna Ferber

3.       Back Street by Fannie Hurst

4.       Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

5.       The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick

6.       The Bad Seed by William March

7.       Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds

8.       The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring Stone READ MARCH 2018

9.       Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson

10.   The Night of the Hunter by David Grubb

THE RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION SERIES (Themed Set by HiLo Books, 2012-2013)

1.       The Scarlet Plague by Jack London READ APRIL 2018

2.       With The Night Mail / “As Easy as A.B.C.” by Rudyard Kipling

3.       The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4.       When The World Shook by H. Rider Haggard

5.       The People of the Ruins by Edward Shanks

6.       The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson

7.       Goslings by J.D. Beresford

8.       The Clockwork Man by E.V. Odle   (re-read)

9.       Theodore Savage by Cicely Hamilton

10.   The Man with Six Senses by Muriel Jaeger (re-read)

E. CATHERINE TOBLER’S “FOLLEY & MALLORY” SERIES

1.       Rings of Anubis READ MARCH 2018

2.       The Glass Falcon READ APRIL 2018

3.       The Honey Mummy

4.       The Clockwork Tomb

CHINUA ACHEBE’S “AFRICA TRILOGY”

1.       Things Fall Apart READ FEBRUARY 2018

2.       No Longer At Ease

3.        The Arrow of God

Review of 'Nathan Burgoine's HANDMADE HOLIDAYS

HANDMADE HOLIDAYS, ISBN 9781947904354, 82 pgs, $2.99 (Kindle, no print edition)

‘Nathan Burgoine, NineStar Press

PREMISE: (From Goodreads.com)

At nineteen, Nick is alone for the holidays and facing reality: this is how it will be from now on. Refusing to give up completely, Nick buys a Christmas tree, and then realizes he has no ornaments. A bare tree and an empty apartment aren’t a great start, but a visit from his friend Haruto is just the ticket to get him through this first, worst, Christmas. A box of candy canes and a hastily folded paper crane might not be the best ornaments, but it’s a place to start.

A year later, Nick has realized he’s not the only one with nowhere to go, and he hosts his first “Christmas for the Misfit Toys.” Haruto brings Nick an ornament for Nick’s tree, and a tradition—and a new family—is born.

As years go by, Nick, Haruto, and their friends face love, betrayal, life, and death. Every ornament on Nick’s tree is another year, another story, and another chance at the one thing Nick has wanted since the start: someone who’d share more than the holidays with him.

Of course, Nick might have already missed his shot at the one, and it might be too late.

Still, after fifteen Christmases, Nick is ready to risk it all for the best present yet.

MY RATING:  Five stars out of five

MY THOUGHTS:   ‘Nathan Burgoine’s new holiday-themed novella is a beautifully-crafted story of chosen family, kindred spirits and the old edict that “timing is everything.”

It’s almost a trope now that we LGBTQ+ folk love to build our own families. Even those of us whose birth-families accepted and encouraged us still build families of the heart to supplement our family of the blood. But for still too many LGBTQ+ people, the chosen family is the only family they have, built up through common experience and shared hobbies when their birth-families have abandoned and disowned them. This is where Burgoine picks up Nick Wilson’s story. We know just enough about Nick’s birth-family to know they exist and that they have thrown him aside because he’s gay. In some other hands, this story would be about a happy holiday reconciliation with the family that abandoned him. But Burgoine is not afraid to start with the hard truth that for some in our community that reconciliation never comes, and let the story develop from there.

Nick’s family-of-the-heart doesn’t appear miraculously on winter’s breath with traditions full-blown. The first Christmas, with only Haruto and candy-cane ornaments, is full of uncertainty and anxiety. It’s also imbued with just a touch of bravado and a healthy camaraderie that let us know right away: while there may be drama and heartbreak ahead, this is not a sad story. It carries the hope that “it gets better” from the first paragraph. Over the first few chapters, and thus the first few years’ worth of developing holiday traditions, we get to see Nick become comfortable with who he is and the family he’s building around himself. Matt, Fiona and Perry bring out different sides of Nick, from the protective to the argumentative. We get to know them as Nick gets to know them, and they are all engaging and interesting. Even the supporting characters who are on stage for far less time (and some of who are far from likeable) are at the least interesting. 

Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a book without complications, distancing, and misunderstandings, and all five of these core characters experience their share. Burgoine heightens that drama by occasionally letting more than one year go by between chapters, allowing for lots to have changed within the group dynamic without having to show us every incremental step in those changes. This time-hopping (but never flash-backing) technique keeps the reader engaged, keeps us wondering what new changes will become apparent with each new chapter, much as we might wonder what news the latest “Christmas Letter” is going to bring from old friends we only hear from once a year.

The novella spans fifteen years in the life of Nick and his friends, experiencing losses and gains. It reads fast and easy, another reason I love ‘Nathan Burgoine’s work: he gives us deep characterization and emotional stakes without dragging the story out any longer than it needs to be. If there’s a personal or sensory detail missing, it didn’t need to be there to begin with. The end of the book comes too fast (because we’ve come to love these characters and don’t want to say goodbye) but also not too fast (because the story has reached a natural, happy, end-point without being forced).  I can’t recommend Handmade Holidays highly enough, and it is definitely going on my annual re-read list.

2018 TO BE READ CHALLENGE

Most avid readers have a “to be read” pile, in our office or near our bed: books we bought intending to read, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.  Some of us have “to be read” bookcases.  This year, book blogger RoofbeamReader  is re-instituting his To Be Read Challenge after a two year hiatus. (The first year RBR didn’t run the challenge, I challenged myself and succeeded; in 2016, not so much.)

You have to go to RBR’s website to officially sign up for the challenge if you want to be entered to win a gift card to Amazon or the Book Depository at year’s end: https://roofbeamreader.com/2017/11/07/announcing-the-official-2018-tbr-pile-challenge/  but the basic rules (other than how to enter) are:

The Goal: To finally read 12 books from your “to be read” pile (within 12 months).

Specifics:

1.       Each of these 12 books must have been on your bookshelf or “To Be Read” list for AT LEAST one full year. This means the book cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2017 or later (any book published in the year 2016 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile). Caveat: Two (2) alternates are allowed, just in case one or two of the books end up in the “can’t get through” pile.

2.       Crossovers from other challenges are totally acceptable, as long as you have never read the book before and it was published before 2017!

*Note: You can read the books on your list in any order; they do not need to be read in the order you have them listed. Audiobooks count. Graphic novels count. Poetry collections? Essay collections? All good!  As you complete a book – review it, go to your original list and turn that title into a link to the review. This will keep the comments section here from getting ridiculously cluttered. For an example of what I mean, Click Here.

MY 2018 TO BE READ CHALLENGE LIST:

1.       THE LADY OF THE SHROUD, Bram Stoker     (1909)

2.       THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, Lawrence Block    (1965, reissued 2011)

3.       IRONCASTLE, Philip Jose Farmer and JH Rosny   (1976)

4.       GIOVANNI’S ROOM, James Baldwin    (1956)

5.       WHO FEARS DEATH, Nnedi Okorafor  (2010)

6.       THINGS FALL APART, Chinua Achebe    (1958)

7.       SOLACERS, Arion Gokmakani    (2012)

8.       THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, Grace Zaring Stone    (1932, reissued 2014)

9.       BECOMING NICOLE, Amy Ellis Nutt     (2016)

10.   THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, Junot Diaz    (2008)

11.   SOFT APOCALYPSES, Lucy A. Snyder    (2014)

12.   INVISIBLE PLANETS, translated/edited by Ken Liu   (2016)

ALTERNATES:

A.      REVENGE: Eleven Dark Tales, Yoko Ogawa (Stephen Snyder, translator) (2013)

B.      BUTCHER ROAD, Lee Thomas     (2014)

I have a few other reading challenges that I’m setting myself for 2018 that will overlap partially with this. I’ll be posting about those over the next few weeks.

Review of Neon Yang's TENSORATE novellas

THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN, isbn 9780765395412, 237 pgs, $15.99 (print)

THE RED THREADS OF FORTUNE, isbn 9780765395399, 213 pgs, $15.99 (print)

PREMISES: (From Goodreads.com)

BLACK TIDES: Mokoya and Akeha, the twin children of the Protector, were sold to the Grand Monastery as children. While Mokoya developed her strange prophetic gift, Akeha was always the one who could see the strings that moved adults to action. While his sister received visions of what would be, Akeha realized what could be. What's more, he saw the sickness at the heart of his mother's Protectorate. A rebellion is growing. The Machinists discover new levers to move the world every day, while the Tensors fight to put them down and preserve the power of the state. Unwilling to continue to play a pawn in his mother's twisted schemes, Akeha leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. But every step Akeha takes towards the Machinists is a step away from his sister Mokoya. Can Akeha find peace without shattering the bond he shares with his twin sister?

RED THREADS:  Fallen prophet, master of the elements, and daughter of the supreme Protector, Sanao Mokoya has abandoned the life that once bound her. Once her visions shaped the lives of citizens across the land, but no matter what tragedy Mokoya foresaw, she could never reshape the future. Broken by the loss of her young daughter, she now hunts deadly, sky-obscuring naga in the harsh outer reaches of the kingdom with packs of dinosaurs at her side, far from everything she used to love. On the trail of a massive naga that threatens the rebellious mining city of Bataanar, Mokoya meets the mysterious and alluring Rider. But all is not as it seems: the beast they both hunt harbors a secret that could ignite war throughout the Protectorate. As she is drawn into a conspiracy of magic and betrayal, Mokoya must come to terms with her extraordinary and dangerous gifts, or risk losing the little she has left to hold dear.

MY RATING:  Four stars out of five (for each books)

MY THOUGHTS:  The two novellas that comprise the introduction to The Tensorate, Neon Yang’s new Asian-inflected fantasy world, could just as easily have been published as a single 400+ page novel with shifting POV, but the decision to publish the material as two stand-alone long-ish novellas allows the reader to be fully immersed in the point of view character for each part of the story. Despite the fact that The Red Threads of Fortune clearly follows The Black Tides of Heaven in chronological order, one could read Red Threads before Black Tides and not be at a loss for character background or world-building.

The novellas are immediately immersive; the characters understand how their world works (both the magic and the politics), and there is no “gateway” character innocent of this information to operate as reader-stand-in. Therefore, the world-building is subtle. Vital background information is imparted by inference, forcing the reader to do the heavily lifting of figuring out how the pieces fit together to make the world run. The hard work is rewarding. “The Slack,” the in-world magic system, is given just enough detail for the reader to understand how the Slack works but not so much that the magic feels like science: the Slack has several aspects interlinked (water-nature, fire-nature, forest-nature and the like), and manipulating those natures allows talented individuals to accomplish amazing tasks. Likewise, the politics of the Tensorate (which most of the characters call The Protectorate instead), are explicated just enough for the reader to understand that a) this realm is a largely despotic monarchy, b) at least one religious order lies outside of that monarchy’s control even while being located within the physical boundaries of the realm, c) there’s a tentative, mutual-beneficial alliance between monarchy and religious order, and d) there are other lands outside of the Protectorate that may come to play more heavily in future installments of the series.

Oh, and that separate religious order, The Grand Monastery? Led by Head Abbot Sung and later by Head Abbot Thennjay, they include a group of warrior-monks called Pugilists, who use the Slack to become incredible fighting machines. The Pugilists are mostly background-worldbuilding for now, but every time they were mentioned I could not help but flash back to Sunday afternoons watching poorly-dubbed black-and-white “wire fu” movies as a kid. I sincerely hope Yang will give us an installment of this series really showing us what the Pugilists can do. But I digress.

The first section of Black Tides is largely told through the POV of Head Abbot Sung, and sets the stage for all that is to come. The circumstances of the twins Moyoka and Akeha’s birth are laid out as well as their early formative years.  There are massive time-jumps – in less deft hands, this would be a detriment to the story flow but Yang is adept at feeding us what little we need to know about the intervening years and not bogging us down with details that would be nice to know but remain unimportant to the story being told. But then the majority of the action follows Akeha moving out into the world and discovering the political tensions that exist within the Protectorate. There are street fight scenes (wonderfully described), use of Slackcraft, romance, and familial tensions intricately intertwined.  Red Threads picks up after Black Tides and references the events of the first novella, but shifts the focus to Mokoya’s point of view. How does an ex-prophet and spouse of a Head Abbot navigate political tensions and grief to find a new place in the world?

The non-binary nature of Mokoya, Akeha and their friends and family is important on both the world-building and character-building levels. This is a world where gender is not assigned at birth, and characters remain gender-neutral (using the singular They as common pronoun) until they declare/confirm a gender. Some do it early (Thennjay, by all indications, and other minor characters), some later (Sonami is a late teen, Mokoya and Akeha are well into adulthood when they choose) and some don’t choose at all (Rider, for example, but also almost Akeha), while some declare gender but don’t go to the Confirmation Doctors to be physically altered (Yongcheow). How Mokoya and Akeha in particular decide on their genders is a function of their struggles to maintain their twin-bond as well as Akeha’s feelings about being the unexpected/unwanted/unplanned-for child. And both twins’ decisions are a part of the fall-out of the manipulations and other horrible things their mother, the Protector, does.

These two novellas introduce us to a host of intriguing characters I’m eager to watch develop. I don’t believe Mokoya and Akeha’s stories are done yet, alone or together. And I believe there are as many stories to tell about this world as there are threads in the weave of fortune.  I look forward to exploring it all in future installments.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER'S "TURN ON THE HEAT" - BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: Turn On the Heat

AUTHOR: Erle Stanley Gardner

292 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785656170 (Print)

PREMISE: (back cover copy)   Erle Stanley Gardner was not just the creator of PERRY MASON – at the time of his death, he was the best-selling American author of all time, with hundreds of millions of books in print. Among those books were the 29 cases of the brash, irresistible detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Last year, Hard Case Crime brought out the first new Cool and Lam novel in decades, THE KNIFE SLIPPED, lost for 77 years after Gardner’s publisher refused it. Now, we’re bringing you the book Gardner wrote to replace it, often considered the best in the series: TURN ON THE HEAT.

Hired by a mysterious “Mr. Smith” to find a woman who vanished 21 years earlier, Donald Lam finds himself facing a sadistic cop, a desperate showgirl, a duplicitous client, and one very dogged (and beautiful) newspaper reporter – while Bertha Cool’s attempts to cut herself in on this lucrative opportunity land them both hip-deep in murder…

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: As familiar as I am with the name Erle Stanley Gardner thanks to the television version of his famous creation Perry Mason, I have to confess this is the first Gardner novel I’ve ever read, and my first introduction to his long-running investigative team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. I can safely say it won’t be the last Gardner, or the last Cool & Lam, book I read. If you’re looking for a fun, twisty-turny noir book, Turn On the Heat is a great choice.

The story starts as a straight-up missing persons case: Cool and Lam are hired to track down a divorcee missing for 21 years. Lam quickly discovers there’s a lot more going on: bitter divorce cases, changed identities, political machinations, coercion by crooked cops, all leading eventually to at least one murder if not more. This turns the book into a rollercoaster ride of rising and falling fortunes for Lam, his money-hungry employer Bertha Cool, and for the beautiful small-town reporter Marion Dutton who has staked her big-city dreams on Lam’s connections. It’s a fun ride. While one or two of the twists felt predictable, there were plenty I didn’t see coming.

The character interactions are an equally fun part of the novel. Donald Lam is obviously a more top-notch investigator than his employer gives him credit for. Anything that goes right with this case, any leads that break, are strictly Lam’s doing – although he also gets equal blame for the things that go wrong. Lam may be smart and savvy, but he’s also fallible, which makes him a really enjoyable lead character. Bertha Cool, on the other hand, is thoroughly unlikeable but a compelling presence nonetheless. Almost anything that goes wrong in the second half of the book is because Bertha puts the idea of a big payoff ahead of any real consequences. It’s a character flaw that is far from endearing in a series lead, but does create added tension and mounting stakes. Where in the first half of the book I found Bertha overblown and annoying, in the second half I relished finding out what blunder she would commit next to make matters worse for everyone involved. Marion Dutton, by contrast, makes her mistakes out of an innocent earnestness to leave small town life behind, and in the end proves to be just as talented a manipulator as Lam and Cool. They’re an interesting trio to watch circle each other trying to solve the multi-layered case they’ve become entangled in.

The title itself is multi-layered. “Turn on the heat” could be referring to the pressure the blackmailers are putting on “Mr. Smith,” or the mounting pressure on Lam to solve the case before he gets arrested for things he didn’t do, or to the building romantic/sexual tension between Lam and Marion. I’m sure Gardner, or whoever titled the book, did that on purpose.

Gardner published 29 Cool & Lam novels in his lifetime. According to various sites, Turn on the Heat was the second and has been out of print for 50 years. This re-release continues Hard Case Crime’s fine tradition of bringing out of print noir and crime classics back to print. It’s the third Cool & Lam book they’ve published, following 2011’s re-release of Top of the Heap and last year’s release of The Knife Slipped (the lost Cool & Lam case). I enjoyed Turn on the Heat so much I’m moving those previous releases up on the “to be read” pile, and hope that HCC will bring more of Gardner’s Cool & Lam books back into print in the near future.

Note: I did receive an advanced reading copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Website problems prevented me from posting the review before the novel’s publication date, which was this week.