It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had a reading update. That’s because in the intervening three weeks, I was offered a job, turned it down, accepted it, and then eventually turned it down again. The world is a pretty hairy place right now, with corporations large and small announcing deep layoffs as prices continue to skyrocket for everyday things.
I’m pretty blessed to have an independent consulting business in my field that pays the bills, but I was sorely tempted by an opportunity to put down some firmer roots (and was perhaps thinking of some reading I recently finished on consultants).
Not everything works out and that’s okay. Since I got off that particular job search rollercoaster, a number of very interesting projects have come across my desk, and I’ve continued to have a great time expanding my horizons here and on TikTok.
I’m really excited for the next few months of historical investigations (including a greater focus on women writers in weird fiction) as well as more contemporary urban fantasy (be on the lookout for a fun side project in early May).
But all of that everything took a lot of focus and time away from reading and tending to my parasocial relationships. So today we have a mega update covering everything that I read over the past three weeks.
On repeat
I would be a liar if I didn’t say that I’ve had that two hour loop of Pinback’s “Loro” on pretty constantly over the past few weeks, but there is another song that's been occupying a lot of space in my brain.
“More Like You” is my reliable driving song. I can put this on repeat and 30 minutes will easily pass by as I tap and sing along. I don’t know what it is about how she sings “no I just want to swap our bodies for a day,” but I can feel it in my soul. And the music video is a oner, which I’m a total sucker for.
Finished in the past three weeks
Because of everything, I didn’t read all that many books over three weeks. At the same time, it was five books and I’m in the middle of three more. Being a very amateur book reviewer does tend to warp your perceptions about a lot of things.
First, let’s start with the three books I read for the Trans Rights Readathon, and before I get to those, let’s add another song to my on-repeat list:
The Transgender Issue1 by Shon Faye
A forcefully argued case for trans liberation by U.K. trans activist Shon Faye. Don’t let the description or the general branding of the book intimidate you, this isn’t really an academic book at all. Faye assembles numerous intersectional arguments to argue for trans liberation. If you are a leftist and want to have a humanistic guide to those intersections, this is a great starting point.
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
A parable. A prediction. A prayer. Pet is a powerful piece of young adult fiction that recalls A Wrinkle in Time by way of. Set in a seemingly perfect post-revolutionary earth free from “monsters”, Pet explores what it really means to be a monster. A quick and important read.
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
In rearranging my shelves a month ago, I buried my copy of Cemetery Boys among a host of other “modern” urban fantasy (remember I’ve still not breached the 20th century in my historical investigations). But like the dead in Aiden Thomas’s wonderful world, Cemetery Boys was insistent and unearthed itself as I was making selections for the Trans Rights Readathon.
And I’m so glad it did — this was a great book to end the event on. Thomas has crafted an awesome UF world brimming with life and diversity (and it’s just waiting for sequels). Expect a longer review sometime in the coming weeks, but I can highly recommend this to YA/New Adult UF fans.
Every Which Way but Dead by Kim Harrison
I got a lot of my immediate thoughts out in my discussion of this in the last reading recap. Harrison stuck the landing with the first better than average book in her Hallows series. She upped the ante with action, sex, and character growth and leaves a lot of room to run in the next book.
Battle Hill Bolero by Daniel José Older
Older pretty much nailed it with the finale to his Bone Street Rumba trilogy. I get the feeling that he planned a longer series because there is a big jump from the end of book two to Battle Hill Bolero and things have gone from cold to hot war between the main character, Carlos, and his friends and the Council of Dead pretty fast. But given the parameters of “this is the final book, so let’s blow everything up and see where things land,” Older did a fantastic job.
As with Midnight Taxi Tango, we get more character POVs this time including the critical one of Sasha (the mother of Carlos’s twin children… and the woman who killed him). Unfortunately, we lose Kia’s POV (although she still plays a critical role in the plot) and Reza is entirely absent (sent upstate with the twins to protect them).
We even get a tantalizing throwaway line that Reza saw some shit while protecting the twins that seems like great fodder for a novella or short story that we probably will never get, considering that this book was published six years ago. I did discover that Older published several short stories set in the world that I’ll definitely be checking out.
This is the first UF series that I’ve read to completion, and it was well above average. Older does an amazing job of allowing his characters to inhabit and embody Brooklyn. There is an effortless display of the diverse characters required for a story to call itself a Brooklyn story. And I’ll lightly spoil things by saying that we get a mostly happy ending2, which was well earned by both Older and his characters.
One bone to pick (with the world, I guess): this series is out of print and not all that easy to get your hands on. My library system has it, but the first book isn’t available on Kindle at all, so if your library doesn’t have it, you’ll have to thrift it. Copies do seem plentiful, and I highly recommend getting your hands on them. This is a fun and introspective UF series that walked the line of action and noir right up until the explosive conclusion.
Still reading
Abeni’s Song by P. Djèlí Clark
I consider myself extremely lucky to have gotten a physical advanced reader copy of P. Djèlí Clark’s forth-coming YA series debut: Abeni’s Song. I’m about two-thirds of the way through and it’s charming and thought-provoking and a great addition to the YA canon. I will have a lot more to say about this as we get closer to its July 25th release.
A Fistful of Charms by Kim Harrison
It really does feel like a switch got flipped around book three of The Hollows and now things are humming along with a lot more energy and consistency. A Fistful of Charms sees Rachel, Ivy, Kisten, and the new character Ceri tackling the exact major problem remaining from Every Which Way but Dead: Rachel and Ivy’s pixy partner, Jenks, left the house and their partnership in anger midway through the last book.
Harrison disposes of that issue fairly quickly by forcing Jenks and the crew back together to save one of Jenks (50) children, Jax, who has disappeared with Rachel’s ex-boyfriend Nick.
A Fistful of Charms has a bit of a D&D campaign quality to it. The first fifth is all set up and prep for the adventure, then the next fifth is the first major encounter, and where I am now is right in the tail-end of the third fifth which was basically a long refreshment scene. Much more tightly structured than even book three and far more than books one and two. So far, I’m digging it.
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
Between 2009 and 2010 I worked my first real job and my first real political campaigns. They were “learning experiences”, which is what we say when we lose. I was a data staffer working for the Democratic campaigns in Ohio where we lost every statewide race, control of the state legislature, and about a half dozen congressional seats.
I’ll never forget being 23 years old, sitting on the floor of the certainly asbestos-filled Ohio Democratic Party headquarters building the night of the election when the soon-to-be-former-governor’s campaign manager came in and told us to get into cars and head over to a cheerless hotel ballroom to hear Ted Strickland give his concession speech. He said, “the bad guys won.” It felt devastating, like the world was ending.
To top it all off, I didn’t get immediately laid off like all of my friends. I had to stick around for two weeks to help catalog and organize all of our data and provide support to the handful of down ballot races that had gone to recounts. It was miserable work.
The only thing that seemed to soothe me were the obscure videos I started finding on YouTube (especially ones about this niche game called Minecraft). I ended up meeting one of my lifelong friends through those weird videos and I also got swept up in Nerdfighteria, like so many other Millennials. I even had my own channel, the contents of which are safely privated.
Despite that pedigree, I’ve never read a book by either of the Green brothers. John’s YA novels have never appealed to me, and Hank’s books are… sitting on my endless TBR. I don’t know what it was about The Anthropocene Reviewed that called to me. Possibly a TikToker given it a positive review, possibly the thousands of impressions it made in hardcover at bookstores, who knows. But when it came out in paperback, I saw it and I got it.
John’s writing reminds me of those days thirteen years ago (my god), the maniac energy that he and Hank brought to their channel but distilled and tempered through age. I’m older now, too. I suspect that as I move from my mid-thirties into my mid-forties, I will only appreciate John’s demanding optimism even more. For now, I’ll just read these short essays and mull a truly 21st century thought: should I have just listened to the podcast?
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Shelley
The lack of progress on Frankenstein that I had in mid-March has continued now through mid-April. I expect to tackle volumes two and three in the coming week.
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With an incredibly cameo by a Chuck Wendig character that makes me thing I need to prioritize reading his Miriam Black series