A bit all over the place, and I like it so.

A reminder, this is all stuff read this past year – not published.

1. Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates: A psychological thriller that’s Dead Poet’s Society at an all-women’s school circa 1975, except Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromm fill in the Robin Williams role. An ugly book, but a great read.

2. The Long Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan: A collection of Brennan’s New Yorker pieces spanning four decades that shows Brennan’s eye for detail and perceptive wit while creating a portrait of a long vanished city.

3. The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss: Quakers in SPAAACE!!! The crew of a generation ship faces conflict and peril as they seek a new home. Gloss is a fascinating writer that’s able to craft stories around domestic events and interactions within a landscape, even if that landscape is an artificial world.

4. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer: The first book in The Southern Reach trilogy and my favorite. On the surface it’s a simple enough horror novel, a research team in a strange place is slowly destroyed by forces they don’t understand, but there’s something else going on, something that touches more on the emotion of awe than horror.

5. The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason: A fascinating collection of stories that take Odysseus and recasts him in an assortment of stories, some straightforward, some post-modern, all interesting.

6. Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano: This collection is the first Bolano I’ve read, and it knocked my socks off. Cynical, playful, fascinating, and cruel, this is the book I’ve been foisting on to people, saying, “You have to read this!” Probably has my current favorite short story in it, “Henry Simon LePrinc”.

7. Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick: A government agent is sent to a world on the brink of a recurring natural disaster (in this case massive flooding), his mission: bring a fugitive “wizard” to justice. Short and straight forward science fiction in a weird world.

8. Create Dangerously by Edwidge Danticat: Part memoir, part essay collection, Danticat writes about her experiences as an immigrant living in the USA and walking the borderlands between her ancestral country, Haiti, and her current home.

9. Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo by Miyuki Miyabe: What it says on the cover: ghost stories set in Old Edo, but what makes Miyabe’s stories work is how they occur amid elaborate social connections and responsibilities, and not just tell some spooky story.

10. Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack: A portrait of a futuristic New York City that’s now in our past, yet still recognizable any time you watch a news report. A tough read, but a rewarding one.

11. The End of Everything by Megan Abbott: It’s the summer before high school begins and Lizzie and Evie are inseparable. Until the day Evie is kidnapped, and Lizzie finds her world torn apart. This is a great book: a coming of age story, a deconstruction of the detective novel, and a thriller. Well worth tracking down.

12. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler: Is this science fiction? Is it not science fiction? I come down on the Yes-it-is side. A young woman, floundering about in college, recounts the strange events of her childhood that have left her with two siblings that have disappeared. I won’t say much more than that.

Lists from past years:

2013

2012

2011