Books bought, borrowed, and read 2023

[dreamer_easy]

Haven't finished a book so far in 2023. Partway through Kaaron Warren's The Grief Hole. I've only owned it for eight years, along with one of Keely Van Order's beautiful and mysterious illustrations. Sigh.

Books read
Ray Bradbury. The Martian Chronicles. Probably last read in primary school.
-- R is for Rocket. Probably also last read in primary school.
William Burroughs. Naked Lunch.
Diane Dimassa. The Complete Hothead Paisan (re-read). I've been dusting this off every so often since about 1998. (We were all disappointed by Dimassa's 2004 remarks about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, remarks which were surprising given Hothead's explicitly pro-trans content.) Anyway I told myself I'd just bookmark one or two of my favourite bits.



E.W Hildick. The Nose Knows (a McGurk Mystery)
Richard Hooker. M*A*S*H.
Gillian Mears. Fineflour.
Herman Melville. Moby Dick (audiobook).
Bae Myung-Hoon. Tower.
Sylvia Plath. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.
Alex Prichard. Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction.
Kim Stanley Robinson. Aurora.
Charles Stross. The Rhesus Chart.
Izumi Suzuki. Terminal Boredom.
Kaaron Warren. The Grief Hole. I especially liked this novel's distinctive Australian voice -- amidst surprising, shocking dark fantasy, there's a straightforwardness, even laconicness. I wish I'd read it much sooner.

Books borrowed
Nicola J. Adderley. Personal Religion in the Libyan Period in Egypt.
Kasia Szpakowska (ed). Demon Things: Ancient Egyptian Manifestations of Liminal Entities.

Books bought
Christopher Frayling. The Yellow Peril: Dr. Fu Manchu and the Rise of Chinaphobia. You know, I've never even liked Talons of Weng-Chiang (unlike, say, Pyramids of Mars, or The Two Doctors). Yet I think I'm going to be dealing with it for the rest of my life.
Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton. The Future of Silence: Fiction by Korean Women.
Richard Hooker. M*A*S*H.
Alex Prichard. Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction.
Kim Stanley Robinson. Aurora.
Charles Stross. The Rhesus Chart.

Notable short stories
K.J. Aspey. Aspey, I Paint the Light with My Mother's Bones. Fantasy and Science Fiction May/June 2023.
J.G. Ballard. The Enormous Space.
Jayme Lynn Blaschke and Don Webb. It Gazes Back. I'm not sure this is the greatest SF story I have ever read, but the concepts hit me in the head like a cricket bat, at least three times, so I'm gonna shut up and be grateful.
Isabel Fall. I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. (Perhaps I shouldn't have, but I couldn't resist.) Shocking and sharply intelligent.

Comments

Reading

[mesozoic]

Short stories are a great plan. I'm working on "Octavia's Brood," an anthology of short stories inspired by Octavia Butler. It sat on my shelf for a long time, because even snack-sized reading was more than I could do for awhile.

Re: Reading

[dreamer_easy]

I read Butler's novel Dawn many many years ago, and it went right over my head. I should give it another crack.

Re: Reading

[mesozoic]

You might try "Parable of the Sower." Dawn is the first book of an iconic series, so it is good to return to eventually, but I can see how a reader would get lost. There is A LOT of sudden world building. I think this mirrors the disorientation of the protagonist. The stuff that happened between her last earthly memory and her waking up among the Ooloi is a lot to process, and I think she doesn't quite grasp it all at once. "Parable of the Sower" starts in a world that is not at all hard to see from where we are now.

Re: Reading

[dreamer_easy]

Ta muchly for the rec! I suspect the main problem was own inexperience as a reader; sometimes I'm slightly shocked by being able to read things now which defeated me in the past. (Heck, I should give "Turn of the Screw" another stab.)