I’m way behind on the reading and the keeping up thereof, so I’ll just mention a couple of things which really got my attention this year. I can only say for certain about thirty of the books I read this year, because most of those were new reads. Everything I re-read this year, it’s all speculative as to when I read it because I was trying to use Goodreads to track what I was reading, leaving reviews on books I’ve already left a star rating for. Unfortunately, neither the dates on the books nor their position in my books list changed any when I added the reviews, and I don’t have the patience to sift through my entire book list there to find the reviews I left this year. The only re-reads I can say for sure I read were The Lord of the Rings and The Ghost Brigades, because they were the last two.
I started out with Hours of the Dragon, by Robert E. Howard, and that was a pretty good way to kick off the reading for the year. Start on a good foot, yeah? Yeah. I also read Bye, Bye, Baby, Ace Atkins’ goodbye to the Spenser series. That was bittersweet, as his voice is entirely reminiscent of that of Robert B. Parker’s when he was at the height of his powers. But he’s got to move on to focus on his own work, which is also very good. The next book which left an impression was The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy. It was the noirest of noir, and I enjoyed it immensely.
I read my one (1) non-fiction book in Death of the Territories, a story about how Vince McMahon Jr. and the WWF turned the world of professional wrestling on its head. I read Web, by John Wyndham, and that was both creepy and undermined by its own format, as most of the reveal and scary things were given away at the very front of the book, which is fucking baffling to me. Also, the behavior described in the novel was found in nature not too long after the book’s publication, so it’s only a matter of time before we’re living in a real-life Kingdom of the Spider. Whee!
I re-read Left Behind because I’m a masochist, and there’s still more of that to read, but it’s only been five months and I haven’t yet fully recovered. And speaking of underwhelming reads, I also failed to really enjoy Isabel Allende’s rendition of Zorro. I much preferred the graphic novel version as written by Matt Wagner and drawn by Francesco Francavilla for Dynamite Comics. And in that vein, finally, is Slaughterhouse-Five, which I suppose is some kind of heresy. I mean, I enjoyed it, but goddamn. What was the point of that book? Would it have hit the same if it was told in a linear fashion, or was it dependent on the character being unstuck in time to be enjoyable? I don’t think it would have been the hit it was if it weren’t for the gimmick.
The last book I finished before the end of the year was John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades, and it will be an eternal source of irritation to me that he has no interest in taking over John Gardner’s Armor sequel, ha. I asked him about that, once upon a time, and he very firmly denied any interest in that kind of thing. And that’s completely understandable, as any writer worth their salt has projects a-plenty, but still. It’s irksome, because he’s just the right author to do it. Anyway.
That was the reading for 2022, and may 2023 have better accountability, ha. I hope you had a good year in reading, and I hope that continues next year. Especially, you know, if you pick up my new book, World of Trouble: Tribulation of Dax.
(I’ll have you know, I feel dirty now, having typed that last sentence.)
That’s it for me! I’ll see you when I see you.
_thom