Books Read in 2018

Last year, I reflected on how many people I know no longer find the time to read fiction, especially novels. This year I find myself pondering a related question: in 2018, in a hyperspeed soundbite social-media driven and oftentimes toxic culture, what does it mean to read fiction?

It’s an ambitious question. Every individual who reads fiction is going to have different reasons for doing so, reasons that are deeply infused with personal meaning. We are a storytelling species. When we don’t know how or why things are or came to be, we create stories to explain. We create stories to teach. We create stories to entertain. We create stories to better ourselves and to feel less alone at night. We are a storytelling species. We are a creative species. We are, in Carl Sagan’s words, a way for the universe to know itself.

Let’s reign this in a bit before I go too far cosmic (if I go down the Carl Sagan wormhole, I will still be writing this on my deathbed.) For the purposes of this blurb, I’m going to limit my definition of fiction to printed books, and the scope to the last two hundred years. In that timeframe, we have seen tremendous advances in technology, a vast expansion of the human population, multiple cultural upheavals, and the bank of human knowledge enlarged by a considerable sum. However, our ethics and our wisdom have not expanded at the same pace. We have not, on a fully human level, yet grasped the scope and power (danger, even) of these changes. We are still animals, we are still governed by fight or flight, distrustful if not antagonistic of the other. Perhaps we will always be this way, to some varying degree. Evolution is messy.

Fiction provides a way to grapple with these fundamental changes. In telling stories, we realize our worst fears so that we might face them, and we project our best qualities so that we might aspire towards them. This is why I find the debate between “serious” and “pulp” fiction, between “literary works” and “beach reads” ridiculous—and fortunately, this debate appears to be on the wane. All stories have the ability to inspire, to teach and to entertain. Some may not do all these things, some may not do them well, but by the simple act of being told they carry the ability. Aesthetics are a personal choice; what resonates with you may not resonate with me but that doesn’t make either of our reactions invalid. That’s not to say a work of art may not have a larger cultural impact. But at the end of the day, I find the question of cultural impact less interesting (and more reliant on external factors—form, distribution channels, promotion, etc.) It’s a different discussion. Did the work of fiction you just read make you think? Cry? Laugh? Throw the book across the room in disgust? Lie awake at night contemplating your place in the cosmos? Here, in the heart, is where fiction lives.

We could all stand to treat each other better. Fiction reminds us that, for all our flaws (or maybe because of them?) we are all humans. The dream of our species, our hopes and fears, our beauty and our ugliness, are expressed through our stories. I cannot speak for others, but for me? This is what it means to read fiction. Each story I read, no matter how good or bad, contributes to my constant evolution as a human being. Each story I read, no matter how good or bad, chips away at the wisdom gap. Each story I read, no matter how good or bad, opens up a new point of view, a new thought, a new dream. With each story, I touch a little bit more of the limitless cosmos.

Dammit, there I go, getting all cosmic again. And after I promised to reign it in! Sorry (not sorry.) Let’s dispense with the armchair philosophy and talk about some books, shall we? Welcome to my annual summary of books I read in the last year. This is the fifth(!) year I’ve done this (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it. It’s just a ramble, but it’s a fun ramble. And I’d love to hear you ramble too, so reach out and let’s have a cup of coffee or beer and talk about the books we love (or don’t love.)

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsay
Moscow But Dreaming, Ekaterina Sedia
Figures Unseen: Selected Stories, Steve Rasnic Tem
Elevation, Stephen King
Ararat, Christopher Golden
Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts
The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism, various authors
The Twilight Pariah, Jeffrey Ford
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Tideland, Mitch Cullin
No One Gets Out Alive, Adam Nevill
Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin
Follow You Home,Mark Edwards
Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens, Steve Olson
Exit West, Mohsin Hamad
You Will Know Me, Megan Abbott
The Fever, Megan Abbott
Swans: Sacrifice And Transcendence: The Oral History, Nick Soulsby
The Cipher, Kathe Koja
You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up, Richard Hallas
Medium Raw, Anthony Bourdain
The Good Girl, Mary Kubica
The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Outsider, Stephen King
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident, Donnie Eichar
Arguably, Christopher Hitchens
The Investigation, Stanislaw Lem
Best New Horror #28, edited by Stephen Jones
Audition, Ryu Murakami
Red Dragon, Thomas Harris
Creatures of Will and Temper, Molly Tanzer
They Don’t Come Home Anymore, T.E. Grau
Prodigal, Melanie Tem
The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission, Jim Bell
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, Peter M. Bracke
Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991, Michael Azerrad
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, Sherman Alexie
Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980, various
Blackwater: The Complete Saga, Michael McDowell
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson
So Let It Be Written: The Biography of Metallica's James Hetfield, Mark Eglinton
Roadside Picnic, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Sweet Death, Claude Tardat

One of my favorites this year I read back in January: Michael McDowell’s Blackwater: The Complete Saga. I wrote up a review of it back then, and those words still hold true. I’m a latecomer to McDowell, discovering the excellent The Elementals in 2016, and I’m coming to believe he was one of the finest paperback writers of the 80s, particularly in the horror field. I can’t recommend Blackwater highly enough. It’s an ambitious read—five novels totaling 788 pages—but I was never bored and treasured my time spent in its world…I didn’t read anything else this year as ambitious as Blackwater, and I wouldn’t use that term to describe Adam Nevill’s No One Gets Out Alive, but there is a denseness to the novel that is not always to its benefit. Like a tasty bagel with the dough not quite baked all the way through. I really think someday Nevill could write a genre masterpiece; the three novels of his I’ve read thus far (The Ritual and Last Days being the other two) all have flashes of brilliance as well as stumbling blocks: pacing issues, plot choices that don’t hold up to the light of the day, etc. No One Gets Out Alive is a harrowing tale (the first two-thirds of it, at least) that succeeds more often than it fails and is recommended to survival horror fans, but if you’re new to Nevill, try Last Days, which doesn’t suffer from his weird trait of devoting the final third of his books to a story that is completely different and less successful than the first two-thirds…

I usually don’t include re-reads on this list, but given that it’s been 20 years since I read the sublime Picnic at Hanging Rock, I’m making an exception. In that time Joan Lindsey’s haunting and enchanting novel stayed with me, and my second reading of it proved to be just as wonderful as the first. Some books hit you in just the right way, and the fact you can’t easily explain why becomes part of the magic. Picnic is a book that can be enjoyed by all ages and all tastes. It belongs to no genre, and the period language (written in 1967, the book takes place in 1900) makes the scathing wit go down like sweet tea masking a cockroach leg. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful—cannot recommend highly enough…Also from the “cannot possibly recommend highly enough” files is Angela Carter’s marvelous spin on fairy and folk tales, The Bloody Chamber. I’m not sure why it took me so long to read such an influential book, but Chamber not only lives up to its reputation, it surpasses it. I’m sure I will read this book many more times. On a related non-book note, I finally saw the 1984 film The Company of Wolves this year and it is every bit as magical as the Chamber story on which it’s based. If you like a modern take on classic tropes with plenty of teeth, read the book and watch the film ASAP…

I somehow read a lot of thrillers in 2018. It wasn’t intentional, and while most the titles were at least good, one author was much more, a thrilling (heh) new discovery: Megan Abbott. From my local library (support your local library!) I picked up both The Fever and You Will Know Me, intending to read just one. I decided on the The Fever and was instantly swept into the world of this stunning and topical social horror novel. Probably the most well-drawn portrayal of teenage society I’ve read in many a year, free of the histrionics that so often come with the territory, I found The Fever’s growing darkness to be deeply unsettling and the mystery elements of the story compellingly structured. So much did I enjoy The Fever that I immediately read You Will Know Me (I virtually never read the same author two books in a row) and it was arguably even better, portraying the fears and realities of parenting in a skillful way that resonated with me. It felt truthful, you know? Set in the world of competitive gymnastics, I could draw many parallels with my daughters’ experiences in the world of competitive swimming (though nowhere near the level and thankfully not anywhere as extreme as in the book.) Perhaps that’s why the story resonated with me, but I think Abbott is an excellent character writer and her plots are solid and well-formed. She has a number of other novels out there, can’t wait to read more. And now I’m really bummed I didn’t get to catch her reading when she came through town this past summer…You’ve probably heard of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, the first Hannibal Lecter novel and a classic of the genre. I don’t think it has aged particularly well. It’s a sturdy novel structure-wise, and the pacing is terrific, but I found it very much a product of its time (1981, though it feels more of the seventies) in a negative way and less compelling than I expected. I’m not sure it has much to offer a casual reader in 2018…

Continuing with thrillers, I overall was quite taken with Mary Kubica’s The Good Girl. The book tells its unsettling story via alternating character viewpoints, and the central figures are complex and well-drawn. If the book stumbles a bit, it’s in the supporting characters, who often veer too far into cliché to really be effective. I found the ending satisfactory, if perhaps a touch too predictable. A worthy read…I’m not sure how I came across Mark Edwards’s Follow You Home, but this moody little psychological thriller packs a punch if you can overlook the occasional incongruity of the plot. Suitably page-turning…I’m not sure if Audition is a thriller, exactly, but I can say it’s the rare case when the movie is better than the book. Which is not to say Ryu Murakami’s unsettling tale is bad, but the movie made a couple of key plot changes that worked better and I think it’s a tale better given to visual storytelling. The movie is a masterpiece and required viewing for anyone who likes psychologically intense storytelling with tones of deep sadness, the book is for completists only…

There have been countless novels dealing with nuclear war, and I won’t claim to have read most of them, yet I’m still confident in saying none are as powerful as Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach. This is the story of the human race winding down, with only a handful of survivors left in Australia. They know the winds will bring the fallout to them soon enough, and the quiet dignity with which they face this inevitability makes for a heartbreaking tale that kept me up more at night than the scariest horror book. There are no histrionics in the book, no scenes of violence. In plain tones, we learn that the war took place far away from these people, but there is no stopping its effects. I guess you could say some of the social mores are dated and maybe some character reactions ring a little hollow, but I found the book both graceful and haunting. I want to believe that anyone who reads this sobering book will realize the futility of nuclear war as a solution to any problem. I also want to believe there is a measure of grace in all of us. Let this story be forever fiction so we need never find out if we do, indeed, possess that grace…

In the waning days of the horror paperback boom, circa the early 90s, Dell launched the Abyss paperback line. This imprint was dedicated to original contemporary paperback horror, with a very fresh approach focused on pushing the genre past the tired tropes and bloated novels that by that point had pretty much choked the life out of the genre. I was only vaguely aware of the line at the time, and damn, I wish I’d paid more attention because by accident more than intention, I ended up reading two books from the Abyss line this year and they were both great, leaving me hungry to explore more. Before I get into the particulars, I want to call out that perhaps the most refreshing thing about Abyss was the number of women writers they published, something distinctly lacking in the genre at the time. Almost a decade ago I read Kathe Koja’s Skin and it immediately became one of my favorite books. Yet it somehow took me until this year to finally read her debut novel The Cipher, a book that was influential at the time and that I absolutely loved. It definitely has an early nineties feel to it (a VHS tape is a central object in the story) but the strangeness and unpleasant taste of this tale read just as potent now as I imagine they would have then. It’s a real shame Koja left the genre behind as, much like Poppy Z. Brite at the time, she was a strong, original and fresh voice that the genre always needs more of. But when the Muse moves you somewhere else, you gotta follow…my other Abyss read was Prodigal by the late Melanie Tem. The only other book I’ve read by Melanie Tem was co-written with her husband Steve Rasnic Tem, the magical The Man on the Ceiling, one of those books I want to hand to everyone and envy them the experience of reading it for the first time. Prodigal is not on that level but it’s a well put-together novel that has some powerful things to say about the bonds of family life. I thought the characterizations were great and while the plot sometimes dragged, Tem was an engaging writer and this is an easy recommendation to fans of the genre who are tired of the same ol’ tropes…

Damn, this has been some dark and heavy going so far. What say we lighten things up a bit? I’m not sure what caused me to pick up Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Will and Temper as on the surface it’s not the type of novel I typically read, but what marvelous fun it was! Probably the smoothest read of the entire year, Tanzer’s sentences flow in the magical way that only the most talented authors seem to be able to conjure, propelling the story effortlessly (yeah, I may be a bit jealous!) from one incident to the next. A real page-turner set in Victorian London, Creatures throws social roles, arts culture, fencing, cults and other fun ingredients into a vibrant stew. Like a refreshing mojito on a hot summer afternoon, Creatures was a pure joy to read. I’m not sure quite how you’d classify it, and that is one of its many charms…Exit West is an imaginative novel whose predominate themes of emigration, refugees and love are both topical and timeless. Mohsin Hamid’s book artfully veers between a practical (and almost always harsh) reality and magic realism. Yet the book never feels schizophrenic doing so; when the elements of magic realism are first woven into the story roughly a third of the way through, it should have been jarring (given how the tale had been told up to that point), and yet it felt natural. Both a moving character study and a sociopolitical novel, the triumph of the book is its humanism. Recommended…

Annual Stephen King update: Two books published this year. Elevation is a slim story that clearly bounces off of The Shrinking Man, but whereas I found The Shrinking Man to be a rancid, misogynistic piece of narcissistic garbage, Elevation is charming and magical. I read it in a single sitting, something I haven’t done with a book in a long while, and besides being a tale that moved me to the point of tears in its final pages, it also serves as a counterpoint to those who maintain King’s stories are bloated and/or gross. It’s not a horror tale, not even close…The Outsider is a stereotypical late period King novel. By that I mean it’s a thoroughly enjoyable read, a little wobbly in the plot department, and sometimes feels of another era. But The Outsider is still a well-told tale (if a bit overlong, this one could have lost about 50 pages and been all the better for it) and makes better use out of one of the supporting characters from his Bill Hodges trilogy than anything in those books. I can’t deny that King’s using some pretty hoary tropes here, and your mileage may vary depending on how you feel about those tropes. Nothing new, but for this Constant Reader he still ranks as the greatest page-turner. I’ve read every King book save four of his 1990s novels (Insomnia, Rose Madder, Desperation and The Regulators). Each year I think I’m going to get to one of those four and then I turn around and he’s published yet another new title. I’m grateful. I’d rather have too many King books than not enough…

I read fewer short story collections than normal this year, probably in part out of fatigue. Not that many of the ones I’ve read over the last decade or so haven’t been great, but I needed a bit of a break from the form. That said, I read a few this year worth calling out. Ekaterina Sedia’s Moscow But Dreaming uses themes from classic Russian folktales as building blocks for a collection of gems that don’t fall into any one genre. There’s an austerity to these tales that suits their concerns well, and for as different as each tale is, Sedia’s voice always comes through with strength and clarity. I really enjoyed this book and I’m looking forward to seeking more of her work out…On the opposite end of the spectrum we find Carmen Maria Machado’s collection Her Body and Other Parties. This book came highly recommended and has garnered a fair amount of critical acclaim, but it didn’t do much for me. There are a couple of solid tales (and, if I’m truthful, one I absolutely hated) but as there are other authors mining the same territory with much better results (Damien Angelica Walters and Kristi DeMeester, to name just two) I can’t really recommend this…I have a lot of respect for Steve Rasnic Tem’s work. Figures Unseen is a solid collection, not every story lands but the ones that do pack a punch…The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism isn’t strictly a short story collection (there are poems, essays and drawings as well) but it is a beautiful book, and two of the short stories it contains: “Blood and Smoke, Vinegar and Ashes” by D.P. Watt and “Under the Casket, A Beach!” by Nick Mamatas were two of the best stories I read this year. A special shout-out to my dear friend J.T. Glover’s essay “Translating The Ritual,” a fine read and recommended to anyone with interest in either Adam Nevill’s book or the excellent Netflix adaption of it…Speaking of Mr. Glover, congratulations are due for having a story featured in Best New Horror #28. That story, “En Plein Air,” is the best of his stories I’ve had the privilege to read, and it’s a real thrill to see it next to personal favorite authors like Kristi DeMeester, Glen Hirshberg and Lisa Tuttle. As always, Stephen Jones has put together a well-rounded collection of stories that demonstrates just how versatile the horror genre really is…

I’m not a huge reader of sci-fi and I tend to be very particular about what I do like in the field. When a book really clicks for me—like Neal Stephenson’s novels Anathem and Seveneves—it moves me in a way no other literature does. Such experiences are rare. I don’t know what the secret sauce is that makes such books work for me, and as such I’m very cautious when I approach the genre. This year I read three sci-fi novels, and while none of them provided a transcendent experience, two were excellent and the other enjoyable. My favorite of the three was the 1972 Russian novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers, a book primarily known for inspiring Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinematic masterpiece Stalker. Roadside is an excellent, engaging read, reminding me at times of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (one of my favorite reading experiences of the decade.) Highly recommended…I adore Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Lathe of Heaven had been on my to-read list for years. It was as close to a breezy read as Le Guin gets, a slim but rich novel that I found captivating. Required reading for anyone with an interest in the genre…It had been years since I’d read any Stanislaw Lem, and The Investigation was an enjoyable read. Not groundbreaking like the best of his work, and at times the pacing felt off, but a worthwhile read for anyone interested in his work…

Like many of us, I felt complete devastation over Anthony Bourdain’s untimely death. Suicide has touched my life directly in recent years, and Anthony was such a light, a voice of community and humanity so desperately needed in these divisive times. The hardest thing to do is to reach out, but please, if you are feeling that there is no way out, know that people love you and want you to share this life’s journey with them. At the end of this post is I’ve listed two resources that are there to help you and will pass no judgement. Just before Anthony passed, I re-read Kitchen Confidential for the first time in a decade. Still an excellent book, but he grew so much beyond the character in that book. The first book I read after his passing was Confidential’s sequel, Medium Raw. It is a worthy if uneven follow-up; you sense how much he is trying to deal with his celebrity in the occasionally fraught pages. But I deeply admire the way he takes himself to task; Anthony was someone not afraid to grow and own up to how limiting and unfair some of his past viewpoints were…As of now, the last book project he worked on (which also marks his first posthumous publication) is Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts, a collaborative graphic novel that reimagines the classic Japanese stories of yokai, yorei, and obake in a series of tales featuring food as the common thread. The artwork is almost uniformly excellent and the tales good fun, for those of us with a taste for the morbid. It is a dark work to be sure. A handful of Anthony’s recipes are included…

Short takes: They Don’t Come Home Anymore by T.E. Grau is quirky and unsettling novella about a teenage girl’s obsession leading her to some gnarly places…Also making excellent use of the novella format is Jeffrey Ford’s The Twilight Pariah, which effectively uses a Midwest setting to tell its Lovecraftian tale…Mitch Cullin’s Tideland is an unclassifiable and surreal book that I enjoyed greatly, apparently it was made into a movie by Terry Gilliam that flopped, I’d never even heard of the film but the book was one of the strangest concoctions I read this year…You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up is a largely forgotten 1938 noir classic that deserves to be more widely known, absolutely worth reading if classic noir is your thing…I thought Ararat by Christopher Golden was an effective yarn that could have been something even more; some of the characters were too stock and the ending lacked the tension it should have had. But the first two-thirds are icily claustrophobic and unsettling. Brrr…Sweet Death is a book as strange as the story of its author, which is simply that she disappeared from the face of the earth so far as anyone can tell and no one knows anything about her--apparently they can’t even send her royalty checks, it’s not even known if she’s alive. The book concerns a young woman who chooses overeating as a method for intentional suicide; for some it may be too precocious but I found myself strangely absorbed…Rebecca is a classic and it’s a mystery that it took me so long to finally read it. I did enjoy it, though I struggled at times to mentally adjust to the time period and its cultural norms. The language felt a bit heavy-handed, though I doubt it read so at the time of publication. But it’s a book that proves you don’t need likeable characters--I think the story would have felt dishonest if any of the key characters had been likeable. A good book worth one’s time…

I usually don’t spend much time in these year-end wrap-ups on nonfiction, I don’t know why except that I find it harder to write about for some reason. I will say that the two film books I read this year were both excellent. Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin explores the work of one of my favorite filmmakers through essays penned exclusively by women critics, scholars and film historians. Every film is covered, including those very obscure, and a deep dive is made into the core themes of Rollin’s career: his near-exclusive use of female protagonists, his reinterpretation of the fairy tale and the fantastique, his use of horror and exploitation tropes, the application of Gothic literature and the occult to his work, etc. Just a wonderful work. The man never had an actual film budget to work with in his entire career, yet his work sticks with me in a way no one else’s does. This is the book his utterly unique work deserves…Crystal Lake Memories is essentially an oral history of the Friday the 13th franchise and the author manages to track down virtually everyone involved; it’s a very impressive effort. I love books like this, lovingly crafted by passionate people, and you learn so much about the workings of the film industry and cultural context in addition to the history of the films themselves. I’m not much of a fan of the movies (I like the first two, beyond that they are just too bland for me—I need more teeth in my slashers) but I recognize their importance and I really enjoyed this book…

Well, I don’t know about you, I’m about ready for a whisky and then bed. If you are interested in any of these books, please consider purchasing and supporting the authors and/or using your local library. There is a lot of blood, sweat, tears and love that goes into writing and if we don’t support the authors, small publishers and our libraries, we’ll all be stuck with nothing to read but Dan Brown books. I don’t know about you, but that’s a world that I’d find horrible to live in. I hope you enjoyed this ramble and I’ll see you in 2019.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
https://afsp.org/