Category Archives: reviews

My Favorite Books of 2012

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I make a concerted effort to read lots of books. I do it to support fellow authors and good-quality small presses. It also helps to keep my literary muscle in shape.

According to Pew Research Center, most American readers read 17 books annually. E-book readers read more – 24 on average.

That sounds pretty good, but not so encouragingly, Pew’s survey found that one in five Americans don’t read any books at all. And the percentage of readers and the number of books read each year has been steadily declining since the 1970’s.

This year, I’ve read 19 books. I would have to give myself a C+ as a reader based on Pew’s statistics.

Here’s a round-up of my favorites. As with last year, I try, really try to include some new releases; but with an ever-expanding reading queue, it’s hard for me to keep up with what’s current.

Top Pick

SONG OF ACHILLES (Ecco, 2012) is a true 2012 release, and a truly outstanding work of mythic fiction. At its center is a love story between Patroclus and Achilles that spans from childhood to young adulthood when the two join the Greeks to fight the Trojan War. Miller’s portrayal of young love is extraordinary, and she renders the time period and setting beautifully. You can read my full review from June 12, 2012 here.

 

 

Close Second

I have never included a short story anthology in my top picks, but this issue of sci-fi/fantasy journal Collective Fallout (Vol. 3, No. 3) was my most enjoyable read of the year. It’s theme is futuristic, and it’s filled with entertaining stories of queer love in dystopian worlds. Highly imaginative and unexpectedly romantic. Here’s my full review from March 14, 2012.

 

 

 

Pick #3

Strange Fortune came out in 2009, but I’m sneaking it in here because I felt it edged out the remaining new releases that I read this year. It’s published by a high quality, LGBT small press (Blind Eye Books).

I’ll give a little more extensive review of the book since I haven’t talked it up on my blog. The story is set in a fantasy world that is an intriguing blend of high fantasy and ancient Indian sensibilities. There’s an Indiana Jones-ish hero Valentine Strange, and a more timid Warlock-y co-hero Alleister Grimshaw. The two get thrown together on an adventure to recover a magical, ancient artifact: the diadem of the goddess Purya.

The two men’s simmering attraction pulled me through the story, but Strange Fortune is equally an engrossing fantasy adventure. The two heroes are up against it early on. Bandits, sent by a mysterious patron, for a mysterious purpose, want to kill Valentine and Grimshaw to get the diadem. A complex mystery unfolds, and between my eagerness to figure out the significance of the diadem, and whether or not Valentine and Grimshaw would get together, I rushed through to the end of the book. A really fun diversion with a fresh fantasy setting.

Honorable Mention

Allison Moon sums up her self-pubbed Lunatic Fringe in two words: “lesbian werewolves.” I took a peek, got hooked and sped through the pages.

It’s the story of Lexie, a reserved young woman raised by her widower father, who goes off to an elite liberal arts college and struggles to fit in with a more “worldly” crowd. Delightfully, she gets taken in by an otherwordly crowd, a politically-empowered group of women who secretly hunt werewolves. They call themselves “The Pack.”

Meanwhile, Lexie falls for an independent-minded townie named Archer, who Lexie discovers is a werewolf.

What worked for me so well in this story was the interwoven political commentary, and Lexie’s journey to find her political self. Things heat up on that score when there’s a rape on campus, and the threat of werewolf attacks becomes symbolic of the physical/sexual violence that maintains male power and privilege on college campuses and elsewhere.

But I didn’t find Lunatic Fringe to be a preachy book. Both feminist politics and the werewolf world are portrayed as complex, with unexpected discoveries of what constitutes “good” or “evil.” There are good guys and gals and bad guys and gals on both sides of the political and werewolf spectrums. Moon brings an interesting perspective to werewolf mythology, with a variety of factions within that are warring as much with each other as they conflict with the human world. The intriguing question becomes: where will Lexie fit in?

Dylan Edwards’ TRANSPOSES

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Dylan Edwards' Transposes

Retrieved from Northwest Press

I recently received, and tore through, a review copy of cartoonist Dylan Edwards’ TRANSPOSES (Northwest Press, October 2012).

Having worked with LGBT teenagers at a youth center for many years, and being a writer and a fan of gender-bending characters, I found TRANSPOSES delightful and instructive.

The book comprises six illustrated stories of “queer-identified female-to-male transpeople” inspired by a series of interviews that Edwards undertook in his community. While he’s careful to point out in his Authors Note that the characters couldn’t possibly be representative of all queer-identified FTMs, I think it is extremely likely that readers, across the gender spectrum, will find something they relate to in this book.

With characters based on real life people, TRANSPOSES provides portrayals of ‘T’ individuals that are current and provocative. Issues like gender corrective hormones and surgeries play into some of the stories. But more often the characters are wrestling with, and learning about, and celebrating the experience of being themselves outside of social and medical preconceptions about gender and sexuality. As Henry, a bespectacled young FTM with an intellectual, OCD-leaning point of view, explains to readers in his chapter “The Museum of Natural Henry,”

“I do sometimes wish my body were more like a genetic man’s…but transition as a state of being rather than a temporary phase seems to be working for me.”

There’s amusing commentary on the perplexity of living in a binary gender-obsessed society. In the same chapter, Henry cleverly laments: “Frankly, I’d jettison all pronouns and gendered language if I could. But, as with pants, it tends to upset people if you leave the house not wearing any.”

Edwards establishes a wry tone from the start in his illustrated Introduction. Imagining himself addressing an auditorium, Edwards talks about the “cauldron of monkeys” awaiting trans-identity disclosures to family and friends. That cauldron gets opened pictorially, and the angry, mischievous monkeys fill the auditorium, demanding answers to such questions as:

“You used to be so pretty. Why did you have to ruin that?”

“How do you have sex?”

“You make me uncomfortable. Don’t you realize you owe me a justification for your existence?”

The stories frankly address such topics as coming out in a lesbian relationship (“Adam”), male role models and gay identities (“Avery”), as well as STIs (“Blake”) and recovery from childhood sexual abuse (“Aaron & James”). As such, I think TRANSPOSES is a trusty guidebook for young adults navigating the discovery of gender and sexual identity, and really for older adults too.

Edwards talks about aiming to create the kind of book he would have wanted when he was younger. I think in this regard, the author emphatically succeeds.

James Vachowshi’s OUTSPOKEN

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If you like smart-alecky, underdog, anti-establishment teen characters as much as I do, you should check out James Vachowski’s OUTSPOKEN (Vagabondage Press, 2012). Following a successful e-pub run, OUTSPOKEN recently came out in print.

The story is a clever high school political drama that reminded me of Robert Cormier’s classic THE CHOCOLATE WAR, albeit significantly updated for our time.

High school senior Abraham Lincoln Jenkins is an overachieving Black student, born of the projects and a troubled, single mother. His life’s dream is to go to Harvard and escape the intellectual mediocrity of Charleston, South Carolina. With his preternatural academic record and drive, Abraham gets an early acceptance letter. The only problem is: he overlooked the fact that to graduate from high school, he needs two credits in phys ed. That problem gets worse when he’s assigned to a Junior ROTC class to fulfill the credits.

Abraham’s discontents with the world are far-ranging – racial-profiling, U.S. foreign policy, the lack of motivation within his own low-income community – and being forced to take part in a military organization is the perfect circumstance to set off his sarcastic and well-articulated ire.

The story is told, very funnily and effectively, through a series of hyper-eloquent letters from Abraham to various authorities, in pursuit of waiving his phys ed requirement, and later, grieving the many policies of Junior ROTC that are an assault his freedoms (and those of everyone else in the world, to Abraham’s view). The tone is perfectly adolescent, perfectly indignant and perfectly venomous. It took me back to my own teenage years when Injustice felt like the air surrounding me.

Woven through Abraham’s letters are contemporary issues like U.S. militarism, the corruption of public education by soft drink companies, and gay rights to name a few, but I wouldn’t call OUTSPOKEN a political novel necessarily. Abraham’s views on these matters are certainly left of center, but few on any point of the spectrum are spared from his literary indictment, including the United Negro College Fund, which he sees as patronizing.

Further, Abraham’s carefully-worded appeals to liberal causes such as the National Organization for Women come off with such self-interest and underhanded collusion, he exposes himself as just as much of a hypocrite as the right-winters he despises. It’s really a skewering of American politics in general, a la Tom Wolfe’s BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES or Christopher Bram’s GOSSIP.

Yet it was hard for me not to root for young Abraham, even after reading his ridiculously arrogant letter declining an offer of acceptance from Princeton.

“I would like to congratulate you on the prestigious honor of remaining one of my top-ranked safety schools…If I happen to hear of any other students within my failing public school whose SAT scores are anywhere near mine, rest assured that I will refer them to your institution.”

This is a teen character who is a lot of fun to follow.

For more about James Vachowski, check out his site.

Madeline Miller’s SONG OF ACHILLES

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Anytime I come across a new title based on ancient Greek myth or history, I am liable to add it to my reading queue. When I heard about Madeline Miller’s SONG OF ACHILLES, which revisits the Trojan War from the perspective of Achilles’ male lover Patroclus, the book went to the top of my list.

SONG OF ACHILLES did not disappoint.

Miller imagines Patroclus as an awkward, lonely boy who is alienated from his curmudgeonly father. Patroclus brings disgrace on his family when he shoves the bullying son of a wealthy countryman, and accidentally kills the boy. His father’s solution is to send Patroclus off to a faraway kingdom that is the home of Achilles, a half god, half mortal prince, Aristos Achaion—the best of the Greeks. Despite his father’s banishment, that’s where Patroclus’ life truly begins.

Out of all of the young, famed prince’s boyhood admirers, Achilles chooses Patroclus as his favorite companion. A scene where Achilles juggles figs for his entourage’s amusement, and tosses a fruit to Patroclus, launches a compellingly romantic story.

It’s truly one of the very best love stories I’ve ever read.

Miller’s style is earthy and visceral. She gorgeously depicts the sights, sensations and smells of young love. On Patroclus’ sensual awakening:

“I kissed his neck, the span of his chest, and tasted the salt. He seemed to swell beneath my touch, to ripen. He smelled like almonds and earth. He pressed against me, crushing my lips to wine.”

While the setting is many centuries removed from modern day, I found the portrayal of blossoming teen romance to be spot on and timeless. The boys’ feelings for one another tentatively unravel, but once they do, the realization is transcendent, their declaration scarcely spoken but felt with greater certainty than anything they’ve known.

Miller perhaps take some liberties for the time period by positioning Patroclus and Achilles’ coupling as an unqualified love affair. They’re the same age, which would be unusual for a same sex relationship, at least one that perseveres beyond adolescence.

But in that, I found it to be a refreshingly angst-free gay relationship. Neither one of the boys struggles with uncertainty and shame. The barriers that stand between the two young men are external.

There’s Achilles’ goddess mother Thetis, for whom no man or woman would be good enough for her son; and the expectations of the day for young nobles: politically-bartered heterosexual marriage and the siring of male heirs.

Achilles disentangles himself from his bride-to-be by telling her father that Patroclus is his “husband.” It’s a great moment that subverts the hetero norm in a delightfully profound way. If Achilles considers Patroclus to be his husband, does that mean he sees himself as Patroclus’ wife? Could both young men be considered both husband and wife to each other?

I love stories that explore non-conventional sexuality constructs, and one of my only qualms with SONG OF ACHILLES is that the latter third of the book didn’t quite realize the unusual, egalitarian partnership between the men. When Achilles and Patroclus travel to Troy, and it comes time to fight, the hallmark of “manhood,” Patroclus timidly strays away from battle, and takes up the role of a medic’s assistant. He’s been trained for combat just like Achilles, and the Greek army needs all the warriors they can spare, so it didn’t make sense to me. Nor did it seem in line with Patroclus who had been brave enough to fight off bullies, not to mention to spar with Achilles during their training.

Notwithstanding that little glitch in characterization, Miller achieves a highly satisfying story rich in setting and emotionality. There are many of the characters and sub-plots from the Iliad in the background–Helen, Hektor, Odysseus, the fulfillment of Achilles’ prophecy–but essentially it’s a story about everlasting love.

Greg Herren’s SLEEPING ANGEL

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I’ve been on a review kick lately. It’s a nice departure from my fiction projects now and then, and it gives me a chance to talk up queer-themed lit that may get overlooked elsewhere.

This week: Greg Herren’s young adult-mystery SLEEPING ANGEL (Bold Strokes Books, 2011).

The story has a terrific premise: Eric, a high school football hero and Junior Prom King, wakes up from a coma to find out he’s the only person who can solve a murder he remembers nothing about. He was pulled from a car wreck with a classmate in the backseat. The classmate Sean had a bullet in him, and he didn’t survive the car crash.

Eric has total amnesia.

The portrayal of Eric early on was one of my favorites parts of the book. Eric is panicked and confused. He knows he should feel something for the people who are worried about him, like his mom, but he can’t. He searches for clues about what kind of person he was. Amnesia can be a convenient mystery plot device, but here it’s a departure point for a multi-dimensional journey of discovery.

One discovery is Eric’s brain injury somehow gave him the ability to hear people’s thoughts when he touches them. Those interactions, revealing what’s really on the minds of his family and friends, are nice, intriguing moments. They shed light on Eric’s character and keep the story moving forward.

We find out the deceased Sean was gay and being bullied at school. Eric was one of his tormenters. The history between the two places Eric as a prime suspect in Sean’s murder, and Eric can’t say whether he did or didn’t do it.

It’s an interesting approach to the subject of teen homophobia. Amnesiac Eric – removed from social pressure and the attitudes of his peers – can’t understand why he would kill or even dislike Sean just because he was gay. Eric is ashamed when he hears from other people, and starts remembering himself, how he treated Sean.

With all those narrative hooks, and Herren’s tight, fast-paced writing, I sped through the story to the end. Eric finds a Facebook message from Sean asking him to a confidential meeting just before the car accident, and I was dying to know what the meeting was about and who shot Sean.

I’ll be judicious, and just say another nice aspect of the story is the build-up of various suspects. What could’ve been a heavy-handed lesson about the treatment of gay teens becomes richer through the range of people in Eric’s life. I liked especially Eric’s younger brother Danny who is full of rage and hurt because Eric is perceived as the perfect son.

I went back and forth about what it meant to take the story from Eric’s perspective versus Sean’s. It felt at times that All-American hetero Eric didn’t deserve to be the story’s hero just by virtue of becoming enlightened about his bad behavior through this scary episode in his otherwise privileged life. In fact, Eric expresses as much, which earns him some self-awareness points, but Sean, for whom there was much more at stake in the story, was more interesting and likeable to me.

Overall though, SLEEPING ANGEL is a satisfying mystery with very clever storytelling approaches.