For three (or so) years running, I’ve been sharing My Year in Books as organized and analyzed by Goodreads. It certainly does make it fun to look back on all the titles you’ve read and to realize it’s quite an achievement!
I actually nearly doubled my reading output in 2018. For the past two years, I finished thirteen books annually, and this year I read twenty-four (I might hit twenty-five if I find the time to finish a book on Hungarian history in the next week or so). That might be a slightly inflated improvement in that I did a lot of beta reading and awards program reading in previous years, and I usually didn’t log those titles in. But here’s my positive take-away: I got a lot more reading done on my commute back and forth to work, which can be one to two hours total each day, by spending less time with games and social media on my phone. 🙂
Another thing that probably helped was I took on writing reviews this year for the New York Journal of Books and Out in Print, in addition to occasional reviews for Queer Sci Fi. In total, I read eight titles for the purpose of reviews, which is definitely the most I’ve ever done in a year.
A lot of those were recommendable, and I’d say my favorite discovery was K.D. Edwards The Last Sun. It’s kind of an alternative history/urban fantasy that takes inspiration from Atlantean mythology, along with a ton of paranormal horror conventions–vampires, zombies, witches, etc.. It’s a début novel from Edwards, and his action-writing and suspense-building craft is vacuum tight. I’ll definitely be following where he goes with the series. You can read my full review here.
I read pretty purposefully, and this year I was eating up popular, historical, and #OwnVoices gay fantasy to consider titles for my curated Intro to Gay Fantasy list. Thirteen of the twenty-four books I read fall into that research category, and I thought three of those titles were worthy of adding to the project: Lawrence Schimel’s fairytale inspired short story collection The Drag Queen of Elfland, Ricardo Pinto’s Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy, which begins with The Chosen, and Philip Ridley’s In The Eyes of Mr. Fury.
All three of those titles are remarkable and appealing for different reasons. If you like heart-warming, young adult-ish magical fantasy, In the Eyes of Mr. Fury is the book you should drop everything to read RIGHT NOW. If you like dark, complex, slow-burning epic fantasy with a gay hero who breaks the mold, get cracking with Ricardo Pinto’s trilogy. Well, if I could take just one book with me to a desert island, I’ll say I’d be in good company with Stone Dance of the Chameleon.
So that leaves just three books that fall in the category of “read for pleasure,” and you see my dillemma. I don’t have much reading time to pick up new books by authors I like or try something different that might be fun. I did read Gregory Maguire’s re-imagined story of the Nutcracker Hiddensee (and LOVED IT). And I did finally get to read Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, which had been on my TBR list forever. That was a little dry, but still a mind-blowing work of literature, written with such authority and an authentic voice you can’t believe it’s not source material.
I’ll end with some fun by answering the question: what’s the strangest book I read last year? I actually have two.
First, while researching gay fantasy novels written before the 1960s, I came upon William Beckford’s Vathek. It was first published in 1792. Though I’m afraid that’s the only intriguing thing about Beckford’s bizarre, overly-written and ultimately unreadable tribute to arcane magic and horror.
Then, I chose a re-printing of a “gay pulp classic” from the 1960s – Neil J. Weston’s Naked Launch 2. – to review for Out in Print since Riverdale Avenue Books recently launched an imprint to re-release a series of pulp titles. It’s just about the most absurdly adolescent take on gay pirates I can imagine, but the story ended up winning me over. There’s a lot of heart and hopefulness in-between the copious scenes of pirate debauchery.
So that’s my year in books! This will be my last post of 2018 so let me say Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Thank You Very Kindly for supporting my work. 🙂
