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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?

COLLECTIVE FALLOUT: Queer Speculative Fiction!!

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Cover art from Collective Fallout Vol. 3 Issue 3

While researching queer fantasy markets, I discovered Collective Fallout. It’s a literary magazine dedicated to queer speculative fiction.

Issues are themed, and the one I ordered – Vol. 3, Issue 3 – was called “Futuristic.”

It blew my mind. In a good way. If you’ve read my reviews, you know it doesn’t happen often that I go off raving about stuff I read.

The stories are imaginative and tightly written, and I’ll get to some of my favorites. But what I responded to, most wonderfully, was the sum of the issue’s parts: wild, conceptual fiction as a platform for queer possibilities, and often queer transcendence.

Most of the authors take the future theme from a dystopian perspective. Warren Rochelle’s “Green Light” posits the rise of a multinational, totalitarian empire, genetically engineered warriors, and a substratum of outcasts fending for survival on a war-ravished frontier. In Christopher Keelty’s “Toll Road,” bio-contamination leads to a politically-fractured state where Catholic knights vie with leather-clad biker dudes called “the Dawn.”

Somewhat smaller in scale, and charming in its quiet way, is Terence Kuch’s “Other I Now.” In Kuch’s future, media technology has born the creepy pastime of ‘voying’, downloading other people’s memories. When Kuch’s narrator Ned rents out a memchip that is uncannily like his own memories, he goes in search of his “other I,” and discovers another life he might have lived.

The struggle to live queerly and authentically is a theme tying many of the stories together. It’s sometimes the main narrative drive, as in the case of Rochelle and Keelty’s stories where an accumulation of heterosexual power has begotten a nightmarish era of persecution for their queer protagonists.

In Derrick W. Craigie’s “Tales of K’Aeran: A New Road,” opportunities for queer living are contrasted when two strangers, from different fantasy clans, band together for survival in a sub-zero neutral zone. The Highborn woman Tatyana comes from an elite society where being caught with her female lover brought about a campaign for her assassination. Her companion Garon, from the martially-centered Nathikan clan, reflects on the more nuanced traditions of his people, who hold heterosexual marriage as a tribal obligation, but believe in the essential practice of choosing additional lovers for personal fulfillment, whether hetero or homo.

Caleb Wimble’s “Singularity” evokes queer otherness through allegory. The central character’s choice to undergo experimental cloning, after a terminal diagnosis of brain cancer, sets off  violent, global organizing by “humanists.” “Synths” are criminalized because they are seen as an affront to the way God intended humankind to be.

I was surprised by the romantic spirit of the stories, a universal thread, which may be a bit too ‘on-the-nose’ for some readers, but it worked quite well for me. Rochelle’s “Green Light” has an outcast teen and a young warrior, trained to exterminate the masses, deferring life and limb to be together. The story invokes the poetry of Walt Whitman. “Singularity” finds love possible between a man and the clone of his former boyfriend.

Not a bad thought that in the future, love will conquer all.