2016, whew, what a year. Like many folks, I presume, I am hoping that the turmoil of this past 12 months is an outlier, and a not a prediction of things to come.

My reading year was different, at first as planned. i had set out to read works by authors of color, hoping to vary my perspectives and stay away from the voices of “white dudes”, so to speak, who often speak for everyone. So Fran Ross, Paul Beatty, Valeria Luiselli, Nnedi Okorafor, Colson Whitehead, T. Geronimo Johnson and Kobo Abe were conscious choices.  The experiment was a success and broadened my reading world.

I never planned to re-read as much as I did, but I was glad to re-enter the worlds of Rothfuss and Sanderson, they made travel easier.

My NF choices were rewarding as well. Vollmann’s Seven Dreams continues to amaze, but they take an enormous investment in time and attention.  Annie Proulx was the big disappointment of the year. Barkskins just never got going for me, and the lack of interesting characters made it not worth the time to finish. It stood very poorly next to Fathers and Crows despite for enthusiasm both for Proulx and the subject.

My yearlong  “poetry” read for the year was Desolation Angels.  Kerouac didn’t impress me all that much with this one, but I did enjoy it in small bits.

The biggest surprise of the year ends up being the best sci-fi, best page turner and most easily recommendable book: the First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.  It was a delight because of the sophisticated way that Claire North dealt with the premise, creating a tense thriller while maintaining an interesting mix of historical, philosophical, and scientific musings; plus, the best villain i can remember in a time-loop story.

T Geronimo Johnson’s Welcome to Braggsville.

Johnson tackles issues, and I applaud him for that. Cultural appropriation, the South’s insistence on glorifying the confederacy, protest as art/experiment, lgbt identification are all themes in WtB, making it an enormous undertaking, with a lot to juggle.  I would recommend to anyone that they read the afterword while reading the book itself, it gave me a better understanding of Johnson’s main character’s POV than I had while actually reading the book, and considering how ‘heavy’ the story is, it might be better for future editions to include it as a foreward.

D’aron is a white, rural southerner, who rebels against his home town’s culture by enrolling at Berkeley.  At first he’s quite understandably a fish out of water, until he finds some like-minded souls to conspire with.  Berkeley is famous for its liberal activism, and Johnson was a student there, so his portrayal of the mindset of privileged students looking to save the world by bringing it understanding ring very , very true (and obviously haven’t changed much since I was at Penn in the mid 80’s, where this attitude was rampant).

With the best intentions in mind the four little indians set out to subvert a traditional Civil War (confederate) reenactment in order to fulfill a classroom assignment, and enlighten the locals as to their misguided view of history.

Things, of course, go very wrong, and the various characters are left to face the consequences of the Tragedy (yes, Tragedy, as Johnson rather deftly explores).

At times Johnson is brilliant. He doesn’t shy from asking a lot of his readers as he riffs on philosophy, women’s studies, the classics, histories of all sorts in both an academic tone and with a variety of street voices. Unfortunately once the story turns dark it stays dark, and his hand is not subtle with satire, nor does he effectively use his comic as relief.

I found the story to be interesting, but I never cared, not about D’aron, or his family, Candice or even Louis.  Charles, who stood in the for the author, might have been interesting if he had been more central, but his lack of bravery is perhaps telling of Johnson’s lack of bravery to make his dark story a dark comedy.

Q: 3

E: 3

I: 3

(QxE) + I = (12)

Good lord Seveneves.  Is this a trilogy, made up of a pretty good apocalyptic thriller (Pt 1), an action-packed space survival adventure (pt 2) and a booooooooring first contact alien story (pt 3); or one gigantic hot mess of a poorly edited novel that destroys all of the pacing and goodwill it had built up with a final third that is an endless info-dump bogging down what amounts to a fairly satisfying ending?

There are so many good ideas in this book, and so many thrilling scenes, that to simply hate on it would be an injustice, but my goodness the final third is so very very bad that it took all of the wind out of my sails.

It’s hard to believe that a good editor wouldn’t notice how problematic the pacing of the final third was, but gone was any character development; gone was the tension of the human race on the brink of extinction,  it’s only hope a few survivors with some very real reasons to distrust each other enough to just let it go; replaced instead with endless digressions into technologies best left for another novel altogether.

Q: 3

E: 3

I: 2

(11)

by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina McSweeney.

What a great way to start the reading year.  There was, of course, no way that I was going to pass up a book with this title, despite the fact that the amazon sample contained none of the text (just a few of the illustrations that are peppered throughout, which appear to be slides of cells from teeth).

I really enjoyed this book. It is spare, probably 175p or less after the illustrations are subtracted, but Luiselli manages to create a rich world, and a fascinating character in Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez, otherwise known as Highway.

It’s obvious from the beginning that the writing is flavored by Luiselli’s  wide literary and artistic influences, from the classical Greek through German modernism and , in the end, completely Po-Mo.  Borges  and Calvino are obvious, as is Marquez, but i was reminded of Eco and his eponymous character from Baudilino the most.

I most enjoy when an author presents a character that is supposed to be a good story teller, and then that character delivers.  It’s not done to perfection in TSOMT, but the book is ambitious and it comes close.

Luieselli is and author to seek out and to watch.

Q: (4) — ambitious and clever, it’s not perfect enough to be a masterpiece, but it has the qualities of books that are.

E: (5) — Enjoyable throughout — the spanishification of names was excellent

I: 4 — humorous and fun, but not quite deep enough to be truly moving

(24)

It’s no secret that the Goodreads and Amazon 5 star rating system is sorely lacking in finesse. Ratings are, of course, purely subjective by nature, but that does not mean that there cannot be criteria by which a book is judged that give a bit more accuracy to the relative merits of that book.

This system is my system, and a work in progress.

Here is the formula as of the beginning of 2016:

Q is for quality of writing and more or less breaks down like this:

5 — a masterpiece

4 — fantastic throughout, quotable, wordsmithy, poetic

3 — well written with moments of the above criteria/ a page turner

2 — A good read with few hiccups

1 — flawed

E is for enjoyment of the reading experience

5 — flawlessly readable/thought provoking/quotable

4 — page turner/few to no skimming/difficult

3 — ok read/worth finishing/needlessly difficult

2 — amateurish

1 — unfinishable/crap

I is for emotional impact

5 — unforgettable/transcending/tears

4 — quotable/laughs

3 — fun/moving

2 — problematic

1 — gag

Q x E + I = (score)   30 max

This system should provide, more than anything, some separation among the 4/5 star books, and give a clearer guide to books that were great because I loved them vs great because they are triumphs of style ( I hope).

Thanks to the Impromptu Sci-Fi Book Club (ISBC), the genre gets its own separate entry this (and maybe every) year. Which is to say that Sci-Fi is alive and well and well worth seeking out and reading. 17 (good golly) titles this year!  Here are some notes:

The Good

The Bone Clocks

David Mitchell ranks as the author I find most consistently great, book in and book out, and TBC did not disappoint.  Hard sci-fi it isn’t, but I am convinced that he is telling a meta-story through all of his novels that mirrors what he did in Cloud Atlas, so i look forward to his works like few other authors.

Q: (4)

E: (4)

I: 3

(19)

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline writes a mean John Hughes movie, chock full of easter eggs of its own. Popcorn fun and worthy of the hype.

Q: (3)

E: (4)

I: 4

(16)

The Girl With All The Gifts

Without a doubt the most breathless read of the year. Is un-put-downable a word yet?

Q: (3)

E: (5)

I: 3

(18)

Several books crossed nicely between sci-fi/fantasy and diversity, and they are worth mentioning. Kindred (14), The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (7), Nexus (6), Ascension (5) and The Three-Body Problem (5).

This is the place where I remind myself that I was among the few who really really didn’t like Station Eleven (1).

A few of the books I read this year were parts to series. Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was the only one that convinced me to read another, and that one didn’t convince me to read the third.

I did quite enjoy a quirky little thing called The Alex Crow (12), thank you Shannon.

Next: Looking forward