Witty's Year End Book Review 2022

I know I am late at the end of this year to compile the best of what I've read this 2022, please don't yell, it'll wake the cats... 

As a reminder, this list is not the best books that came out this year, but the best of what I've read this year. This means the book could be published five-ten years ago and I've just gotten around to it. The book should well be available in your local library (or you can always purchase online).

Here's my 2022 recommendations:

Best Fiction

Free Fire, CJ Box

I've been trying to diversify my reading interests as part of my librarian's duty of advisory (recommending stuff to patrons asking for new authors to follow), so instead of the science-fiction / fantasy stuff I tend to peruse, I've been reading various thriller series to see if I can find something other than Jack Reacher to promote.

Box has an ongoing series revolving around character Joe Pickett, a game warden from the vast ranges of Wyoming, who comes across dangerous killers and sociopathic bureaucrats in near-equal forces. Pickett's fortunes rise and fall depending on how desperate various politicians are to resolve public disasters, which is how this novel opens with the state's governor granting Pickett the authority to investigate a murder spree where the killer's already turned himself in and confessed.

The twist is the killer committed his murders in a particular corner of Yellowstone National Park where a Constitutionally-enforced legal loophole means nobody can ever be brought to trial for any crimes they commit there. This is the freaky thing: This Zone of Death is real, and Box uses this novel to examine the ramifications of how a devious individual (working for a conspiracy involving Yellowstone's unique habitat) could exploit it.

I bring up this novel, and the Pickett series, as a counter to the popular Jack Reacher series that I've tried reading and just left it feeling underwhelmed. While both series are similar in format, the characters and settings in Box's novels are more relatable and convincing. Also, Pickett and the other characters talk more.

Best Non-Fiction

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, Carol D. Leonnig

Out of all the post-trump works out there worth reading, I found this book by Leonnig to provide an interesting side note to all of the ongoing breakdowns of accountability across our government (of which trump's rise was merely part of the problem).

Leonnig examines the role of the Presidential bodyguard agency responsible for the safety and protection of the President, Vice President, and other vital members of the Executive branch. An organization with some effectiveness but haunted by tragic failures, the Secret Service has found its mission objectives at odds with ethical and professional norms especially when the War of Terror changed the agency into a purely praetorian role. Various scandals - including a prostitution-hiring embarrassment in Colombia - kept pointing to an agency staffed by poorly trained and undisciplined members who were hired for reasons other than being at the top of their game. The situation got worse when trump arrived, staffing the top offices with personal cronies who would be called upon to cover up some of trump's worst excesses (including the January 6th Insurrection that almost saw Secret Service agents kidnap Vice President Pence (!) to disrupt the electoral count).

I would have considered several other anti-trump books, but Leonnig's work uncovers a systemic breakdown that exists even without trump's corrupting influence.  

Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Jurassic League (DC), Daniel Warren Johnson, Juan Gedeon, and Mike Spicer

There are many epic stories in the comics 'Verses, there are often Earth-shattering conflicts with dark consequences, there are annual Crises that tests the valor and virtue of our legendary heroes.

This series is not one of those.

What's known in the DC Universe as an Elseworlds storyline, Jurassic League is basically a variation of the established superhero 'verse of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and all the other heavy hitters of their major superhero team... but with DINOSAURS. It's as goofy as it sounds, and that's what makes it fun. With all the other somber, dark, even gory storylines the DCU is working on - the Vampires series that got so bleak you just couldn't keep reading it, or the Dark Crisis series as yet another attempt to fix all the continuity errors that came from the first big Crisis - it's sometimes refreshing to read a comic book series that's in it for the goofiness. Even Darkseid shows up as a dino. It's awesome.

Best Work By Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With On a Regular Basis

The Kang Dynasty Omnibus, Kurt Busiek and Alan Davis w/ other artists

As part of getting up to speed on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is going into Phase V this 2023, I needed to read up on the next Big Bad of the story arc... which is going to be Kang the Conqueror. Considered one of Marvel's biggest villains - Thanos being the universal threat, and Kang (and oft-times rival Dr. Doom) being the Earth-based threat(s) - Kang is still unfamiliar to me (due to my devotion to the DCU). All I know is, he's a future-based villain with time control powers - among several others - making him a multidimensional threat. Past that, I got nothing. So I went hunting for any collected volumes, and this was one I got into.

This makes the "Someone I Email/Tweet" list with Busiek being a regular Twitter poster to whom I've replied and retweeted. Often with Busiek slapping me down for my silliness and Reply Guy tendencies. My bad. Still, Busiek is one of the more popular authors in the graphic novels/comics industry that I follow, giving a good review of his JLA/Avengers crossover years ago. His Kang Dynasty is a must-read if you want to be able to follow the next set of Marvel movies without whispering to the geek sitting next to you "Wait, what superpower did he just use again?"

Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

Strangely Funny IX, edited by Sarah Glenn

Containing my submission "The Brides of Wi-Fi," a modern take on the three vampire women associated with whatever Lord of the Vampires - no, NOT the D guy - you may confront at a spooky gothic mansion in the hills of Georgia. It's different from my previous vampire stories, going by different rules, but that's par for the course in vampire mythos where the powers and weaknesses of the strigoi change from region to region (and sometimes even in the same narrative 'Verse, damn you Hammer Horror for your inconsistency). Please do buy a copy of Strangely Funny and please do leave a good review, danke.

Witty's Year End Book Review 2021

Ahhh, where did the time go?

Things picked back up at work, which included an uptick in ordering more science fiction novels and nonfiction titles, and involved reading a few more titles than usual just to keep up with the hottest authors and current topics.

That all means I'm still promoting a narrow list of things I liked most this past 2021. This has actually taken me longer than usual because I really couldn't figure out a Best Fiction novel to choose from even though there were a couple I liked well enough. Rather than leave the category empty I had to think it over. So here goes.

Best Fiction

Zoey Punches the Future In the Dick, David Wong

There's a trope called Exactly What It Says On the Tin, where if a book title reads "Kaiju Fighting Robots" and there's 50 foot monsters fighting 50 foot robots, then HELL YEAH that's what we're looking for. And this novel goes exactly into the zany, hyperkinetic comic book craziness the title tells us it'll do.

It's Halloween season in a crazy superhuman-filled metropolis where Zoey - a young woman turned criminal overlord - gets attacked by a zombie claiming she's responsible for its death and an impending apocalypse. Now targeted by other crime lords who don't like Zoey's attempts to convert her empire into a force for good - as well as a new threat calling itself the "Vanguard of Peace" - she has to solve this mystery, get prepped for Halloween, avoid cyborg cats, and survive to the next novel in this new crazy-ass series.

Written by the guy who brought us John Dies At the End and This Book Is Full of Spiders, this book - sequel to Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, which I hadn't actually read yet, I only ordered this book for my library because the title was hilarious - does a good job of creating its own world with quirks and decent literary twists. It does provide relevant commentary on the horrific nature of online trolling and the emotional toll it takes on its victims, as Zoey copes with a threat calling itself Blowback that turns out to be just a handful of loathsome trolls who don't represent anybody but themselves. If you're trying to find something to read that's not as ponderous as most of the current sci-fi / fantasy market, this could be a fun alternative.

Best Non-Fiction

The Cruelty Is The Point, Adam Serwer

A lot of the non-fiction books I've read and place here on my blog as best reads all happen to document the rise to power of one donald trump, a bankrupt businessman/con artist who rose to the Presidency on a mountain of lies and a broken political system that let him bluff his way in. Where most of those books documented the atrocities trump committed once in power, Serwer - writer/editor at The Atlantic - takes a larger view to examine the mental state of a nation that willingly accepted this overt bully/demagogue promoting an agenda driven by Cruelty as his platform. Anchored by the essay that gives this book its title, Serwer delves into the various racial and sexist world-views underlying the American psyche, and exposes the rage and hate that trump and his ilk feed on for profit and power. As important a read as any other books on trump's violent rhetoric and abusive behaviors.

Runner-Up: Hiding in Plain Sight, Sarah Kendzior

Similar in focus to Serwer's essays, Kendzior documents not only trump's psychosis but also looks at the parts of America - the Red State regions abandoned by an American culture and economic system of the 21st Century that they distrust out of religious and racist world-views that dominate there - that are never going to accept the more liberal Blue State regions that cannot comprehend how those regional Americans are so hate-filled and contrarian.

Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Wonder Woman Historia Vol. 1, Kelly Sue DeConnick (author) and Phil Jimenez (artist)

Normally I'm a Batman fan first and foremost, but lately there's been a lot of great work done with Wonder Woman as the primary hero of the DC Universe, and it's all capped by this recent release on the Black Label (magazine) format, a massive retelling of the origin of that comics' universe Amazon culture, the emergence of Wonder Woman's mother Queen Hippolyta, and a war between gods and genders. 

What's knocking everyone off their feet is the work Jimenez put in as the artist. Arguably one of the most detailed illustrators in the business, inspired by greats like George Perez and drawing in a similar style harking back to Perez's tenure on Wonder Woman in the late 1980s, the first issue already has been hailed as a masterpiece of graphic art.

While less a story about Wonder Woman and more about the history - hence the title - that would lead to her "birth" as the Amazons' princess warrior, there is well enough here to entice readers who don't even follow comics to pick up the title. Like most Black Label works, this is NOT a comic book for children and its depictions of abuse gets brutal (given the themes of male-on-female violence, this is unavoidable). 

And again, the artwork on this is incredible: Any one panel of Jimenez's art could stand alone as a framed work on museum walls. This is arguably the best-drawn comic in ages.

Best Work by Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis

Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove

One of the few advantages of Twitter is that well-known authors occasionally take to the tweets to make their voices heard on the issues, and Mr. Turtledove is one of them. As a writer of Alternate History (AH) novels - and with an academic degree in Byzantine History, which does explain a whole lot of his interest in What-If narratives - he does have knowledge about the rise and fall of empires/civilizations, and if anything the 21st Century political landscape is full of that requiring his observations. So tweet he does, and often I tweet/retweet his stuff with follow-up commentary by him, so it's all good.

That said, Guns of the South is one of Turtledove's better-known What-If novels: The Confederate army under General Lee is facing defeat in early 1864 due to lack of supplies and lack of rifles. A group of men calling themselves "America Will Break" (AWB) show up with an offer of a new, rather lethal weapon they call the AK-47, more advanced and deadly - and literally futuristic - than the Union repeating rifles. Along with oddly packed rations most 20th Century people would recognize as Cold War-era MREs and guarantees of unlimited supply of both, Lee accepts the deal... and leads to the South utterly defeating the North within weeks. With this sudden change of history - where Confederate success means their dreams of a slave nation continue - the timeline we know of by the 21st Century becomes a darker, more treacherous place... especially when Lee and the other Southerners find out who the AWB really are and what they really want.

What makes Turtledove's efforts here intriguing is how he doesn't fall into the traps most other AH/What-If authors fall into: The one little "For Want of a Nail" moment doesn't always end up with clean and unrealistic happy results that bad AH novels fall into. For all that the AWB hoped for - that their time-travel events would create a slave-controlling empire that would ally with them in a future war of their own making - it doesn't change the historic global trends of slavery getting outlawed. Indeed, the European powers - Great Britain especially - that hesitated siding with the Confederacy against the United States now have a reason to openly oppose the new Confederate nation that still propagates a slave system. Defeating the Union doesn't stop slaves in the South from fleeing for safe havens further north. And for all that slavery did promoting racism in the United States, the AWB's more hateful views become shocking to Southerners who prided themselves on more genteel behavior.

Turtledove's novels cover a lot of major historical events - the American Civil War, World War II (he comes up with some doozies for "Hitler Wins" scenarios including lizard aliens), the Age of Exploration, etc. - so he has a bunch of novel series to go through. It'll be worth a look.

Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

Strangely Funny VIII, edited by Sarah Glenn (Mystery & Horror LLC)

Many thanks again to the publishers at Mystery & Horror LLC, who accepted this year a story about 2020 aptly titled "War Of the Murder Hornets." It's about Murder Hornets, a legitimate imported death machine from Asia that contributed to a lot of madness the previous year (and are still around as a looming threat). Because 2020 was worth that kind of horror.

In some ways, 2021 was too.

/cries

Witty's Year End Book Review 2020

You might think with a year-long pandemic - things at the library quieted down right quick by late January - I would find more time to read. Also, that my early year surgery that forced me to stay home for most of a month would leave me with that kind of time as well. Sad to note: the level of anxiety and stress in the midst of all that kind of reduced my reading habits this year. It wasn't I did not have the time - no longer wasting weekends at the movies, for one - it was that I lost a lot of focus to read. I'm sorry.

I did read *some* this year, and so in that regards I will list what I read as suggested reads to pass along to the seven people who follow this blog, thank ye. It's just... honestly? This wasn't a competitive year...

Best Fiction

My rules on what I like each year isn't that the work HAS to be from this year - I do try - sometimes it's an older published work I re-visit that regains my interest. That said:

Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett

Another of the Discworld books I've become fond of, this is one of the later works where Pratchett's world-building - especially the fantastic politics of the various nation-states engaged in border clashes - expands to make it a more realized realm. On Discworld, the Narrative matters and the Gods are real. The problem with the small nation of (looks it up) Borogravia is that their god Nuggan has gone mad, been mad for ages, and His insane proclamations have weakened the faith of the population, which still has to abide against his Abominations. It's led to a state of constant war with neighboring kingdoms, which has also led to the literal depletion of Borogravia's manpower... to the point where the young women are signing up for the latest war in order to get into (or out of) conflict to rescue their loved ones. Or so it seems.

Playing on the trope of Sweet Polly Oliver - with an actual Polly (this is how Discworld rolls, son) as the protagonist - the main characters find themselves the last standing military unit against Zlobenia. Relying on the military tropes as both parody and metaphor, the lads (or ladettes, however the case may be) must rely on their innate skills - vampire, troll, Igor, Joan of Archetype, what have you... just not their feminine ones, which becomes a plot point later - to break the cycle of madness (and free a soul they don't realize has been trapped by faith) and end the war. 

Where the book excels is Pratchett's subtle yet elaborate wordplay, and his willingness to tweak tropes for all they're worth. For example the vampire Maladict (whom Polly thinks is the only real man in her regiment) had traded out the addiction for blood to an addiction for coffee (the mainstay of any marching army, what what). When one of the bad guys (yes, he's a guy) steals the regiment's supply, it forces Maladict into withdrawal mode, mimicking the shell-shocked Vietnam trooper with increasingly powerful hallucinations that Maladict can broadcast. It's in this confused state that Polly herself can imagine "Copters in the LZ" even though she has no idea what a 'Copter or an LZ is. It also allows her to hallucinate walking with Death (yes, he's a Reaper Man) because after all every soldier walks with Death (plus he's contractually obligated to appear in every Discworld story). It's just that Polly's the only one on Discworld who told Death to keep quiet while they walked.

It's not one of Pratchett's best Discworld novels (Small Gods, Guards Guards, and Hogfather are far superior works) but it's an enjoyable read that's easy to get into even if you're not a hardcore reader of the series.

Dishonorable Mention: The Jack Reacher series by Lee Child

I'm sorry, but... I tried, I really tried to read a number of these books about an ex-military MP who walks the Earth getting into violent adventures. But it's just... almost all the same damn thing. He shows up, gets into fights with the locals, uncovers a conspiracy, occasionally has sex with a woman tangibly involved in the matter, wipes out the big bad's merc army in a gunfight, sometimes heads off in an epilogue to take out a corrupt government official who violated the oath of service to America, and goes wandering off to the next book. Half the dialog isn't dialog it's just the narrator writing "(This character) said nothing." I guess it's like Mac and Cheese for a large number of readers, but it's just overheated Revenge Porn. The Punisher does it better, dammit.

Best Non-Fiction

Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig

If you follow me on my political blog, you might notice I am not a fan of donald trump (I refuse to capitalize his name as English grammar requires. The SOB obsesses over his name's presentation and the smaller I can make it the better).

So a lot of non-fiction I've been reading the past four years have been "What The Hell Happened" history/political science books focusing on the disaster that has been the trump Administration. Very Stable Genius is coming towards the end of trump's one-term tenure, and it looks back at all of the chaos and damage that occurred. Most telling is the ninth chapter where Rucker and Leonnig detail how - in an attempt by the Defense and State Departments to explain to trump just what is actually happening in the world - trump hijacked the meeting to spew his unfounded diatribes about our foreign allies, which all ended with trump - a draft-dodging self-obsessed whiner - insulting military officials to their faces:

Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn't taking many breaths... "I wouldn't go to war with you people," Trump told the assembled brass. Addressing the room, the commander-in-chief barked, "You're a bunch of dopes and babies." For a President known for verbiage he euphemistically called "locker room talk," this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred place. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room..." (p. 136)

You might notice the book's title - trump's own words describing himself (like 74 percent of anything he says, it's a lie) - is a sharp rebuke: Everything in the pages details how trump is an unstable, self-absorbed fool. And it's someone who was put in charge of the United States for four painful years.

There's going to be a lot of books written about this era. Rucker and Leonnig's book should be one of the first ones to reach for.

Runner-up: The Public And Its Problems, by John Dewey

As part of my efforts to keep up with Pragmatism as a philosophy, especially with an eye towards promoting it as a political philosophy to counter the darker (cough Randian Objectivist cough) ideologies consuming our nation. I'm still re-reading it to see what I can translate into modern world-view explanation.

Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth (Black Label), by Daniel Johnson

Part of DC Comics' efforts to re-imagine their main characters with edgier, more mature stories, the Black Label brand includes this retelling of Wonder Woman in a post-apocalyptic future where she emerges to find her attempts to save the World of Men had failed. Worse, the nuclear war that consumed the planet had turned her paradise into a monstrous realm that has abandoned any hope of peace at all.

In the same narrative take as Sejic's dark vision on Harleen, Johnson as writer/artist employs a stark and harsh art style similar in my mind to Frank Miller's work. It's the first time I've seen his artwork and I am impressed by it. I am going to keep an eye out for future works. 

Runner-up: Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh

It took about 7 years, but Brosh returned with a follow-up to her Hyperbole And a Half with another essay-styled series of comics about the everyday dramas of coping with the world. Where the earlier book's artwork was crudely pixelated work (the strength of the stories is Brosh's writing and observations), the new work is cleaner, sharper in tone as the writing itself gets sharper with experience.

Best Work by Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis 

The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi

Keeping up with Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy, which I started reading back in 2017 with The Collapsing Empire, the third and final volume focuses on the eventual collapse of a naturally-occurring hyperspace system (The Flow) and how it affects a galactic-wide human empire suddenly forced to find other ways to survive.

Intermixed with the efforts to discover the new portals to a shifting Flow network, Scalzi's main characters have to contend with the political backstabbing of an empire still driven by intrigue and ambition, where the bad guys from the first two novels have succeeded in seizing control of the one planet (End, literally at the end of the Flow) that has a sustainable human environment and are gathering the other Houses to overthrow Empress (well, Emperox to avoid the gender bias) Grayland and condemn billions of humans who need to reach End.

Some of the characters - including the villains - remain rather predictable playing out their roles in a Space Opera environs (did one of the baddies twirl a mustache at one point?). Scalzi still crafts a believable 'Verse with relatable characters and satisfying plot twists. There's no new ground really broken here - the themes of humanity, futurism, our relationship to the environment, these are all regular tropes of most science fiction - but it's a story well-told. 

Expect the SyFy miniseries in the next two-three years.

Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

I did not get published this year, alas. Self-publishing even one of my short works seemed... wrong. I am struggling to keep my head in the writing game... I may have something published by next year, we will see.

Witty's Year End Book Review 2019

This whole year had been busy in a lot of ways: Work at the library involved my taking on double-duty as an interim director; I was active with the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards as a judge (I did not judge in the fields I submitted, relax); I increased the amount of stories submitted to the markets to see if any publisher would like (just one: A sad truth is that writers face a ton of rejection and few victories. We live for the victories).

In all of this, I still found some time to sit and read, both for relaxation and for education/self-information. Here's what I had in front of me for 2019 and what I think deserves a huzzah or three for being effective reads:


Best Fiction

Black Spire (Star Wars Galaxy's Edge #2), by Delilah S. Dawson

I didn't read much fiction - I blame my heated political slant, see below - so what I did sometimes didn't keep my interest. This one did. Granted, I am a huge Star Wars geek and so I can get into books in that 'Verse quite easily, so this one already had a few bonus points to keep the grade up.

Tying in to both the aftermath of The Last Jedi movie as well as promoting a new Disney theme park called Galaxy's Edge, Dawson (who also wrote the well-received Phasma novel) sends her heroine/Resistance spy Vi to the Outer Rim in search of safe havens and new recruits. Instead Vi runs into a wretched hive of tourism and sunscreen (in other words Orlando Metro FL ow stop hitting me) where run-ins with First Order troops and vendors selling 800 credit t-shirts (ow stop hitting me again) keep her busy.

Dawson does write a lot of Young Adult, so a good amount of dialogue and description reads to a middle-school level than adult, but for me it's not a problem. What I enjoyed were 1) re-immersion into a 'Verse I love, 2) good storytelling, 3) likable characters and 4) the subtle Floridian snarkery of poking fun at our tourist industry while accepting its place in our lives.


Best Non-Fiction

The Man Who Sold America, by Joy-Ann Reid.

There are a TON of trump political books I can recommend, given my outrage and discontent about our nation's current predicament under his corrupt rule (yes, as an apostate moderate ex-Republican, I have a bias against that Shitgibbon). Reid's is one of the better ones worth your time, which focuses as much on trump's still-shadowy background and rise in business as well as his current acts of corruption and failure.

Honorable Mention: The Mueller Report (Washington Post edition)

In terms of our current events, keeping up with the political catastrophe that has been the trump Administration requires constant reading and constant reminding. Robert Mueller's years-long investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 elections, and the possibility of donald trump's involvement aiding them, may have come out in April and it may not have ended with proper closure... but a lot of the revelations even when redacted exposes a criminal enterprise behind everything trump has done and is doing right now (hi, impeachment over Ukraine military aid extortion!).


Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Harleen (Black Label), by Stjepan Sejic (DC Comics)

As part of a publication effort to print darker and edgier versions of their mainstream characters, this one focuses on THE breakout Batman rogue of the 1990s - Harley Quinn - to provide a more nightmarish origin story to Dr. Harleen Quinzel's run-in with (and corruption by) the Joker.

As always, the art is the biggest draw: Sejic works like a painter much of the time with the kind of detail to character designs (although I gotta admit a lot of people's chins start to look the same) that make you squint and zoom in to catch it. Also, he can draw nightmarish images that haunt more than terrify, fulfilling the darker/edgier requirement of the Black Label series. The plot itself covers familiar ground - foreshadowing of the demons Harleen herself carries with her, the meetings with Joker than begin her descent as a force for chaos - but Sejic refreshes them in an attempt to make the (anti) heroine a more intelligent and tragic figure that can later find the shred of redemption.

Dishonorable Mention: Doomsday Clock, Geoff Johns (DC Comics)

Not gonna provide a link here, because as a miniseries supposedly trying to tie in Alan Moore's Watchmen universe into the overall DCU this one has been a meandering mess. Considering how writer Geoff Johns had overseen the last decade or more of Crisis-level changes to the comic 'Verse narrative, this miniseries looks to be his latest - maybe last - attempt to clean up all loose ends caused by those shifts. I'm not sure it works: Characters introduced and then ignored for entire issues, plot points that weren't even present early on suddenly become the reason the whole story is being told... I just couldn't keep up with it. There was one bright moment in the entire series - where Manhattan becomes aware of the multiverse and how it's affected by the real-world metaverse - where you can see what Johns was aiming for... and if he made that more prominent from the first issue the miniseries might have been a more coherent work. But he cluttered it up too early and too often, and I walked away discouraged.


Best Work by Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis

Eye Spy (Valdemar Universe Family Spies series), Mercedes Lackey

Adding to the list of authors I've been in communication is Ms. Lackey, and for a roundabout reason. Ya see, I'm a fan of an MMO called City of Heroes that sadly got shut down a few years back... only for a dedicated fanbase to secretly start up a private server version of the game to continue to hard work of saving Paragon City. Well, earlier this year someone blabbed about the secret server, which launched a huge outcry of millions of fans who wanted to get back on it (oh, and the usual suspects of people complaining the secret server had access to people's credit card numbers). So the secret server managers released the game code and... well, as long as NCSoft doesn't bring the lawyer hammers down on anybody, the game is there to upload and play.

City of Heroes was huge in the day (and its revival one of the bigger gaming news of 2019), and it drew in a lot of well-known fans including Mercedes Lackey. She was such a fan of the game she wrote an entire superhero novel series called The Secret World Chronicles (unrelated to City of Heroes itself due to copyright) that she's kept up with to this day.

So here's the thing: In-game, they hold Costume Contests (CoH is legendary for its varied costume options for your game avatars) and one night they announced a secret prize. So I showed up with my most outrageous avatar (Lady Esoteric) and ended up winning! The prize turned out to be a gift copy of the second book in Lackey's Family Spies series set in her Valdemar universe, which she sent to me via email and basically qualifies her for this award. Congratulations! (ow stop hitting my Blaster)

You may need to get into the entire Valdemar 'Verse first, but I'll try to make it simple. There's a kingdom ruled by a benevolent monarchy beset by dark forces - at one point a rival border power, currently tribal raiders - that require the aid of magical creatures (known as Companions) and also magical people (known as Heralds) to protect the realm. The Family Spies series focuses on one Herald family where at least in the first two books the children develop their magical Gifts to serve both family and kingdom. Eye Spy focuses on Abidela (Abi for short) who discovers her Gift as a form of Scrying (the reading of inanimate objects) that can sense their physical weak points.

From there Abi is swept off to Wizard School the Collegium to hone her skills and train as her parents had to serve as a Spy. From there she hits the field working on a mystery involving a drowned village and political schemes that threaten Valdemar's reputation with their border allies.

Lackey's skills are in the details of her world-building, and crafting characters who are believable as social, living beings. I do encourage you to read the earlier Valdemar novels though to help get a better understanding of how that whole world works.


Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

This has always been a narrow category, considering few publications accept the stories I submit. I made serious efforts this year with short story submissions but... well... Sigh. I need better adjective placement in the stuff I write, I think...

Anywho:

Strangely Funny VI, edited by Sarah Glenn (Mystery & Horror LLC)

Keeping up with the near-annual Strangely Funny series, I submitted another chapter of the ongoing Dhampyr storyline with Minette on vacation in "How a Vampire Gets a Tan". Set in the more current day of... well, after the events of a novel I've half-finished called Subway Night, it's a pretty straight forward story of why vampires don't tan outdoors (it's less to do with getting charbroiled and more to do with the excessive pheromone production when they sweat). Saying any further would spoil the rest of the story, but anyway it's a good volume and it's an overall great series so PLEASE take the time to purchase/download (available in Kindle) and read.

Happy New Year, everybody, here's hoping 2020 has a lot of fun reading ahead.

Witty's Year End Book Review 2017

For 2017, there were fewer books read than usual, but I did try to keep up with current works and refreshed memories.

Some of the rules to note: the works listed may not be new this year, but are ones I've read this year or re-read as a refresher of sorts. Thing is, you should be able to find them in your local library or at least online as an ebook for purchase. The links are to the Goodreads website where you can track your reading library for sharing with friends. That said, this is what damaged my remaining brains cells folks.

Best Fiction

Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi

A new Space Opera series by acclaimed author Scalzi (Redshirts), Empire goes into the ramifications of a change in an interstellar hyperspace system called the Flow that allowed Humanity to spread across the stars. Without it, the human empire of Interdependency falls back to sub-light travel, and entire worlds relying on the FTL trade could die.
Scalzi does an incredible job of world-building in this one, delving into how the politics of a far-reaching empire could work and how fragile such organizations would be. Dark humor abounds, and Scalzi clearly leaves a cliffhanger not because one is required in a series but because the very nature of the novel's crisis can't be resolved so easily.
One of the complaints people have is "what series can I get into" if they're looking at something that's already got 12-to-20 volumes in play. This is brand new in 2017, and now is the time to get into it.

Best Non-Fiction

We Were Eight Years In Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Long-time fan of TNC and third-level member of the Horde, so I'm always reading his stuff. Here, Coates follows up Between the World and Me by examining the shift in American politics from the potential of the Obama years to its dark mirror version of trumpland, where an unqualified failed businessman still convinced enough racist and angry white voters into the highest office in the land (well, that and Russian collusion, but that's on my other blog).
As important a read on the current state of American values, and the horrible track record of racism that haunts us, if you're not reading Eight Years you are ignoring your own nation's perilous end.

Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Mister Miracle, Tom King and Mitch Gerads

Originally part of Jack Kirby's epic Fourth World saga, Mister Miracle had retained a place in the DC Universe by positioning the main character - a New God capable of escaping ANY trap - as a standard hero-with-a-cape. Tom King's reworking of Scott Free, however, steps away from the standard Cape narrative by repositioning Free in the space opera struggle of GOOD VS EVIL between New Genesis heroes vs. Darkseid and the dread armies of Apokolips.
In this reboot of sorts, the war has taken a nasty turn: Orion succeeds in killing Darkseid (!) and Free is charged in the death of New Genesis' leader (and Scott's neglectful father) Highfather. Both worlds spiral further into war, with Free coming to terms with his role in that war and trying to figure out how he can escape his fate in it. Mixed in to all of this are early signs that Scott Free tried "the ultimate escape" of suicide... with the sneaking suspicion that the entire plot may be a Mind Screw trap of Darkseid's to trick Scott Free into revealing what he knows of the Anti-Life Equation...
What makes this series work is the no-holds-barred beatdown King delivers to the existing Kirby mythos, deconstructing most of what we know of that 'Verse and making us question just how noble the good guys are compared to the unsettling horrors of the likes of Granny Goodness. It's not a series for kids, given the level of violence, adult themes, and profanity. I'm not sure a lot of adults would feel up to reading something this disturbing either. It all depends on King's endgame of the series...


Best Work By Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis

And by that I mean someone who actually writes back!

Do you know how geeked I was Diane Duane replies to my Twitter?

Spock's World, Diane Duane

This one's been out a long time - 1989! - but of the Expanded Universe novels this one carries major importance to a lot of Star Trek fans. Delving into the history of Vulcan - one of the key planets of the Federation, and humanity's staunchest ally in the galaxy - Duane writes of a world on the brink of voting itself out of that Federation, driven by long-suppressed anger that the Vulcan's philosophy of Logic can no longer contain. Mixed in with flashback chapters of how the Vulcan race survived a harsh desert world - explaining many of Spock's physic and physical powers on the show and movies - are chapters covering the efforts of the crew of the Enterprise - Kirk, McCoy, and Spock who would be ruined if Vulcan did secede - to figure out who is driving the secession movement and how to save the Federation from rending in two.
What makes Duane's work here a must-read is not just her well-paced plot even as it juggles between past and present but also how it fits into both canonical and fan-based works (she reportedly based a lot of the material on the Vulcan-Romulan schism from a fan work called Kraith). Well, canonical pre-movie reboots and ST:Ent series. She draws out how a race could form a philosophy on Logic... and then deconstructs it by showing Logic can't solve everything and that "controlling emotions" can only mask some very deep hurts.
She also writes with a humorous bent, especially when she has her personal novel characters like K's't'lk - a giant glass spider - get involved in Vulcan's secession debate. The way she proves her argument with an arrogant Vulcan academic ("Tenured", McCoy quips) is both logical AND funny as hell ("Get all Zen with me..."). Any and all of Duane's Star Trek novels are must-reads: But this is where you should start first.

I didn't get much else successfully picked up by anthologies or magazines for print, so this year is a washout on that front.

Maybe next year... Maybe...

Witty's Year End Book Review 2016

To the many readers following this awesome blog - okay, eight of you plus the Chinese and Russian Spammers who keep hitting this web address 34 times every 4 hours, what the hell - it's time again for a review of the works I've read and which I want to say Damn THIS is Good Give It A Try.

As always, the rules are 1) It's not what's new that I've read, merely something I've read this year that counts. It could be a book from 1978 of my youth I've revisited for some reason. 2) It's something you ought to get at your local library (SUPPORT ALL LIBRARIES WOOT).

So, that said, here's the list for 2016.

BEST FICTION

Angelmass, Timothy Zahn

Already a fan of Zahn's work on the Star Wars literary 'Verse (shunted off now that it mostly conflicts with the Disney control of LucasFilm), I picked up this work for ebook reading a few years ago and spent some time here and there perusing it.

Zahn sets up a galaxy-spanning human empire (Pax) in conflict with another race in the Seraph solar system that has developed a bizarre new technology: harvested materials ejected from a Black Hole - yes, it's possible - that are used to create "angels", baubles that compel the wearer to be honest and virtuous. The moral implications alone are staggering, but Zahn's main characters - sent to confirm the science (and to justify Pax sending a warship to destroy the Seraph system) - also have to cope with the truth behind Angelmass, along with the ramifications of a galaxy-wide war that would erupt should their own Pax armada succeed in starting (not finishing) the impending war.

Where Zahn impresses me is with the creative and memorable characters he creates for his works: their interactions throughout most of the stories he writes make his stuff enjoyable reads. This one isn't as good as his Thrawn Trilogy, but as a stand-alone Sci-Fi novel it's a solid work.

BEST NON-FICTION

Pragmatism, William James

While I'm not a fan of -isms (per my political blogging), I still recognize that I have a world-view and that I have to find some way to cope with it all. As such, I'm really getting into reading up on Pragmatism as a philosophy, and I've been reading the works of William James over the last three-four months.

What I'm getting into with James' take on Pragmatism: He argues about Reality in which you have to deal with matters of fact (not so much Truth Of Opinion but Truth of Fact), with ideas that must relate to each other, and that these truths must lead us to useful consequences (that Pragmatism must lead to practical, long-term solutions). As a librarian who performs research into facts, and works on goal-oriented projects, I get the feeling I've been playing by these rules most of my life.

I'm still in the middle of reading this stuff, but if I had to ever go with an -Ism to follow I'm gladly buying into this.

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Granted, I'm a fan of Coates' political and historical writings already, but I'm now a fan of his fiction writing in the comic book literary style. (and DAMN, he's living the dream doing it...)

As part of a Marvel Universe reboot, the company granted Coates the chance to start a new series of one of the major African (American) superheroes in their roster. What Coates did was re-establish Black Panther's political and cultural legacy, by questioning the role T'Challa has as both king and guardian of a powerful African nation now beset by uprising and turmoil. Dragging in the real-world problems that Africa has with terrorism, human trafficking and human rights, and political animosities across borders, Coates tweaked a place with a comic-book history (he's notably building off the work done famously by Christopher Priest) by giving it a genuine conflict that can't be easily resolved within six issues of a monthly release. Coates is signed up for twelve issues (of which 8 is out and this graphic novel collecting the first part of the story arc), so it'll be interesting how he wraps this up.

BEST WORK BY SOMEONE I EMAIL, TWEET, or CHAT WITH ON A REGULAR BASIS

Death Vigil Volume I, Stjepan Sejic

Okay, I'm cheating a bit here by going with another graphic novel, but the rule is "someone I email, tweet, or chat with on a regular basis," and I've kinda tweeted enough times with him - "you did WHAT? With a WHAT?! To a WHAT?!?!" - regarding his other work Sunstone that this qualifies (I kid: I have no problem with (expletive deleted) being used as part of (unusually detailed sexual shenanigans), just as long as it doesn't harm any Presbyterian choirs...!).

Death Vigil, from what I gathered about his working on the project, is more of a personal labor of love for Sejic than anything else. Drawing from his work with Witchblade and on the shared geek concept of Eldritch monsters, Sejic creates a world where death is only part of our problems. Your soul can get used and abused even after you die, and your best chance for your soul to survive is with a team of Knights who work as Reapers/Monster-fighters. Introducing us via a recent cult victim's entry to the ranks of these Knights, we meet a rather lively (pun intended) group of dead people, who are facing a dire threat from humans working with demonic forces to seize the weaponry of these Knights in a mad attempt to cheat death itself.

What makes DV fun amidst the terror is how Sejic creates memorable, interactive characters that we can root for. In particular, he introduces us to Mia an otherwise happy-go-lucky preteen girl who just happens to be a Lovecraftian monster outside of her human form (who's still happy-go-lucky even as she's devouring her enemies).

While Sejic is tied up with other projects - he's capped Sunstone at five volumes but now working on related spin-offs - he's still eager to give Death Vigil one more volume to finish off the ideas he's got in that 'Verse. You ought to give Volume I a serious look.

BEST ANTHOLOGY THAT CONTAINS A STORY I WROTE

Strangely Funny III, Mystery & Horror LLC

If you'll recall an earlier submission to Strangely Funny, I wrote a story "I Must Be Your First" about a vampire coping with the problem of Hunters ruining his morning. Coming off from that, building on a 'Verse where I have rules about what vampires really are and about the other supernatural elements they cope with, I submitted this little tidbit "Minette Dances with the Golem of Albany." Sort of a prequel set in 1985 where a vampire (actually a dhampyr, a half-human blood drinker) spends a night dancing (kind of) with a Golem sent to kill her. I had fun messing with the rules of Golems as much as with vampires, and set up how a Golem is actually the perfect opponent against otherwise unstoppable vampires (vamps can't drink from a Golem, and Golems are stronger and more unstoppable than vampires).

I chose having the Golem come from Albany Georgia because 1) Georgia is known for the red clay, and clay is a good material for Golems and 2) that's my birth city. Yay.

I haven't seen as many reviews for my story, nor for the anthology, but I hope my readers here pick up the book and give it good thumbs up, please and thank you.

Shill shill shill. ;-)

So, that said, IO SATURNALIA and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Witty's Year End Book Review 2015

Getting down towards the moment where I want to mention the stuff I've read, and above all the works that I liked, so that I might inspire the seven people who visit this blog to go out and read these books as well. Hi there!

Some of the rules to note: the works listed may not be new this year, but are ones I've read this year or re-read as a refresher of sorts. Thing is, you should be able to find them in your local library or at least online as an ebook for purchase. The links are to the Goodreads website where you can track your reading library for sharing with friends. That said, here goes.

Best Fiction

Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman.
This had been out for a few years (2007) before I finally got around to reading it, but it's become a minor classic as a deconstructive look at the superhero comic book narrative. Told from the perspective of the Mad Scientist Arch-Villain (think Luthor/Dr. Doom), the story is less about how he plots his next scheme for world domination than about how he interacts with the only people he knows: costumed vigilantes with other-worldly powers. Sharing the narrative in a parallel plotline is a secondary character - a newly created (literally) cyborg soldier introduced to the ranks of superheroes to fill their thinned ranks after a particular tragic battle - coming to terms with how she's no longer really human and yet is expected to BE human in a superhero team that's barely functioning as a group.
The genius of Grossman's work is how he toys with the standards archetypes of the superhero genre - which is emerging as a literary form separate from the graphic narratives it has been confined to the last 70 years - while respecting those tropes and explaining how such skewed, screwed up personalities and plots could exist in our real world.
Honorable mentions: Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee. The anticipated follow-up work from the writer's classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Flawed, but poignant. It's personally heart-breaking to realize some elements from Mockingbird were not as noble or humanizing as we thought when we read it in high school.

Best Non-Fiction

Between the World And Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Caveat: I am part of the group known as The Horde (originally the Lost Battalion of Platonic Conversationalists), which is essentially TNC's fan club from his writing for The Atlantic since 2007 or so. So this means that anything he writes is going to get a favorable impression from me. Hell, the guy can write a comic book series for Marvel and I'll sing its praises. Oh, right, he is... (I'm a DCU guy, so this IS a big deal)
Between the World And Me is a book-long letter Coates writes to his son - standing in for the readers - about his past experiences growing up as a Black teen in a decaying urban setting, coping with issues and personal traumas inflicted on minorities due to the institutional racism embedded deep into the American character. Describing the attacks on Black men and youth as "plunder", Coates details the horrors of lives ruined and brutally ended all because our system - of schools, law enforcement, business and employment, established cultural norms - is geared towards punishment and silence of those deemed poor and inferior.
It's a powerful read, and the sins Coates catalogs in his work are ones that need addressing.
Honorable mentions: Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup. A beautiful memoir about spiritual awareness, coping with personal loss, and how not to panic when getting lost in the woods of Maine.

Best Graphic Novel

Batgirl of Burnside Volume One, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr
You might remember I went SQUEE back in 2014 over superheroine Batgirl's new costume design. So this was something I was waiting on. Our library finally purchased the collected first volume of that series, and when my hold on the book came in I got to be able to read it.
If you haven't followed her history, Barbara Gordon (actually the second Batgirl on record) had endured a tragic attack at the hands of the Joker, leaving her wheelchair-bound for two decades and revamped as a hero coordinator / information broker known as Oracle. The recent reboots to the DC Universe gave the publishers the excuse to let Babs get the use of her legs back so she can rejoin the legion of The Bat Family, and this series starts off with a more youthful version heading back to college to work on her computer science skills developing her own AI program. Mixing in the struggles of being a college-age cutie and the hassles of an invasive social media environment, Babs comes to realize that her snap-on cape is the MOST AWESOME THING EVER. Oh, sorry, that's me projecting. My bad.
This is actually a fun read, with well-drawn work by artist Tarr that keeps the image narrative flowing in a eye-catching way. I heartily recommend the costume for cosplay purposes.  ...What?

Best Work By Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With On a Regular Basis

Sunstone Volume One, Stjepan Šejić (yes, I had to copy/paste that because damn that's impossible to remember for speeling purposes, okay?)
WARNING: Not for kids, NSFW, nobody under 17 buys this, okay? OKAY? Just because it's a comic book doesn't mean it's for kids! This is an incredibly mature work and should be read as such.
I wouldn't say "on a regular basis," but I have done some give-and-take with Sejic about his work on Sunstone as well as Death Vigil (another awesome work that deserves more love), so he qualifies for this award. I need to chat more with Sheryl Nantus someday. Anyway, I digress.
Essentially the WAY BETTER story about bondage than Fifty Shades of Bad FanFic, Sunstone is about the meeting between two women sharing BSDM fantasy stories who decide to take the next step and act out those stories with each other. Yes, it is about hot lesbian bondage (even the main character narrator admits it) between a practiced domme and a novice sub, but like all great works what really sells this series is the developing characterization and humorous details of the real-world implications that impose on the women's fantasies (and their growing love for each other).
Sejic takes the time to build up his main characters Allison (the domme) and Lisa (the sub), giving them back stories explaining why they would have an interest in sex roleplay that makes up the BSDM culture. And he doesn't make them ideal characters: Allison in particular has her doubts and fears (due to a near-tragic bondage incident) and Lisa feeling uncomfortable with how far she's willing to let her writing fantasies overtake the real-world consequences of relationships. Thrown into the mix are fellow bondage enthusiasts - some with their own issues and emotional scars - as well as regular characters from outside that culture who provide contrast and commentary on how Allie and Lisa are falling in love with each other despite their arguing that "it's not like that".
If the plot seems a little bit like Pride and Prejudice (but with hot lesbian bondage), it's because it's following the similar tropes of having two characters who are made for each other coping with the issues of class (Allie is personally wealthy compared to Lisa's struggling writer existence), gender roles (traditional vs. alternative), emotional damage (pride), and other obstacles they have to overcome to achieve that beloved ending of literature: the white wedding of True Love / Happily Ever After. Not much has really changed between the 19th Century world of Jane Austen, except for the 21st Century era of smartphones, file sharing, and texting.
The sex scenes are drawn with care and interest, by the by. This isn't a truly exploitative work like the porn videos you can find on the Intertubes. And if you actually read the story instead of glaring at the naughty pictures, you'll notice the hilarious witty repartee and funny plot twists.
Why this is way better than the exploitative bondage fiction dominating the market right now is that Sejic takes the time to create believable, likable characters, and because he treats the bondage culture with sympathy, genuine research, and detail about the realities of what it's really like to get tied up in rope (hint: it's not safe) and at the mercy of someone else's care.
Sunstone is right now the best example of It's Not Porn It's HBO Art on the market today.

Best Anthology That Contains a Short Story I Wrote

Stories for All Seasons, by Writers for All Seasons
I'm part of a writing group in Lakeland (Writers 4 All Seasons), and this past year we decided on a shared project of creating an anthology to help promote our group as well as get some of us established as published authors. It's currently a Kindle-only version available for download, but I hope people out there will take a look and support our efforts.
My submission was "Where The Snow Is Grey", a Christmas-time winter tale using a character I am using in my own 'verse of stories (but one that can be told here). I hope you like it among the other tales told.

Witty's Year End Book Review 2014

It's December 24, last year I did this on that day and today seems like as good a day to do it as well.

The rules are simple: these are from the books I've read - sometimes re-read - during this year.  While I kept it last year to current books - in honor of having a job again in a library filled with books - this year I feel I can go back to the books I've re-read as part of the review.  Hope you don't mind.

Best Fiction

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

I've made a decision to try and get into new science fiction authors, as waiting on anything new by Douglas Adams, Ray Bradbury, Iain M. Banks or Arthur C. Clarke is going to be a bit of a problem.  I saw this title as a Nebula award winner and so made the jump.
Breq is the only survivor of a missing, possibly destroyed sentient spaceship of which she - and gender pronouns get to be an issue as the story progresses - was mentally part of, meaning half her memories and identities are a mess.  She becomes embroiled in a bizarre galactic civil war within Breq's empire that leads to sequel hooks aplenty.  Leckie's work is very similar to Banks' Culture series, with a well-designed 'verse that plays with the conventional tropes of space opera (which means it delves into a mess of human identity issues in-between all the laser fights).  It is one of those books that requires re-reading to make certain you didn't miss a plot point.

Best Non-Fiction

What If? Randall Munroe

The creator of xkcd, a webcomic of absurdist thought, puns, and scientific accuracy, kept getting all of these weird science questions to answer and so started a secondary blog that would answer "What If We Did This?"  Ranging from such crazy ideas as "what would happen if we drained out the oceans" or "what would happen if a pitcher threw a baseball near the speed of light", Munroe applies actual (and sometimes theoretical) physics and engineering to the question to bring up some of the more bizarre - and world-threatening - consequences of such events.
For example, pitching a baseball at the speed of light would cause a nuclear reaction of such intensity that it would wipe out the baseball stadium and the city it was in... and when you throw in the rules of baseball, it means the batter was hit by the ball and advances to first base.
If you want your mind blown, you gotta read this book.

Best Non-Fiction I Praised On My Political Blog

The Selling of the President, Joe McGinniss

As I noted on my Notice a Trend blog: this book was the first one from college I kept, rather than trade back in after my classes were done.  It's short but exposes so much of the sins of our current political culture.  I still feel this is one of those books everyone needs to read once in their lives, if only to realize how corrupt our election/campaigning system has become.  I wrote about the book due to McGinniss passing away this year, and I feel it deserves special mention here.

Best Graphic Novel Series

Sandman: Overture, Neil Gaiman with JH Williams

Gaiman returns to his breakout graphic series Sandman with a prequel tale about how the human personification of Dream, Morpheus, was captured and broken by a dark magus in the early years of World War I (from the first volume Preludes and Nocturnes).  Like all Gaiman works, it hits the tropes early and hard, and can get confusing for anyone who hasn't read the original series back in the 1990s.  But the series promises to answer several of the mysteries and secrets from Gaiman's back-history of his magnum opus, including the reasons why Dream must destroy any dream vortexes that arise among us dreamers...

Best Mystery Anthology That Includes a Short Story I Wrote

Mardi Gras Murder, Sarah E. Glenn (editor)

Another anthology, this time more of a straight up mystery/thriller type tale called "Why The Mask."  It's less "Whodunnit" and more "Howdunnit", about a woman seeking revenge in 1930s New Orleans, but I hope it appeals to the mystery/thriller crowds.

Witty's Year End Book Review 2013

With almost a full year clocking as a full-time librarian again surrounded by books, books, dvds and more books, it's about time I finished up for this calendar year and promote another year end book review!

To be fair, the rules have changed: during a period when I was out of libraries and relying on my own time and pace for books worth reading/promoting, I pretty much covered any title I'd read over the years to fulfill the Best Fiction, Best Non-Fiction, Best Graphic Novel et al.  This time, I had a whole library to work with (insert grin here), so this time I will focus on the books released this 2013 for once.

Best Fiction

The Ocean At the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman.
Ever since the Black Orchid 3-parter really, I've been into Gaiman's literary style: knowing the fantasy tropes of superheroes as well as magic, playing and deconstructing stories and then putting them all back together again for the sake of the story itself.  Although Mike Bruscell had to remind me when Sandman came out it was the same author and worth pursuing.
Ocean was the first book in a few years that was geared more for adults - Gaiman's last few were juvenile/young adult - and it's a flashback-based tale of a mid-40s man returning to the place of his youth drawn by a re-emerging memory of what happened when he was seven.  A lonely young boy who gets befriended by a girl living on a farmhouse with her mother and grandmother who talk nonsensical (anyone familiar with Gaiman knows the trope he's playing with here) but who are at least the only other ones aware that an inter-dimensional monster has arrived in their corner of the world.  While this monster is disruptive, it's easy to deal with... problem is that monster causes a mess that brings nastier monsters into the world to clean up...
All of Gaiman's favorite tropes are on display here - the love of cats, the vastness of the universe, the magic of perception, the monsters that try not to be monsters but just can't help themselves - as well as a sense of this being a personal tale, related very much to the author's own childhood and to a sense of loss when that childhood ended.  It's a very good book to read.
Also, when I named my new cat Ocean... well when you read the book you'll understand why.
Runner-Up (I think I do this once in awhile): The Human Division, John Scalzi

Best Non-Fiction

The United States of Paranoia, Jesse Walker
I get into conspiracies, but for all the right reasons...  Growing up I read books about UFOs and ghosts and the Bermuda Triangle and Loch Ness Monster, the strange and unusual, upon which I noticed the bits of conspiracy and cover-ups surrounding some of the events.  By my middle-school years I had "graduated" to more serious stuff like JFK's assassination and the Church Committee findings.  While reading these conspiracy theories I quickly grew to recognize the folly behind a lot of them: some of the conspiracies get so convoluted in their setup and explanations, and relied on thin wisps that half the time weren't even real, that they made little or no sense (sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one).
This year Walker came out with a book reviewing the prolonged, twisted history of conspiracy thought in the United States itself: the fact that even since our colonial days, our society has been fearful of "the outside threat", the shadow figures below or above us, the belief that someone or some group had it in for our own, for our nation and communities.  Walker does his best to explain the mindset of how perfectly rational people would believe irrational conspiracies: the make-up of the American mindset that allows us to handle the real world while believing that alien shapeshifters from the moon Europa are harvesting our ova.  At least, Walker tries to explain: I think it's all a plot... yes a plot...

Best Graphic Novel

Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh

It's not the most beautifully drawn work in the universe, but Brosh writes in a clear, refreshing, horrifying fashion.
Taken from her ongoing blog, each chapter delves into a particularly unusual moment during her life or delves into particularly painful observations.  Above all, for me, are the moving two-parter chapters she writes about her chronic depression: arguably the most insightful, illuminating description of what depression is really like and why it is so hard for those of us enduring it to ever explain it to people who never experience it.  Where the character representing Brosh describes the emotional void/distance that overwhelms you... the flatness of your emotional state itself... Look, these words I'm using barely even describe it right.  Brosh's words do.

Saddest Thought That is Going To Bother Me Forever

Elmore Leonard is dead and I'll never find out if Foley and Sisco ever get back together.

Best Humor-Horror Anthology That Includes A Short Story I Wrote

Strangely Funny, Sarah E. Glenn (editor and submitter)
Okay, so I'm shilling my stuff!  Glenn and co-editor Gwen Mayo were kind enough to add "I Must Be Your First" into the first anthology printing from their Horror & Mystery LLC publisher.  Some of the stories I found very good - "Best of Taste" by Edward Ahern, "One Scareful Owner" by Catriona McPherson, "Criticus Ex Machina," by Glenn - and some of the others very dark and unsettling.  Some of the online reviews on Goodreads have been okay... but I'd... we'd like to get a few more... especially with 4 or 5 stars attached!

Witty's Year End Book Review 2012

To the seven people still reading this blog who aren't Chinese spammers (by the by, they kinda dropped off when I imposed the register-to-comment rule): It's BEST BOOKS TIME.

To re-state the rules: These are not books published this year that I think are AWESOME AND COOL.  Some of these books may have been published ages ago.  It's just these are the books I've read this year that I feel are deserving of the AWESOME AND COOL labels of labeling.

One thing to note: I've been reading more and more in ebook format on my Nook Color.  Yes, even graphic novels are now available in ereader format, so...

Best Fiction Book

Raylan, Elmore Leonard
Leonard is the master of simple prose crime thrillers.  He started off writing westerns but soon turned to modern noir (there is, oddly, very little difference between the outlaws of the Wild West and the outlaws of the urban streets) and hit it big writing about desperate violent criminals and cops in places like Detroit and Miami.  Raylan is a novel dedicated to one of his minor cop characters turned into prime-time television superstar: a US Marshal reassigned to his home county in Kentucky after a questionable shoot-out in Miami.  The beauty of Leonard's work is the vivid characterization for even the smallest role: his criminals (even the college-educated ones) tend towards stupid and reckless, but you can see how and why they think the way they do.  And even the most stupid of them are capable of a moment of pure clarity and profound thought... right before they do something even dumber that gets them caught or dead.  Raylan himself is not a white-hatted good guy - even though he wears an iconic beige cowboy hat - but he is at least the most sane character running around shooting up half the countryside.
I got into reading Leonard while working in Broward County libraries - during the period a lot of his books were getting turned into shows and movies - especially falling in love with his book Out of Sight (alongside watching the film of said book, it is one of my favorite non-scifi movies ever).  I watch Justified - the television show this novel is a spinoff of, expanding the fictional universe of Harlan County - enjoying the characterization and depth of narrative.  The novel is akin to reading short stories or episodes not produced for the screen, in Leonard's perfect style.

Best Non-Fiction Book

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, Eric Foner
Once you finish reading McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, you need to read Foner's Reconstruction covering the aftermath of the Civil War and the sorrows and miscues that befell the nation.  Documenting the failures of the North to ensure the rights of freed ex-slaves right after the war ends - due to Andrew Johnson's reveal to be more interested in retaining the southern power structure (Johnson hated slave-owners more for their aristocratic airs than for their ownership of humans) - up to President US Grant's struggles to stop the Klan and cope with corrupt state-level Republican governance, Foner notes where the failures took place and why: above all a level of expediency and short-sightedness on the part of Northern politicians who quickly found the rebuilding efforts of the South too time-consuming and divisive among voters back north.  If you want to understand why we had 100 plus years after the Civil War of southern historical revisionism, Jim Crow humiliations making blacks into second-class citizens even with the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in place, and why we've still got serious problems with racism in the United States to this very day... you gotta read this history.

Best Graphic Novel

I've read several but haven't really felt the need to compliment any of them by declaring them "best."  My big problem right now is that the universe I follow - DC - is undergoing yet another universal revamp called "The New 52" aka Nu52.  A lot of it has to do with what I call "Universe-Shattering Crossover Fatigue" where every year the comic book universe is rocked with earth-breaking catastrophes in which heroes die, heroes get reborn, and any recent continuity changes get rewritten just to satisfy a minor faction of head editors who want things done their way without realizing how bad their changes are gonna be.  Batman for example getting a never-before-seen secret conspiracy known as The Court of Owls even with 80/40/20 years of established history never once hinting at such a thing.  It gets tiring, all these EPIC re-inventions.  For once I want stories of honest-to-goodness one-issue-length, no more 12-issue storyarcs, no more vast ground-shaking revelations, no more what-the-hell plot twists.  Give me comfort food for a year, people, just stop with the "what a twist" stupidity.

Best Book By Someone I Know And Correspond With On a Regular Basis

Sheryl Nantus has been busy this year, I'll tell you what.  She's got Heroes Without, Monsters Within finally up for sale as her follow-up to the Blaze of Glory novel I recommended awhile back.  I haven't gotten it meself yet, but I should be getting a few BN.com gift cards for the Nook this Saturnalia...

Witty's Year End Book Review 2010

Another year of unemployment, more time to stress out and read books to calm down...

To re-state the rules: These are not books published this year that I think are AWESOME AND COOL.  Some of these books may have been published ages ago.  It's just these are the books I've read this year that I feel are deserving of the AWESOME AND COOL labels of labeling.  And for the Chinese Spammers who try to leave ....... comments in my comments field, there's a chance they might notice a title and read a book and BE CORRUPTED FOREVER BY MY WESTERN CULTURE IDEALS BWHAHAHAHA.  Okay, maybe not, but here goes.

BEST FICTION BOOK

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
This is a cyberpunk novel that's been out for less than two decades (published 1992!), but I'd heard good things about it and never got a chance to find a copy to read.  Well, with the time on my hands now...
Snow Crash involves Hiro Protagonist (yes, that's his name) living in a 21st Century Los Angeles future world where corporations (some having merged with crime families) control everything... even to where people's names are trademarked.  After losing his job delivering pizza for the Mafia (it's there in 20 minutes OR ELSE), Hiro teams up with the girl YT (Yours Truly) - who's partly to blame for that job loss - to hire themselves out as a hacker/intel to the privatized CIA.  They quickly uncover a dangerous new drug - Snow Crash - that's part computer virus and real-life virus that's infecting more and more citizenry.  It all has something to do with Sumerian religion, self-made gods, and a quest for a universal language that can enslave us all...
What makes the novel fun is how it's both standard cyberpunk - the computer universe and its anarchistic hacker culture - and post-modern thriller. Post-modern meaning self-awareness.  Hiro is fully aware of all Internet Traditions (even though this book was written before any serious traditions were forged!), and also fully hip to the tropes and memes of heroic narrative.  His description of Raven also explains the Badass so well it's what the Tvtropes.org website uses to open their Badass entry.

BEST NON-FICTION BOOK

 Battle Cry Of Freedom, James McPherson
If not the definitive work on the American Civil War, most likely it's in the Top 5.
Political blogger Ta-Nehesi Coates hosted a book reading club online for 2010 on this work, and I had chimed in with my comments, observations, and witless retorts.  Index here on all of TNC's Civil War entries, by the by.
McPherson goes into excellent detail about both the causes of the Civil War (Slavery, slavery, Southern financial and political elites eager to maintain the status quo, and oh yeah slavery) and the battlefield conflicts themselves.  Switching from one chapter that investigates and highlights the political, economic, and cultural changes that the war brought upon the nation; to the next chapter that describes the carnage, confusion, and wartime heroism of each major battle (Shiloh, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Petersburg) and the generals who mismanaged it all.
It's a must-read for all Americans.  Even the ones who don't like history.  You need to read this because, by simple comparison of the rhetoric of the Southern Slaveowner politicos to the rhetoric of today's Far Right conservatives, you'll realize we're still fighting that damn war...

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL

JLA/Avengers, Kurt Busiek and George Perez
This had been out for a few years, and in fact had been on the drawing board for decades (back to the mid-1980s when the comic business exploded into mainstream culture), but I had finally gotten around to reading the collected series this year.
Comic book crossovers are nothing new.  In-universe, they happen all the time (especially as a guest appearance by a popular character - Batman - could boost sales for a struggling title).  Crossing universes, however, are obviously trickier: companies are wary of losing any creative control over their characters, and crossovers between universes have a habit of ignoring certain continuity in order to justify its plot.  Sometimes, a writer unfamiliar with the history or traits of a character can derail everything both within the crossover's story and back in the established continuity that could well kill off a character's popularity for good.  This is, by the way, what happened when DC and Marvel did create a crossover event called DC Vs. Marvel in the mid-1990s that created a convoluted and ridiculous Origin Myth for both universes, set up characters to fight each other for no real reason or resolution, and ended up entertaining NOBODY.
JLA/Avengers did it right.
Taking the primary superhero teams of each universe - Justice League of America (DC) and The Avengers (Marvel) - the story involves a DC galactic villain Krona who travels from universe to universe in a quest to understand how universes are created (in order to control such power for himself).  But in order to do that, he has to destroy said universes while studying them.  When he reaches the Marvel Universe, he confronts the first being of any power that can delay him - The Grandmaster, a hedonist lover of high-stakes games - and is forced to accept the Grandmaster's challenge of having universal champions fight each other to claim twelve powerful totems... and they choose the Justice League and Avengers for the game...
Busiek has a lot of fun tweaking the cultures and continuity of each comic book universe as the two teams visit the others' world and clash.  DC heroes are horrified to see how in the Marvel universe that mutants are persecuted and tyrants like Doom left unchallenged.  Marvel heroes are horrified to see that Supers in the DC universe are nearly worshiped as gods in what looks to them like a fascist society.  Marvel's resident speedster Quicksilver is envious of the fact that his competitor The Flash has his own museum.
Impressive also is Perez's artwork: Notorious for drawing elaborate battle scenes and massive gathering of characters (the cover art for one issue was so packed full of superheroes that Perez had to rest his hand for weeks after completing it), this series was quite possibly his best effort since Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The clincher for the series is when the two teams, realizing the Grandmaster's plot had forced their two Earths together to trap Krona - and that the trap is falling apart - find out from the cosmic being the price each hero will pay even if they stop Krona.  As the heroes had reverted to their Silver (Heroic) Age personas of the 1980s, all of them are shocked by the de-railings (and deaths) each character suffered during the Dark (Antihero) Age of the 1990s.  Disgusted by their futures, they nonetheless agree that stopping Krona - who would destroy both universes anyway - has to happen... and they proceed to launch a massive assault on Krona's citadel just as he's carving into the two beings (Infinity and Kismet) that personify each universe...
As a comic book fan, this was a decent read.

BEST BOOK BY SOMEONE I KNOW AND CORRESPONDED WITH VIA EMAIL ON AN OCCASIONAL BASIS 

I'm gonna need to get back to you all on this one, I haven't made up my mind between Sheryl Nantus or TNC or...

Witty's Year End Book Review 2009

Just as a reminder, this isn't a list of new books that came out from 2008 or 2007, these are simply the best books I've read this year.

Best Fiction Book

Being a little busy in the job-hunting and college-class-taking this year, I didn't get many chances to sit down and enjoy a novel or five.



Best Non-Fiction Book

Presidential Character: predicting performance in the White House, James David Barber.
My college studies at Florida were geared for a Journalism degree, which didn't work out as I'd hoped. But class requirements included a good number of Political Science classes, and in one of them (either a class with Professor David Conradt on comparative political systems, or another class on Famous People which had me comparing FDR, Churchill and Rosa Luxemberg... yeah, go figure) this research by James Barber came up. Barber had worked out a system of psychological profiling for Presidents, based on work histories and biographies of those that came before. He became famous for predicting Richard Nixon's decline/fall during Nixon's first term, and his subsequent reviews of following Presidents (Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder).
Barber is responsible for establishing the two measurements for Presidents - Positive/Negative and Active/Passive - creating four types: Active/Positive (constant policy actions, positive and flexible view of Presidential power and decision-making), Active/Negative (Lots of policy actions, but with a narrow, inflexible and sometimes corrupt view of power), Passive/Positive (little initiative, relying more on Congress or on society as a whole to go their way, but eager to provide leadership as a statesman or captain at the helm), Passive/Negative (very little true initiative, only leading out of obligation). Interesting side note: the first four Presidents on the list - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison - fit each type. Quick, figure out which was which. :)
Given my political leanings (and my ever-growing animosity towards certain current-ex-vice-Presidents who ruled behind the curtain) I've been digging around for Barber's work for ages. I finally spotted Amazon selling a 4th edition (textbook for a college course again) and ordered one. Thanks to Barber's book, I've gotten a better understanding of how we should rate Presidents... Bush the Lesser? In my estimates he's a Passive/Negative - more a pawn of other political forces than his own, more intent on the perks of the Presidency than actually leading (enjoying a birthday celebration while Rome burned uh New Orleans flooded, for example). The book also helped nail Dick Cheney (who as you look closer at the Bush the Lesser admin was a true co-President than anyone before him) as an Active/Negative (a true heir to Nixon, which is terrifying).
Hmm, I should leave that for my other blog. But still, this is a great Poli Sci book and a lot of libraries ought to carry it.

I still suggest the No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, as this is vital reading for the NaNoWriMo event.


Best Graphic Novel Series, This Year

Instead of a novel, this year I've taken a liking to a crossover event series.
DC Comics' Blackest Night primarily written by Geoff Johns and penciled by Ivan Reis, is still in production, Issue 5 so far out of 8 issues. And a lot of background is needed here...
Long long time ago, there were major comic book publishers: National/DC and Marvel were just a few. They used to publish their superhero titles with little interaction between their established characters... but then one day Superman teamed with Batman... and then Justice Societies got together... and then the World War ended and superhero comics were attacked for unhealthy morals and everything went to Western and WWII titles... and then superheroes came back, but with new origins... and then the new Flash literally ran into the old Flash and proved there were alternate universes... and then DC heroes formed a Justice League while Marvel started Avengers within the now-expanding comics universe in each publisher's realm... and by the 1980s it all got convoluted because writers and editors with each book weren't keeping up with everyone's else work, and conflicting mythologies and plotlines were cluttering up stories where the fans expected clarity and continuity.
So DC Comics decided in the mid-1980s to rewrite their universe with a Crisis: update it, kill off cumbersome galleries of side characters, streamline the history to make it compatible with the real world, everything. They killed off major characters - Supergirl, Flash - and rewrote existing ones with brand-new origins - Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, slew of others. It got so popular that Marvel countered with Secret Wars as a crossover, and then DC published a few crossovers to keep their universe interactive (and to make money). And thus were the crossover comic events born.
But where Crisis tried to clear up everything, it actually made things worse. Origin rewrites for some characters - Hawkman in particular - were delayed and conflicted with other stories. DC's solution? More crossovers! But in the process, existing characters were re-written again - in particular Green Lantern being turned into a villain called Parallax - and more killed off. In attempts to attract readers, the publishers started more and more crossovers - to encourage purchasers buy multiple titles - and in order to justify the crossovers being MAJOR UNAVOIDABLE EVENTS OF ULTIMATE DESTINY - those crossovers kept killing more and more characters.
But all this character killing created problems. For one, the publishers - both DC and Marvel were guilty of it - were bumping off what proved to be marketable, likeable characters. When replacement characters proved unlikeable, flimsy excuses and retcons were used to bring dead characters back. The biggest publisher stunt ever was the Death of Superman... all because it was too quickly followed by a plotline of multiple Supermen leading up to Supes' all-too-expected ressurection. The other problem with all the superhero deaths was that by relying on it too often as a plot device - oooh, we're killing a character! oooooh, we're bringing a dead character back! - it became too cheap a gimmick. Readers got jaded by all the death to where rather being a shocking, humbling moment in a comic universe's storytelling, it was mocked, parodied, and expected. Everyone now expects a superhero's girlfriend to end up in a fridge... which is both sad and sick. Oh, by the way, they killed Captain America a few years ago... and where the mainstream media made a big deal out of it, fans knew he was coming back sooner rather than later... Oh, and Batman's dead too. Yawn.
Which leads up to Blackest Night. Written by Geoff Johns, currently the guy responsible for the destruction of DC Comics, Night is playing off the threads of ideas than ALAN MOORE HIMSELF toyed with back when he worked for DC in the 1980s. Moore had during his brief stint there tossed out idea after idea that deconstructed, rewrote, and expanded the superhero mythos in ways you couldn't even imagine... and almost all of it never happened. Twilight of the Superheroes remains one of the best-known "lost" works in popular culture, with only bits and pieces - the Armageddon 2001 crossover, the Kingdom Come Elseworld miniseries - emerging as bastardized versions. Night is playing off a storyline Moore created for a Green Lantern anthology, wherein legendary Abin Sur is confronted with prophecies regarding his eventual death and the fall of the Green Lantern Corps itself. It was Moore's attempt to explain why Abin Sur was flying a spaceship when Lanterns are perfectly capable of flying solo: the prophecy weakened Abin's faith in the ring, and paradoxically led to his death (allowing the ring to pass to Hal Jordan of Earth). Johns read the story, and decided that the other elements of that prophecy - namely, the fall of the Corps (which would mean the fall of the universe) had to be played out. Hence the coming of Blackest Night.
Johns has basically, over the past 5-7 years, been revamping the entire DC Universe yet again, trying to undo the wreckage caused by Crisis on Infinite Earths by bringing out more Crises after another - Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis. Each one actually killing off more characters than before, infuriating readers with bizarre character derailments, bringing back dead heroes with more bizarre explanations, each one actually causing MORE damage to an increasingly unworkable multiverse.
But it turns out Johns might have planned this all along. Make things worse in order to make things better... and so far the idea is bearing interesting fruit... Because it might fix the problem with comic book deaths once and for all.
Night is basically Johns' answer to all the comic book deaths we've suffered over the last 40 years, in fact. Every character killed during the past series of Crises are RISING from the grave, but as zombies... No, wait, while you think "Hey it's been done" this time these zombies are different. Powered by Black Lantern rings (a whole rainbow of Lanterns have exploded on the scene), the undead superheroes are attacking their still-living colleagues by provoking emotional responses... using the moment of peak emotion to kill their prey and in true zombie fashion turn the fallen into more Black Lantern zombies. All in an attempt to resurrect a Death demon called Nekron... who seeks to destroy the emotional light of the universe (basically ALL LIFE) to return all to the black void. Deal is, Nekron just revealed he is not only powering the newly dead, but that he had a hand in allowing previous heroes - Superman! for example - to return from the dead with Nekron's taint... meaning they all Came Back Wrong... From what I'm gleaning off the plotline, Johns is seemingly wiping the slate clean, bringing back ALL dead heroes (and villains) for the purpose of this miniseries, and then using the mechanics of the Black Lantern's strengths and weaknesses to hammer out a method in the future (once all is set right) of killing certain characters and giving them an out of getting resurrected later.
What's enjoyable about this miniseries is that finally someone is looking at the bigger picture of how haphazard the universe-fixing attempts were, and how stupid and eventually fan-crushing the whole Comic Book Death meme has played out the last 15-20 years. Just as long as Johns gets it to make sense in the last issue...

Unavoidable Book That Spells Doom for Humanity

There's actually been a lot this year: all of them far right screeds. All of them wrongly made best-sellers (more out of marketing and fan-driven quantity than actual quality). I'm not linking to any of them. Suffice to say, just avoid the Personal Narrative political bio/philosophy titles for the past 3-5 years. You'll thank me.

Best Book by Someone I Know and Corresponded with via Email on an Occasional Basis

Kinda hard to list one this year: being out of the library profession, I haven't kept up with Petrucha's latest. I do know Nantus is getting a second book reviewed in the galley stage, meaning a print release soon. 'Course, I've been busy meself...