2013 Books Read

keep readingHere’s the annual list of everything I read last year. It’s a new low, numerically–between the move and a couple other things, I wasn’t in the right headspace. I did read a fair number of short stories, but I often forgot to record them. A few made it to their own list, though, at the bottom. Of those, my favorite was the John Chu story

The best novel for me, this year, was Hild, by Nicola Griffith. You probably remember that I reviewed it, here.

1. Best American Science and Nature Writing, edited by Dan Ariely and Tim Folger
2. Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
3. The Cat’s Table, by Michael Ondatje
4. The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
5. Suspect Identities: A history of fingerprinting and criminal identification by Simon A. Cole
6. The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars, by Paul Collins
7. Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World, by Matthew Goodman
8. The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg
9. Black Rubber Dress, by Lauren Henderson
10. The Given Sacrifice, by S.M. Stirling
11. The Summer of Dead Toys, by Antonio Hill
12. Hild, by Nicola Griffith
13. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, by John M. Barry
14. The Voices In-Between, by Charlene Challenger
15. Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn
16. The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes
17. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
2 student novels, plus partials

Short Stories
About Fairies,” Pat Murphy
The Water that Falls on You from Nowhere,” John Chu

Running of the Bulls” by Harry Turtledove
Brimstone and Marmalade,” by Aaron Corwin,
Dormanna,” by Gene Wolfe
House of Dreams“, by Michael Swanwick

Vacation looms, and with it the reading of lighter fare…

In my case, having finished Nicola Griffith’s excellent Hild
(here’s my review) and Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, I think I will be going with a thriller, Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. Here’s the cover.

Vacation is a relative term. I want to finish some substantial revision on Daughter of a Pirate by the end of the calendar year, and I have a couple one-on-one students I’m doing things for, or with. But my Novel 1 class is about to wind down, and there will be some loafing. And with loafing, for me, comes crime.

Edited to add: Having read the Gillian Flynn book, and having found it just okay, I am thinking of moving on to a book Barb recommended: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

Where does all the awesome come from? Jack Womack and the #BuffyRewatch

fangirlTor.com has a new feature called That Was Awesome: Writers on Writing. The inaugural post is one by me, on Jack Womack’s uber-fantastic coming of age diary, Random Acts of Senseless Violence
. The essay is called: Surprise, Fear, and an almost Fanatical Devotion to the Womack.

This essay–and there will be others–owes a debt to Favorite Thing Ever, where I got to go squee about Veronica Mars and Tana French and many other wonderful things.

Meanwhile in Sunnydale, season seven needed a catchy refrain, and has chosen blogs/2013/11/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-rewatch-did-you-turn-this-ladys-ex-into-a-giant-worm-monster”>From Beneath You, It Devours.” Won’t that make a great theme for Dawn’s first prom?

Reading, Riting, Rithmatik

Tor Shorts2I have begun Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall
this week, having finished The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History and Hild, but I have only just scratched the surface. The bulk of my readerbrain is engaged with my Novel 1 students at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. They turned in their first chapters this week, and are deep in the workshop process. The group of them have some delightful books on the go; it’s always incredibly cool to see novels just sprouting, in this very new stage. I’m a fan of beginnings: many of my all-time favorite TV episodes are pilots. But I do need to pick myself another history or science book. I find it easier to read non-fiction when I’m reading student submissions. Hmmm, this probably means it’s time to crack The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013.

Next quarter I will be teaching Creating Universes, Building Worlds, and in the spring I will be running the more advanced Writing the Fantastic. Both classes will be open to new and returning students–I’ve had people take CUBW more than once, just for the chance to workshop again. Both have filled fast the last few times they’ve been offered.

Speaking of books, my very fun day-counting app now has an entry for the release of Child of a Hidden Sea; it’ll be out in 223 days.

The #BuffyRewatch also got to review #Hild this week on @tordotcom

keep readingI have two new essays up on Tor this week. The Buffy rewatch is up to “Lessons.” (Meanwhile, I have only just finished submitting the essay on “Help,” and I see I gave them very similar titles. Sigh.)

I also had the great good fortune to get an advance peek at Nicola Griffith’s fantastic new novel Hild, and to write the following review.

Hild’s story begins when she is three and her father is poisoned. Her mother, Breguswith, moves their household to Edwin’s court for safety. Mom immediately begins some high-end scheming. She has already laid the groundwork for Hild to have a very special place within the court, because when she was pregnant, she revealed a vision that predicted Hild would be “the light of the world.”

Hild is out now and I can’t recommend it enough. If you buy one book in hardcover this week, let it be this one. Go! Read! Enjoy!