2022 Reading Wrap Up

I think it’s been a couple years since I actually posted my list of books read, but here’s everything I finished in 2022…

Empty Planet, by John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker
The Invention of Sicily by Jamie Mackay
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson
MS copy of a banging horror novel by a friend
Naturally, I also got to read the MS copy of Kelly Robson’s brilliant novella High Times in the Low Parliament.
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (reread)
Spear, by Nicola Griffith
I Contain Multitudes, by Ed Yong
Dragon, by Saladin Ahmed, drawn by Dave Acosta
Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit and Obsession, edited by Sarah Weinman
Hawkeye: Anchor Points, by Kelly Thompson art by Leonardo Romero & Michael Walsh
Artemesia, by Nathalie Ferlinghetti & Tamia Baudouin
The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (yes, I got an advance copy, you should be very jealous of me.)
Agatha Christie: an Elusive Woman, by Lucy Worsley
Sex (The School of Life) by Alain De Botton
Ducks, written and illustrated by Kate Beeton
Unthinkable, by Helen Thomson

Worlds Seen in Passing, including my story “The Cage,” coming from @tordotcom !

I am pleased to announce that my novelette “The Cage,” the first thing I ever sold to Tor.com, has been chosen for their ten year retrospective collection, Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, edited by the wonderful Irene Gallo, who has been such a key part of making this sight awesome on every possible front.

The book has been announced here; you can find the full story on how the anthology came to be, along with a full contributor’s list and a bigger picture of the cover. It’s available for pre-order now, and contains work by Charlie Jane Anders, Nino Cipri, John Chu, Tina Connolly, Ken Liu, Haralambi Markov, Helen Marshall, Kai Ashante Wilson, Alyssa Wong and so many other wonderful people. You’ll be dazzled, amazed, and delighted by it.

One of the many reasons I tell people–unabashedly and often–that I am delighted to be a Tor author is that this fiction project and the entire Tor.com site is so forward looking. It is a great experiment in figuring out what publishing is in the age of the Internet, and how it can work. The Tor.com team takes risks, works hard, and experiments. The wild success of their novella program (from which you can pre-order Kelly’s thoroughly wonderful  Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach) and Tor Labs shows they aren’t resting on their laurels. It takes guts, perseverance, and vision to bring all of this wonderful creative product together, and I cannot express how much I admire everyone at Team Tor for their innovative spirit and dedication to the cause.

Annual Books Read 2017 (for an increasingly shaky definition of book)

This year the amount of student work I read–both as an instructor at UCLA and UTSC and as an MFA student at UBC–was copious. We’re talking around two hundred stories and novel fragments, all of which I critiqued, too. This is what I fit in the cracks:

New Fiction – Novels, Novellas & Collections

Autonomous, by Annalee Newitz

Spoonbenders, by Daryl Gregory

The Best American Mystery Stories 2016, edited by Elizabeth George

River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey

Taste of Marrow, by Sarah Gailey

The Red Threads of Fortune, by JY Yang (I am reading the companion novella now!)

Non-Fiction

The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life by Jonathan F. P. Rose

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (Kelly is reading this to me so we aren’t quite done)

Crafty TV Writing: Thinking Inside the Box by Alex Epstein

Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel, by Hallie Ephron

The Best American Travel Writing 2017, edited by Lauren Collins

Women & Power: A Manifesto, by Mary Beard

Fieldwork Fail: The Messy Side of Scence, by Jim Jourdane and 25 scientists

I read lots and lots and lots and fucking lots of non-fiction articles, and I didn’t track them. You can’t track everything. But notable among them is: “City of Villains: Why I Don’t Trust Batman,” by Sarah Gailey

New Short Fiction

This is an incredibly incomplete list… I’m still struggling to capture all my short fic reading, especially the DailySF offerings.

Excerpts from a Film (1942-1987)” by A.C. Wise

And then there Were (N-One)” by Sara Pinsker

We Who Live in the Heart,” by Kelly Robson

Letters Found on the Backs of Pepper Labels next to a Skeleton in an 800-year-old Hibernation Capsule Ruptured by What Looks Like Sword Damage,” by Luc Reid

We Need to talk about the Unicorn in your Backyard,” by Mari Ness

Making the Magic Lightning Strike Me,” by John Chu,

The Famine King,” by Darcie Little Badger

Later, Let’s Tear up the Inner Sanctum,” by Merc Rustad,

Seasons of Glass and Iron,” by Amal El-Mohtar

It Happened to Me: I was Brought Back to Avenge my Death, but chose Justice Instead,” by Nino Cipri.

A Hero, I am,” by Kat Otis

​“Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by @KMSzpara in @UncannyMagazine

​”Rivers Run Free,” by Charles Payseur –

The Witch in the Tower,” by Mari Ness

Rereads

The Blue Place, by Nicola Griffith

Stay, by Nicola Griffith

Always, by Nicola Griffith

In the Woods, Tana French

Ghost Story, Peter Straub

The Trespasser, Tana French

Caboose of the Whimsically Tardy 2016 Reading List

On Monday I posted a rundown on all of my 2016 reading except new-to-me books: the student projects, rereads, short fiction, first chapters, you name it. Today, I give you the things I read from cover to cover.

One of the great things about being a writer is that you sometimes get to see advance copies of books, and I got to look at a few such things, some of which are out now, some of which are coming soon.

They were amazing, and you will love them!

Crossroads of Canopy: Book One in the Titan’s Forest Trilogy, by Thoraiya Dyer
And Carry a Big Stick, by S.M. Stirling (March 2018)
Weave a Circle Round, by Kari Maaren
All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault, by James Alan Gardner

Just as wonderful, but slightly less hot off the presses…

The Trespasser, by Tana French
Company Town, by Madeline Ashby
This was my reading year! And 2016 being in the rear view, perhaps I’ll ask: How has yours been so far?

Whimsically Tardy 2016 Reading Post

In 2016 I read approximately 120 stories and/or partial novels from students, pieces ranging in length from 1,000 words to 25,000, and wrote a critique for each and every one.  I also read over fifty stories, novelettes and novellas for the Heiresses of Russ 2016 anthology, which I co-edited with Steve Berman. Most of those, naturally, I read twice.

Because of the anthology, I was often very focused on short fiction, and read a lot of it online. I had promised myself that I would remember to record titles and authors and links, and I probably managed to do this a quarter of the time. When I list notable shorts, below, know that I may well have read and loved your story too… I just forgot to cut and paste the link into my master list.

Notable stories:

This is not a Wardrobe Door,” by A. Merc Rustad
Only their Shining Beauty was Left,” by Fran Wilde
Motherlands,” by Susan Jane Bigelow
No Matter Which Way We Turned,” by Brian Evenson
Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers, by Alyssa Wong
Madeline,” by Amal El-Mohtar
And You Shall Know Her By The Trail Of Dead,” by Brooke Bolander
The New Mother,” by Eugene Fischer
The Blood that Pulses in the Veins of One,” by JY Yang
Grandmother Nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds,” by Rose Lemburg
Fabulous Beasts,” by Priya Sharma
Over a Narrow Sea,” by Camille Alexa
A Million Future Days,” by Charles Payseur

Samples and Starts: Another new category for me, this year, was first chapters and samples of books I didn’t go on with. Usually these were non-fiction works with great concepts and line by line writing that wasn’t quite delicious enough to out-compete all the other brilliant non-fiction books out there.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, by Kate Summerscale
The Winter Prince, by Elizabeth Wein
Accused, by Mark Giminez
Tales From Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made? by David Hughes
Morgue: A Life in Death, by Dr. Vincent DiMaio
The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way People Live with Technology, by Kim Vicente

Rereads:

When I am reading a lot of student work, I find new novels rather hard to tackle. Too much of my headspace is taken up, and so I reread. I didn’t record these very well either, in 2016. I know Tana French’s Broken Harbor and Faithful Place were among them, as was Minette Walters’ The Shape of Snakes.

And this is plenty for you all to chew on, so I’ll make a second post, soon, containing 20 new-to-me novel-length works I read in 2016!