Tag Archives: reading

Books I Read: 2024

Hey gang! I am back with another reporting of all the books I read this past calendar year. Which is the one thing that you can count on consistently from this blog that I’ve otherwise left to shrivel on the vine. I should change that. I really do want to write more, I need the outlet. But do people even read blogs anymore? If a blog falls in the TikTok forest, can anybody hear it? I guess that doesn’t matter, I write this for me. And my one blogger friend Brian, hi Brian! And any other unwitting fool who stumbles upon it. I’d like to write more, so I’m gunna just jot that down and hopefully find the gumption to follow through this year. Anyways!

2024 was a record breaking year in terms of my reading because I read the most books I’ve ever read in one year! (That I know of, because I’ve only been keeping track officially since 2017. Maybe I read more books one year, like, when I was 8 and I just don’t know it. That was a big year for Goosebumps and I was fucking 8, so what else did I have to do?) But in terms of quantifiable stats, I read 66 books in 2024. Yeah, SIXTY-FUCKING-SIX! That feels like an immensely significant number to me, mainly because I decided it is. Keeping in mind, I know some people who read no books and I know someone who read over 100 books last year. That person is a lovely, inspiring reading machine. They’re the LeBron James of reading, and I recognize that they are the true outlier here. Lots of people read none, that’s very common. But 100 is rarified air, and I kinda feel like 66 is too. If the goal is a book a week, 52 is easily achieved, depending on what you read. But I really put the pedal to the metal last year and I feel like my 66 is an impressive showing.

What was so different from years prior? Not much, but I guess I was motivated. There’s a lot of books that exist, and I want to read as many of the good ones as I can. Because it just feels good, you know? To be completely engrossed in a gripping adventure outside of my boring suburban shell. Slip into a world of murder and mayhem and leave unscathed, an unassuming voyeur of slickly contrived drama. And while life with Woody is still demanding and very hands on, somehow more opportunities to read during his waking hours have cropped up. When I take him to swim or gymnastics class, I whip out a book while I sit in the stands. Yeah, I’m that parent. Or, sometimes on the weekends we tell him it’s quiet hour and he has to play independently because he just needs to calm the fuck down and chill out for a bit and we’re tapped out on playing hot wheels and dinosaurs for the moment. Which is conveniently a great reading hour for me. I’m hoping that my love of reading will extend to him via osmosis or whatever science term thingy it is that transmits shit to others. I figure he’ll see how cool I look doing it and obviously he’s gunna want to be hella cool like that too, right? Sometimes he does a great job at quiet hour, playing entirely by himself, quite happily. Other times he’ll play a bit during quiet hour, but it’s obvious he’s still jonesing for parental attention, so he’ll curl up beside me and ask me to read my book aloud to him. If I’m reading something that isn’t appropriate for his ears I’ll tell him no, but if I’m reading something fairly tame I’ll oblige. The first time I did it was to humour him, thinking he’d get bored of it in 30 seconds because there weren’t any pictures, but to my surprise he actually liked it! I was reading from a book called “How to Talk to Little Kids So They’ll Listen”, exposing some great parenting manipulations to make life with him easier, while he sat there an enraptured listener. (I haven’t finished that book btw, so it is not on the list this year. I’ve just been reading choice chapters from it as needed.) He also sat and listened me reading over 15 pages of Val Kilmer’s memoir aloud. No clue why that resonated with him so deeply. But thanks, Val! My plan is working after all.

Now, let’s get down to brass tacks! What you came here for, what you’re all dying to see, the list. I still write a tangible, touchable, lickable version of the list in my list-making journal. It took up three pages this year! (Not pictured, the third page…) Here it is, in all its Skittles toned glory:

A new habit this year though is that I’ve also started digitizing my list. I’ve done that using the GoodReads app AND with google sheets. Double your pleasure, double your fun, I always say. Now you can see a new and improved list of all the books I read showing the author, genre, date finished, and my own personal rating. It’s a simple 3-point scale from Total Crap to Excellent. With an It Okay middle tier. Data Analytics nerds rejoice!

Some noteworthy conclusions drawn from my google sheet:

  • 26/66 books were rated Excellent, a 39% excellency rating!
  • 3/66 books were rated Total Crap, only a mere 4.5% of the books I read sucked ass, which I guess means I’m doing a good job choosing entertaining books
  • All 3 of those Total Crap books were from the Horror genre
  • December was my most prolific month with 9 total books read
  • On average, I read 5 books per month
  • Horror is my most read genre, (22/66 = 33%, a full third of all my reading). No surprise there! The thrillers are all very horror-adjacent though, I’m just splitting hairs here, so we could mush those genres together and conclude that 35/66 (53%) of the books I read were scratching a serious itch for danger
  • I read 2 Pulitzer winning works of fiction and they were both Excellent, as expected. Ronan Farrow’s work on Catch and Kill contributed to a Pulitzer win for the New Yorker as well, but in a different category.
    • To note: I am on a casually meandering side quest to read all of the books that have won a Pulitzer prize for Fiction. I’m keeping a separate list for that and I’ve already read 10/76 books awarded that prize so far!
    • This is the list that I’m working from for that, if you’re curious: The Pulitzer Prizes – Fiction
  • The highest rated category is a three way tie of 100% Excellence between Pulitzer Winners, Non-Fiction, and Kid’s Lit. Every single book I read in those categories was Excellent (but, those stats are admittedly skewed given the raw data I’m working with.)
  • The most read author was Dean Koontz with 6 books
  • Many authors made multiple appearances though: Riley Sager (5), Stephen King (3), Thomas Harris (3), Richard Chizmar (3), Josh Malerman (3), Grady Hendrix (2), Kiersten White (2), Madeline Miller (2), and Robert McCammon (2) respectively
    • Which just goes to show that I am nothing if not loyal!
  • There were some other familiar favourites making singular appearances as well: C.J. Tudor, Neil Gaiman, and Joe Hill

A really fabulous stat that I get from using the GoodReads app is the total number of pages I’ve devoured across all the books read in a singular year:

24,077 Pages! That is truly incredible. I was shocked when I saw it, but also quite proud. This is the sole reason I’m using GoodReads to be honest. I don’t rate books or write reviews or engage content from other readers in any way. I just like that big juicy Pages stat.

Also of note, I had an eye exam this year and have learned that in my advancing years, I am now far-sighted. I had to get glasses for reading. There I am, getting all old and shit. Kinda looking like Dave Grohl maybe. But at least I don’t cheat on my spouse and keep a stash of secret babies squirrelled away. (Shots fired! Dave, you let us all down last year with that shit, you dirtbag! And I’m still mad at you.)

With so many pages turned, and so many lessons learned, I have to say that the absolute cream of the crop this year, the best of the best books, the ones I would recommend to any one, are these (in no specific ranked order):

  1. Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
    • A bonkers nutso tale of horror and murder revolving around artisanal apples. It made me a Chuck Wendig fan and I’m looking forward to reading more of his stuff.
  2. Brothers by Alex Van Halen
    • Is this a perfect rock ‘n’ roll memoir? No. Is it entertaining and deeply endearing? Hell yes! I loved learning more about the Van Halen brothers and how they grew up. I loved hearing crazy stories about Diamond Dave! And I loved spending time in a loyal and loving sibling relationship. Alex is right, the connection they had is one that most siblings will sadly never achieve.
  3. Circe by Madeline Miller
    • I don’t often read Historical fiction, but this book was on Paste Magazine’s list of The 40 Best Novels of the 2010’s (another side quest I’m on), and I kept seeing it highly recommended in the book forums I follow. I immediately got why it’s been lauded as a remarkable and fantastic read after the first chapter. It is so freaking good! I loved the reimagining of the witch Circe from Homer’s The Odyssey, which I had lots of experience with in my academic days. She was a complex and compelling heroine who I loved spending time with. I applauded her tenacity and I ached with her during her loneliest moments. It made me read Miller’s The Song of Achilles as well and it is also a phenomenal read. But of the two, I liked Circe best.
  4. Gone South by Robert R. McCammon
    • The summer of 2024 was my summer of the dusty old paperback page-turner, and this was the best of them all. The story was good, a wild and outlandish adventure with multiple subsets of characters overlapping and intertwining. You’ve got a fugitive on the run, bounty hunters, deformed freaks, swamp people, and a deluded Elvis impersonator/wannabe! This book had it all and moved at a breakneck pace. It was weird and funny and exciting. Boat chases! Car chases! Foot chases! Swamp chases! All the kinds of chases were present. It was fun. Way more fun than McCammon’s Boy’s Life which holds an exalted place in 80’s fiction, but I’m not really sure why. It just meanders. Gone South is a better bang for your buck.
  5. Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna
    • Incredible. This is the perfect example of everything I want a memoir to be! Kathleen Hanna is candid and raw to a degree that nobody else ever is when they write their memoir. When I read a memoir I want the person to really show me who they are behind the veneer of fame. I want to feel like I’m having a one on one conversation with someone about their life where they’re willing to share with me everything, to answer any question I might have. Kathleen gives that and oh so much more. She’s a real person, a real artist, who has struggled and made mistakes, who has persevered and figured out who she is outside of the musical scene and point in time that seemingly defines her for the purposes of a Wikipedia page. I’ve always loved her and her music, but now I somehow love her even more. Everyone should read this book.
  6. Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger
    • Arnold is similar to Kathleen Hanna in that he is very honest in telling the story of his tremendous life. And this is just such an amusing and inspiring read. This is a person who was born with buckets of determination and drive, who made everything they ever wanted to happen in life, happen. Through unrelenting force of will alone. This is a great portrait of a man who loves living and has never stopped pushing himself. It’s an ode to optimism and grit. I respect and admire him, simple as that. He’s got unique views on life and he’s a very intelligent person. He’s made some monumental mistakes, and parts of the book read like an effusive apology to Maria, but I get it. Even though he fucked up, he was trying to be accountable for his shit as he reflected on those mistakes. Unlike Val Kilmer’s slippery and seemingly revisionist retellings of all his failed romances… that dude is pathologically exempt from all his faults, so I especially respect the hell out of Arnold for owning his shit. They say never meet your heroes, but he seems like the exception to that rule, the kind of hero you would never regret meeting.

One little bit of snark before I wrap this up, and it’s directed at Thomas Harris. Red Dragon is a phenomenal book. I couldn’t put it down and it kept me guessing at every turn. It was visceral and haunting at times, and it made me feel deeply uncomfortable in the exact way I want a horror novel to make me feel. Bravo! It spurred me on to reading a few more Harris novels. I’d already read The Silence of the Lambs years ago, and not needing to re-tread old ground, I jumped ahead from Red Dragon into Hannibal next. Here’s the snark: It FUCKING SUCKS! What a total pile of shit that novel is. It took me over 2 weeks to read it because it was such a tedious slog. I burned through Read Dragon in four days and was expecting to do the same with Hannibal, but it was sooooo slow in the beginning that I just kind of stalled and dreaded picking it up. I had to force myself through it. The novel starts with Clarice and her fall from grace, which is just so stupid, but you expect Harris is setting the stage for major redemption later on so you deal with it. And then the story goes to some random ass character in Italy that we give no shits about, and a whole clusterfuck happens over there. Which makes Hannibal decide it’s safe to come back to the U.S.?? Like, no dawg. He’s an evil supervillain genius that the whole world is looking for, this makes no sense! Then the last half of the novel does start to pick up, and I’m thinking “okay, maybe he’ll salvage this and stick the landing after all.” NO. It was a total shit the pants, miss the mats completely, zeroes across the board from all judges ending! I’m still infuriated thinking about it months later as I write this. Why??? Why did you do this to your fans, Mr. Harris? WHAT.THE.FUCK my dude? It was a completely unnecessary character assassination of Clarice Starling and an overall abomination of a story. I hate it. Hopping mad over here.

For whatever reason, I gave Harris another chance later in the year when I read Cari Mora because that book had killer potential. The description on the book jacket led me to believe there’d be a semi-recreation of the Starling/Lecter dynamic, but with new characters in a new iteration. Another plucky female lead facing off with an unthinkable monster. They had a moment, those two, at the end. But they didn’t come together and square off in quite the way I expected. It was anticlimactic at best. There’s some nervy scenes, but mostly this is a heist story. A heist story told in the most vague, ambivalent way possible. The book was by no means about the falsely advertised cat-and-mouse between hunter and prey. But I guess that was the best the publishers could come up with to get people to read it? I mean, it worked on me. The problem is after you’ve read the book, you just feel like you were duped. So I won’t be reading any more Harris, I’ll tell you that. Fool me once, fuck you. Fool me twice, goddamn, fuck me! I shoulda known better.

So that’s that, everything I read in 2024. This year of reading should be good too. I’ve read 5 books so far and I’ve got a few early contenders for best of the year. I’ve got Lonesome Dove on the shelf, just waiting for the right moment to leap into my hands. I think maybe the summer will be a good time to tackle this critically acclaimed, epic western. And I’ve got some more 70’s Koontz lined up. I haven’t read as much Koontz as I have King, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say from what I’ve read so far, the 70’s might be my favourite era of his. His villains are so deranged, but in a very direct and earnest way. I dig that. We’ll see how that opinion shifts though as I dive deeper into his stuff.

I’m not going to force myself to crush a specific number of books this year, it’d be nice to meet the 50 book quota again, but I’ll see how I feel. Usually a year of crushing books gives way to a year of lightly crunching them instead; the natural ebb and flow of obsession and restraint at work. I do want to read something that challenges me this year though. I don’t know what that is, but I know it’s out there. Maybe something that will inspire focus and improvement in my own writing. Or, maybe I should finally tackle Hemingway! (I’ve read absolutely zero Hemingway, can you believe that?)

If you came this far, thanks for reading dude, I appreciate it. Drop me a line if you’ve got thoughts on my reading list or want to chat about any book, ever! I never tire of talking about books and I welcome your company, always 🙂

Books I Read: 2023

Hey pals! I’m here posting my belated reporting and reflection on the books I read in the last calendar year. I don’t have it in me to be overly fun and creative about how I share my list with you. I think this will just be a dutiful reporting, for posterity’s sake. That’s because 2023 was the worst year of my life, to date, and walking back through it sucks.

My dad died last year. He was only 66 years old. It was traumatic for my sisters and I who planned on having him in our lives a whole lot longer than we did. He was an incredible dad, and my earliest memories of loving reading all start with him. So there are quite a few raw and exposed nerves I have to be mindful of.

I want to write about what happened and my grief experience, and I think I will eventually, but I’m not ready to just yet. There’s still too much pain, and frankly bullshit, from bullshit people who have arrested my grief and made it impossible to freely express any sorrow or give an authentic retelling of what happened without feeling the sting of reprisal and further oppression.

Somehow, I was able to read 26 books this past year. That’s actually 3 more than in 2022 surprisingly, a year when I was a normal, non-profoundly sad person who could do life. Maybe I should start tracking page numbers per book too, so I can compare number of books against number of pages read? But would that just be taking data analytics too far? Should I be thinking about what doing that might mean for future generations of anal-retentive readers? Hmm, I see the quandary Pandora found herself in starring down that box.

Here’s the visual of my list and the re-listing of my visual list that’s more fit for human eyes:

  1. Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Jan. 10)
  2. A Sliver of Darkness by C.J. Tudor (Jan. 16)
  3. Based on a True Story by Norm MacDonald (Jan. 22)
  4. The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay (Jan. 30)
  5. Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Feb. 5)
  6. Vengeful by V.E. Schwab (Feb. 20)
  7. I Might Regret This by Abbi Jacobson (March 1)
  8. Brat: An 80’s Story by Andrew McCarthy (March 3)
  9. The Twin by Natasha Preston (March 12)
  10. The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (March 13)
  11. The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (March 19)
  12. It’s Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han (March 21)
  13. We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han (March 23)
  14. The Drift by C.J. Tudor (May 6)
  15. An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (May 17)
  16. Fairy Tale by Stephen King (July 15)
  17. House of Cotton by Monica Brashears (July 26)
  18. We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix (Sept. 3)
  19. Birdman by Mo Hayder (Oct. 15)
  20. My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff (Nov. 13)
  21. The Clementine Complex by Bob Mortimer (Nov. 20)
  22. For You and Only You by Caroline Kepnes (Nov. 25)
  23. Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar (Nov. 28)
  24. Home Body by Rupi Kaur (Nov. 29)
  25. Goblin by Josh Malerman (Dec. 27)
  26. Milk Fed by Melissa Broder (Dec. 29)

Lots of the usual suspects here: Stephen King, C.J. Tudor, Josh Malerman, Caroline Kepnes, and Grady Hendrix. I started the year hungry, reading voraciously. March was a stellar month for me, with 7 books read. I got sucked into a sappy and saccharine sweet teen romance trilogy by Jenny Han, of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before renown, which made me feel vicariously carefree and stupid for a short time. The main character is all “Oh, whichever cute boy will I choose? Who will I spend summer getting groped by in the ocean?” The sort of youthful escapism I really needed.

Then my dad was hospitalized in April. I spent all of April and May in turmoil, run ragged, trying to juggle work, home, my dad, and life in general. I was going to visit with him evenings after work a few days a week, and every weekend. I was working modified hours, 7:30am – 3:30pm every day so I could have time to do the hourlong drive to the hospital, grab some food, and have at least 2 hours of visiting time with him on weekday evenings. I was spending as much of the day on Saturday and Sunday as I could visiting with him as well, which meant way less time at home with Woody, who could feel the strangeness of the arrangement but couldn’t understand it. So, I wasn’t reading much of anything. Here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it. The books I read in May were distractions at best. Although I love C.J. Tudor and The Drift was a good read, I didn’t give it the attention it deserved.

And then my dad passed away on June 4th. The world collapsed and nothing made sense. Crappy, selfish asshole people made things unnecessarily difficult for my sisters and I in the grieving process. It was a black summer. It continues to be black days some of the time, but after a long contemplative summer, I did start feeling less like I was pantomiming life and more like I was beginning to actively engage it again.

Reading continued to meander all through the summer and didn’t really pick up again until late into autumn. I finished Fairy Tale by Stephen King on my dad’s birth date, July 15th.

I need to stop for a moment to talk about Fairy Tale. I was looking forward to reading it, and given the bleak phase of life I found myself in, I thought it would be the perfect escape from reality. But oh.my.god it was a real chore to pick this book up during the whole first half of it! Steve spent so much fucking time, hundreds of pages, just taking the reader through slow, grinding repetitious nothingness. Like oh my fucking god, I get it! The kid likes the dog, the kid spends time with the old man, yes, they have a special bond, GET ON WITH IT! Nobody in the editing process could relay to him how very dull and tedious the whole front half of the book is? It could have been so much better had they just tightened up the initial story. Also, I’m sorry, but Steve cannot convincingly write in the voice of a teenager anymore. This kid is supposed to be 17 years old but he curses and uses the common expressions of a 65-year old man. Eventually, the story did get good though and this book wound up being something I could throw myself into as a welcome distraction on what should have been my dad’s 67th birthday.

You know what was a really good book? Fleishman is in Trouble. That book was so engaging, right from the very first sentence through to the last. I loved it! I fucked up though because I had no idea there was such a book before I started watching the FX Series based on it. And I would always prefer to read the book before watching the thing that was made based on the book. I found that show while idly scrolling one night, then binged it hard and was obsessed with it. After that, I had to read the book immediately. I needed to compare to the source material, and sink deeper into the story. It was a deeply affecting read because it was so relatable and the characters were all so real to me. I’m at a very similar stage of life, I get the existential mid-life confusion, dread, and disillusionment that Toby, Rachel, and Libby are all having. So it reeled me in and touched a special place in my heart. I recommend this book, please read it. Then watch the show. Learn from my mistakes!

I bounced back in November, and managed to read 5 books that month. Maybe it helped that it was an especially grey and miserable fall up here in Canada, so it just felt nice to be cozied up at home with a book. Or maybe I was just making really good picks, because I loved My Salinger Year, The Clementine Complex, and Chasing the Boogeyman. Plus, I got my hands on the newest instalment in the You series by Caroline Kepnes, For You and Only You, which I gobbled up compulsively. I love that creepy stalker weirdo Joe. He is such an interesting character because he is a legit psycho, but he’s convinced himself that he’s just a sweet romantic idealist with so much love to give. I’m always excited to find out what he’s up to and who he’s tormenting.

Chasing the Boogeyman was insane. I could not put that book down, but I was also so creeped out by it. It got under my skin in the best possible way. I don’t want to spoil even a little bit of it for you, but if you’re interested in a story about a small tight-knit town being rocked by a series of heinous unexpected murders in the 80’s, then you should read this book.

Speaking of creepy things, I need to talk about Birdman for a moment. This is a novel that was written in the 90’s, and it’s the first in a series about a homicide detective who solves grisly crimes. At first I was quite enjoying it, because I do like to read about murder and psycho killers and all kinds of wicked stuff like that. I like solving a mystery as we go and trying to guess the twist. But as the story started to unfold it got more and more sick and gratuitously violent. About midway through the book I thought to myself this could be a good new series to get into, but as we got closer and closer to the fucked up ending I knew I didn’t want to come here again. And a quick google summary of the second book’s plot told me the subject matter was exponentially more dark and twisted. Going to places too gritty and vile for me. So I noped myself out after book one and I won’t be looking back.

We Sold Our Souls wins a special nod for having one incredibly intense scene that actually made me physically uncomfortable. A really spectacular moment of psychological and physical horror that overlapped and put me mentally right into the shoes of the protagonist as she was making a desperate bid for escape. I wanted her to get away so bad! But the walls were closing in, literally! And I didn’t think she’d make it. Even though we all know the hero can’t die mid-book, I actually squirmed in discomfort and got a bit panicked. The tension was just too much! I love Grady Hendrix for that exact reason, he is such a masterful builder of suspense. He is getting better and better with every publication. I’ve become a lifelong fan and devotee of his work.

And a tip of my cap to the one and only, the funniest person I wish I had the chance to know in real life, Norm MacDonald for writing the most batshit ridiculous memoir I’ve ever read. He was such a special treasure. Don’t expect to learn anything at all about Norm, don’t expect anything to make sense or be coherent or literary. Just laugh. It’s what Norm would have wanted. I miss him, and I didn’t even know him. I hope he’s resting in hilarity, I miss what he brought to the world.

Overall, I’d say it was a good year of reading, very few duds in the mix, if any at all. This year I’m working towards reading way more regularly, and I’m pursuing a bigger goal. I want to read a minimum of 50 books in 2024, and I’m very well underway attacking that goal. I’ve already read 27 books so far this year, one more than in all of 2023, so I think I’m off to a great start. I should be able to crush this goal with ease as long as there’s lots of reading material close at hand.

And while I’ve got my nose buried in a book, I feel like I’m subconsciously working through my grief and healing. This is my safe happy place right now, lovingly enveloped in the fictions and stories of the intrepid heroes, legendary iconoclasts, quirky characters, and kindred spirits who I root for and admire. I never feel alone in the embrace of good storytelling. So that’s where I’ll be.

Until next time, crack a book and keep your noses clean! And, please, for me, if you have an incredible dad or father figure in your life that you’re still lucky to have with you, tell him you love him. Just because. Life is precious and a damn good dad is a rare precious thing.

Books I Read: 2022

Hey pals. What up?

2022 is over, bringing almost 3 complete years of pandemic life to an end. I’m happy to say that my family and I have embraced a lot more “normalcy” this past year than in the years prior. We’ve started being more open socially, meaning we’re not living in hermetically sealed isolation any more. Woody Man is in daycare and actually experiencing day-to-day life and learning with other children. He’s taken to it like a duck to water! He loves going every day and he’s learning a lot. It’s been so good for him, and us. I’ve even eaten pizza at an actual pizza joint again! It was glorious, double cheese and pepperoni, freshly baked with a crisp and fluffy crust. The stuff my dreams are made of, pizza perfection.

I’m also very excited to report that I am still a functioning/working adult who is able to read a book from time to time. When there’s time. And very rarely is there time for anything other than sitting on my couch drooling mindlessly in front of the T.V. at the end of the day. But that’s okay. I have a kid, he’s two and a half, it’s exhausting. You work full-time, busting your butt every day, and then you immediately have to shift into parent mode to be present and caring for your child while navigating a billion screaming toddler tantrums about a billion seemingly nonsensical things. I’m talking about the outright bawling of wildly unregulated emotions because the blue plate is in the dishwasher right now and he has to eat dinner off of the green plate instead. It leaves you utterly exhausted in ways you can’t comprehend unless you’re in the parenting trenches too. Lots of you know exactly what I’m talking about, how it is at this stage. There’s cuteness, and fun, and laughter, and hugs, and hijinks galore. But there’s the real gritty and gruelling work of parenting day in and day out, and those tantrums have made even the best of us seriously consider going out for a pack of smokes and never coming back. All that to say that when I feel like I have remaining brain power leftover at the end of the day, sometimes I put it towards reading.

And this is what I read this past year, officially:

  1. Beastie Boys Book by Mike D & ADROCK (January 2nd)
  2. Dietland by Sarai Walker (January 13th)
  3. Billy Summers by Stephen King (February 3rd)
  4. The Hollow Ones by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan (April 26th)
  5. Horror Stories by Liz Phair (May 7th)
  6. Yearbook by Seth Rogen (May 12th)
  7. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein (June 1st)
  8. Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (July 1)
  9. The Island by Adrian McKinty (July 14th)
  10. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple (August 1st)
  11. Red At The Bone by Jacqueline Woodson (August 8th)
  12. The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (August 23rd)
  13. NSFW by Isabel Kaplan (September 1st)
  14. They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera (September 12th)
  15. A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman (September 17th)
  16. Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz (September 27th)
  17. Potty Training in 3 Days by Brandi Brucks (September 28th)
  18. Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix (October 6th)
  19. Survive The Night by Riley Sager (November 7th)
  20. The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor (November 27th)
  21. This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno (December 21st)
  22. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (December 25th)
  23. I Exaggerate: My Brushes With Fame by Kevin Nealon (December 27th)

I think it was a respectable output this year overall. I’m not trying to crush a high volume reading goal like I have in previous years, I’m just reading when I feel like it and when I’ve got something good I can’t put down.

There were some gems this year, but there were some real stinkers that led me into major slumps too. I got stuck on The Hollow Ones for a long time. I went for weeks in February and the whole month of March not reading because it just wasn’t appealing enough for me to pick up. It got off to such a weird and confusing start, the opening scene didn’t instantly grab my attention in the way that it was trying to. I hunkered down and eventually got it done in April so I could move on to something better.

I switched gears after that and started reading memoirs instead. Liz Phair, Seth Rogen, and Carrie Brownstein all had insightful and interesting stories to share. I liked leaning into reality a bit more throughout spring reading season. But I also got diverted by a different hobby. I bought a paint-by-numbers kit and got really into doing that at night while listening to a podcast. I found an addictive one called History of the 90’s, it’s excellent! I binged it so hard and I look forward to every new episode. If you love podcasts, if you love the 90’s, or even just interesting and well-researched coverage of past events, you should check it out.

I went back to fiction in the summer, reading Daisy Jones and The Six, a book that had been hyped up by a lot of people, both sellers of books and readers of books alike. I was able to finish it, but I didn’t get the hype. The characters were all dicks and it was so annoying hearing about how special and “not like the other girls” Daisy was on a repetitive loop. She was an immature and stupid pill-popper. I hated reading about her “tortured” life fronting what sounded like a pretty shitty rock band. Please, there are real problems in the world you frigging brat. And really, if what you’re after is a dramatic and fucked up rock ‘n’ roll story about a band with members who are incessantly bed-hopping with one another, abusing certain recreational substances in the extreme, and scraping through every kind of petty internal conflict you can imagine, just google Fleetwood Mac. They actually did the damn thing that this book so lamely tries to co-opt.

Obviously, Mr. Stephen King is here. I can’t go a year without reading something from him. And I read 3 books by Grady Hendrix, a new favourite. He’s a great modern horror writer, I really like him. I also read a book about potty training because I had to… You can disregard that one, unless of course you need a recommendation for potty training a toddler. This book and it’s program WORK! We committed to a full three day long weekend at home with Woody, no interruptions or surprises to the cadence of our days, just drinking liquids and running to the potty constantly. It wasn’t as bad as we anticipated and he really took to it. He went to daycare the following Monday and had a perfect day, no accidents! The daycare staff were all impressed and amazed. And it continued well throughout that week. He still has the odd slip up here and there, but we consider him fully potty trained at two and a half years old, so that’s a significant WIN for us. Again, if you need a potty training program, this is the one to do.

Looking back, I’d say these ones are my top 5 picks of the year:

  1. Beastie Boys Book by Mike D & ADROCK
    Amazing. Just incredible to hear all about the guys and their lives in early 80’s NYC and to get to live vicariously through them to some extent. What a remarkable experience this book gives the reader. They really let you into their lives in such an intimate way. This is a well-crafted and heartfelt reminiscence of spectacular youth and freedom. I loved every second of it. I started over the Christmas holidays and just couldn’t put it down. It was so good, but it left me reeling in profound sadness when it was over. I remember the day I heard that MCA passed away. I was at work on a Friday afternoon in May, and it just broke all of our hearts. My heart was broken all over again hearing about it in Mike D’s and ADROCK’s own words almost 10 years later. The special these guys filmed in accompaniment of the book was streaming on Apple+, and it’s really good too! Everyone should watch it, it’s the perfect companion piece.
  2. Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz
    Okay, so this is my first ever reading of Koontz. Can you believe that? I love reading horror, thriller, and mystery fiction so it seems like a no-brainer that I would have picked up a Koontz long before now. But I’m a die-hard King fan, and I just avoided Koontz for years because of that bias. I assumed he was the lesser version of the all-time great, the budget version of King, the Pepsi instead of Coke. And also, I have to admit, part of me avoided him because in some way it felt a bit like I’d be cheating on Steve. I’m very loyal, so that shit does not fly with me. But then it happened, unexpectedly, as it always does. I was at the library one afternoon and Koontz caught my eye. I saw this roguishly good-looking blue book with some serious heft, picked it up, and was immediately charmed by the synopsis on the jacket. So maybe it was finally time to cave and give old Koontz a chance, just this once, to see what it’s like. It’s just one book, right? What could it hurt? Cue my utter delight and surprise upon reading, because it was fantastic! Whole world view rocked, no going back. I couldn’t put it down. Non-stop excitement and thrills. Loved the premise, loved the characters, loved the villains, I loved it all! Please, give Koontz a chance.
  3. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
    Of the three Hendrix books I read this year, this one was my favourite. It’s like some campy Saturday b-movie mashup where the Desperate Housewives of South Carolina Meet Count Dracula at the Bake Sale. In the best way. Total page-turner, I was sucked into the story from the start and couldn’t tear myself away. It’s also a nice long novel, a big old hunk of book. A big book is absolute torture when it sucks, but a precious non-renewable resource you try in vain not to squander when it’s good. And this one was GOOD! There was a lot of intense psychological horror here, a few nasty and visceral creepy-crawly scenes, and some truly stomach churning gross-out gore too. It definitely takes many unexpected detours before the big climactic showdown, and there are some infuriating characters like the dipshit husband of the main character, but it’s a solid read. Hendrix is so skillful at creating stark visuals in the reader’s mind, and that’s why he’s quickly become one of my new faves. That, and the fact that his horror comes dripping in unapologetic campiness, makes him someone to keep my eyes on. I love his style and imagination. He’s got a real talent.
  4. The Island by Adrian McKinty
    Oooo this one! It was scary. McKinty is another writer I’ve started to pay attention to recently who does not hold back, and is incredible at tapping into scenarios that cause the reader deep psychological discomfort. I read The Chain by him in early 2021 and it left an indelible mark on my psyche afterwards, so I was excited to see what else this guy’s got up his sleeve. There was a moment early on in this book where I didn’t know if I could keep going, it was making me feel so upset and frightened. But once I got past that part it became more exciting and less worrisome. A nerve-wracking story that creates fear through an isolated setting with impossible odds of escape from terrifyingly cruel and psychotic captors. You’ll think twice about who you trust and the kinds of excursions you’ll be willing to do in all your future travels, I know I will.
  5. A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman
    A ghost story wrapped in a charming coming of age teenage love story. It was so atmospheric, harkening back to a time of restless summer days, when you could fill your time exploring a connection with someone equally young and naive. Malerman is one of these guys I’ve been keeping my eye on too, ever since Bird Box. He creates fear using an isolated setting, but blends it with a mysterious and paranormal element. Ghost stories are typically my least favourite kind of horror, but this one works for me because it’s more about the kids and their relationship being both propelled by and suspended in an unbelievable and impossible shared experience. It’s a quick read, but it’s a worthy one.

If any of my tastes are aligned with yours, go ahead and give some of these a try. I recommend my top 5 in good faith, because of how much I liked them. And if you do, come on back and let me know what you thought. I love sharing ideas and opinions about books, but D hates reading and Woody is still in his Hop on Pop years, so we can’t have much literary discourse together just yet. He does have voracious appetite for reading that we’ve been cultivating since birth, so I’m certain we’ll get there someday, it’ll just be a long wait yet.

I’m starting 2023’s reading with a bold and disturbing dystopian novel that I’ll report back on next year. Until then keep it real, keep it spooky, keep it funky, whatever your bag is. Just be keeping it.

Books I Read: 2021

Well this is bizarre. Looking back at my post from 2020 not a hell of a lot has changed. Practically nothing is different. We had another full year of staying at home on a locked down, minimized life. The only substantial difference is that I went back to work in June after one full year of bullshit maternity leave that was ruined by covid. But, as I mentioned last year, at least I still have books. What was it that ol’ Willy Wallace said? You can take my ability to comfortably navigate society and see the people I love without severe pandemic paranoia but you can’t take my books? Sounds right. It went something like that, I’m fairly certain.

Reading has always been my ultimate escape and I have needed it these past two years more than ever before. From January – May 2021 I was still on maternity leave so I did a lot of reading. When I went back to work in June, reading took a small hit, understandably. But overall I still managed to read a respectable 45 books this past year.

Here is the official visual of my list:

Followed of course by the official “easier on your eyes” typed list:

  1. The Deer Park by Norman Mailer (January 4th)
  2. Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier (January 7th)
  3. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart (January 8th)
  4. City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg (January 21st)
  5. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (January 29th)
  6. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (February 2nd)
  7. Afterland by Lauren Beukes (February 12th)
  8. Vicious by V.E. Schwab (February 19th)
  9. The Chain by Adrian McKinty (February 23rd)
  10. If It Bleeds by Stephen King (March 1st)
  11. Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay (March 4th)
  12. Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah (March 9th)
  13. The Other People by C.J. Tudor (March 14th)
  14. Whisper Network by Chandler Baker (March 18th)
  15. Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough (March 26th)
  16. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (April 6th)
  17. Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore (April 11th)
  18. Thinner by Stephen King (April 18th)
  19. The Only Child by Andrew Pyper (April 28th)
  20. You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes (May 2nd)
  21. When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole (May 15th)
  22. Daring Greatly by Brené Brown (May 25th)
  23. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (June 13th)
  24. The Dirt by Mötley Crüe (June 20th)
  25. Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole Forsgren, Ph.D, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim (June 27th)
  26. Inspection by Josh Malerman (July 4th)
  27. Bossypants by Tina Fey (July 7th)
  28. The Power by Naomi Alderman (July 24th)
  29. Later by Stephen King (July 26th)
  30. The Girls Are All So Nice Here by L.E. Flynn (August 5th)
  31. I Know You Know by Gilly MacMillan (August 10th)
  32. Made for Love by Alissa Nutting (August 17th)
  33. Sunburn by Laura Lippman August 21st)
  34. The Other Woman by Sandie Jones (August 23rd)
  35. The Arrangement by Robyn Harding (August 26th)
  36. The Store by Bentley Little (September 12th)
  37. Looking for Alaska by John Green (September 17th)
  38. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb (September 24th)
  39. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (September 26th)
  40. Believe Me by J.P. Delaney (October 14th)
  41. It’s Kind of a Cheesy Love Story by Lauren Morrill (October 29th)
  42. The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell (November 16th)
  43. The Switch by Elmore Leonard (November 27th)
  44. Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty (December 25th)
  45. The Storyteller by Dave Grohl (December 28th)

My reading patterns are very similar to last year, lots of “pop fiction”. You know, the psychological thrillers about murder with dubious heroines that have completely dominated the market since Gone Girl sparked the craze of unreliable narration and “shocking” plot twists. It seems like every book now is marketed as having some shocking twist you won’t see coming that you can actually see coming from a mile away. Although I will say, a few of the books I read this year did wind up genuinely surprising me, so shocking readers isn’t impossible, but it has gotten harder to do well. Behind Her Eyes and The Other Woman did have genuinely shocking plot twists at the end that I did not see coming, so worth a look for anyone who still wants to read those pop fiction shock twist kind of tales.

Stephen King made three appearances on the list again, so good for you, Steve! I really liked Later but Thinner was a total chore. It hasn’t aged well, what with the gypsy vilification and all.

I read two books specifically to get myself back into the right mindset for my return to work after a year off: Daring Greatly and Accelerate. Both excellent books, but not exactly pleasure reading. I finally got around to reading Bossypants by Tina Fey. It was good, but didn’t really live up to all the hype.

I read some classic American authors, Norman Mailer and John Steinbeck. Shoutout to Elmore Leonard too, the O.G. of tongue-in-cheek mystery capers. The Deer Park was horribly misogynistic and lacked any purpose for me. But what else would you expect from someone who stabbed their wife at a party? Re-reading Of Mice and Men highlighted for me the difference between an author and a writer. Steinbeck is a fucking AUTHOR. So much of the trashy pop murder fiction I read is just entertainment, written by writers. Steinbeck is levels and levels above everyone else on this list. He’s in a class all his own, a true craftsman and wordsmith. A prolific, respected author of incredible American fiction. He fucking rules!

I’m going to mix things up this year and award superlatives to the books that need individual callouts for good or bad reasons.

  • Heaviest Book on the List – City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg
    This book was physically enormous. Coming in at just over 900 pages, it had some heft. I strained my neck and arms reading it, it was just such a bulky book. And kind of a letdown to be honest. I was excited about spending time with characters who were part of the punk scene in 1970’s New York, but it just got so tiresome as it went on. For all the space Hallberg was given to tell his story, he didn’t do a hell of a lot with it.
  • Most Improved Protagonist – She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
    Oh Dolores Price, my heart went out to you so many times while reading! This poor woman, what an odyssey her life was. I loved it when she told her doctor to eat shit because of his fat-shaming. This was my first time reading Wally Lamb and it reminded me a lot of John Irving. The characters are just put through the wringer and you should never expect a happy, Hollywood ending for anyone. Just pain and the endurance of pain.
  • Book Most Likely to Get Under Your Skin – The Chain by Adrian McKinty & The Store by Bentley Little
    It’s a tie! The Chain was an intense, thrilling read but not for the feint of heart. It’s about this fucked up ring of blackmailers who make regular every day parents abduct children in a horrible chain letter way. Your child gets taken, you’re told to pay the ransom and then abduct another child or you won’t get yours back. Only when the parents of the child you’ve taken have gone on to abduct the next child on the chain will yours be released. As a parent, the premise alone is unthinkable. But it was unputdownable, so if you think you can hack it, give it a try! The Store was a good creepy read too, it’s a slow build to the end. It’s upsetting just because of the disgusting, stomach-churning ending that I’m not going to spoil.
  • Wildest Ride – The Dirt by Mötley Crüe
    These guys don’t hold back, they share every fucked up intimate detail of their journey as one of the hardest partying bands of the 80’s. I’m honestly amazed that they’re all still alive based on the sheer volume of drugs and booze they’ve pumped through their systems. There were so many memorable stories and outlandish antics. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll is an understatement, you’ll get more than your share of all that and then some! A must-read for anyone who loves Mötley Crüe, or just wants to spend some time living that rock star life.
  • Most Likely to be Thrown in the Trash – The Only Child by Andrew Pyper
    I’ve really had it with this guy. I heard about him for the first time a few years ago when I picked up a copy of The Damned at the used bookstore, which was an awesome read. I was so excited that I’d found a great new person to read, but every other book of his has sucked major balls. And this was the worst one yet! The most laughable moment was when the main character got on a flight to Europe and claimed to have read all of Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde while on their flight. Fuck right off, there’s no way in hell any one person could do that. Or would even want to! This is a book about an immortal vampire trying to reconnect with his child, but I lost the ability to suspend my disbelief over someone reading three old timey books back to back on a plane. Utter nonsense.
  • Darkest Reality – The Power by Naomi Alderman
    In theory I love the idea of women having a sudden and terrifying power that they can use to subjugate the male population and give them a taste of their own oppression. But there were some truly terrifying moments of societal uproar, terrorism, and war in this book that caused this beautiful utopian reality to lose its lustre real quick.
  • Class Clown – Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
    By far the funniest, silliest book I read this year. A lot of the great wry humour and quirky wit I expect from Gaiman. Never been a Pratchett reader, but safe to assume all the portions of this book that used humorous footnotes can be attributed to him. Though I’ve never read him, I do know that Pratchett liked him some footnotes! Lighthearted apocalyptic fun, if you’re into that, then give this book a try.
  • Life of the Party – The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
    The last book I read this year, and what a way to finish my list! You get a lot of great stories about Dave’s life from the early days right through to the current Foo life. I couldn’t put this one down, I blazed through it in three days. One thing I will say, just as a general observation not a criticism, is that while I found the stories Dave told to be entertaining and amusing sometimes it did feel just a little bit name-drop-y and like it didn’t give me anything deeply personal that I could empathize with. The part where Dave talks about Kurt’s passing is the closest it gets to cracking through Dave’s chill easy-going dude vibe. He never tells you anything meaningful about his relationships, how he met his wife, failed marriages, etc. And the prose does start to feel too formulaic by the end of the book. Here’s how almost every chapter goes: start with a gotcha sentence, something sudden or shocking to hook the reader and then detour by starting the story at the beginning eventually making your way back to initial setup. Every chapter was like that. It’s the book equivalent of that filmmaking technique that uses narration and the whole record scratch/pause video “Hold Up” moment. “You might be wondering how I ended up in this crazy scenario. Well let’s go back to the start and I’ll tell you.” Very that, you know what I mean?
  • Major Oddball / Misfit Energy – Made For Love by Alissa Nutting
    Did not know this was a book until after I’d already watched the show. D and I really liked the show, it was a bonkers watch. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s about a billionaire tech company founder whose newest invention is a chip that can be implanted into your partner’s brain so you can achieve a truly intimate connection based on biological and neurological data. But it’s actually much more nefarious than even that sounds. It’s really about the obsessive level of control you can have over another person and how you can use that data to keep innovating. Sound like anyone you might know? It felt very on the nose having this megalomanic tech mogul trying to push his insane ideas onto society with no regard for their actual desire for it. Considering the headlines we see nowadays about companies like Facebook and Amazon it felt entirely too believable as a premise. We particularly enjoyed Ray Romano’s role as the crass, bereaved father engaged in a new relationship with his “companion”, a sex doll named Diane. The source material though? Way more fucked up than the show ever got at its most unbelievable plot points. I’m really glad the people who adapted the show decided to drop the whole dolphin fucking sub-story. That shit was completely unreadable. I almost gave up on this book several times. I don’t recommend it unless you like to get weird. Reeeeeal weird.
  • Most Likely to Disappoint – My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
    This is a book I’d seen lots of people recommending online, mostly women. So I thought I’d check it out and see what all the hype was about. It’s just a gross, creepy, sad read. The main character never grows or learns from her experiences being groomed and raped by her english teacher who she fancies herself in love with. The whole thing is just shock value rapist apologist crap. I hated it and I don’t recommend it. It let me down the most out of everything I read this year.
  • Most Likely to Succeed – Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
    Classic. And classic for a reason. It’s a simple, tragic tale of friendship told beautifully and everyone should read it. It’s been challenged and put on banned lists for numerous reasons, but that’s just typical Whiny McWhiners trying to censor art. If you were never made to read it as required school reading, or you just pretended you did to get through English class, you should give it a genuine chance.
  • Most Enjoyable Read of the Year – Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
    A chick lit romp through time, I live for it! This is a new take on the time travel story and I was so into it. Premise: on the night of her 18th birthday, Oona faints and wakes up suddenly thrust years into the future in her 50’s in the year 2015. There’s a letter from herself to read when she gets there that explains from the age 18 onwards she’ll be living every year of her life out of order. So instead of living life in a linear timeframe like the rest of us, 1982, 1983, 1984, etc. her life becomes 1982, 2015, 1991, etc. All the while she’s still the same age spiritually. So even though she just turned 19 she’s 19 in a 51 year old body and life. I thought it was such a cool twist on time-travel stories and I loved it.

Of the 45 books I read those are the ones that stand out the most and are worthy of callouts, for good or bad reasons. Maybe you’ll want to check some out? If I can get someone to read at least one book because of this post I’ll feel just fine about that.

It’s been a slow start to the 2022 reading list. I’ve got some decent things waiting on the shelf for me to pick up, but I’ve been feeling a bit of that “reader’s block” I get sometimes. You know what I’m talking about. That feeling when the crushing amount of work it takes just to exist saps your will to do anything other than lay on the couch with Netflix and Doritos at the end of a long day? That’s the one. Because all the days are so long and exhausting. So very long and exhausting. But it’s wicked to wish the time away so I just focus on getting by instead.

I’m sure I’ll feel a bit more like reading again when the snow melts, when work stops being a total pressure cooker every day, when Woody goes to college. I’m nothing if not hopeful. Until then, take ‘er easy pals! I’ll see you next year when I recap the 2022 list, if not sooner.

Books I Read: 2020

What a year that was, huh? I did not think I’d be hunkered down under stay-at-home orders for pretty much all of 2020. I’ve struggled with accepting this fucked up “new normal” and I’ve grappled a lot of disappointments this year. Lockdown does provide the ideal conditions for doing a shit ton of reading though, so there’s that. But it also means seeing no friends and family in person ever, all socializing relegated to Zoom, and full blown germ paranoia insanity when I do tentatively venture out of my dwelling for “essentials” like Doritos and root beer.

I didn’t mind the first few months. It felt like the gently mandated reset we all needed. I was expanding by the day, my belly swelling with hormones and the aforementioned root beer, and it gave me lots of free quiet time to myself. I savoured that time, I truly did. We did as much baby preparation as we could and I spent lots of time on the couch absorbed in books. Any time feelings of anxiety and impending doom started to surface I just crammed them back down, deep inside my psyche where they couldn’t be noticed, and it was pretty nice. It was alright. It was fine. Fine fine fine.

This year’s reading list would easily be twice as long had I not produced a new human life in May. The first few months of Spring and Summer were a major adjustment. That really cut into my reading. But by the end of Summer I was back in the groove, and by Fall I was unstoppable. We figured out how to get the baby napping regularly and I found little pockets of spare time throughout the day for reading again. And when he started sleeping in his own room, I got reading before bed in my own room back!

In total I managed to read 38 books this year. I’m proud of that output, I think it’s a solid number. Not nearly as high as the number of diapers we’ve gone through, but respectable nonetheless. And it’s a solid list.

Here’s the official visual for anyone who would like to see the actual list of books I read in 2020:

And here’s the official list for those of you whose Operating Systems no longer support cursive writing:

  1. Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chobosky (January 5th)
  2. Full Throttle by Joe Hill (January 12th)
  3. The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay (January 18th)
  4. Elevation by Stephen King (January 19th)
  5. Molly’s Game by Molly Bloom (January 21st)
  6. I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid (January 26th)
  7. Gwendy’s Magic Feather by Richard Chizmar (January 29th)
  8. The Dirty Book Club by Lisi Harrison (February 7th)
  9. My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (February 23rd)
  10. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (March 6th)
  11. Swan Song by Robert McCammon (April 11th)
  12. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (June 27th)
  13. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle (July 8th)
  14. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (July 13th)
  15. Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage (July 19th)
  16. The One by John Marrs (July 27th)
  17. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King (July 30th)
  18. Duel by Richard Matheson (August 18th)
  19. Acid for the Children by Flea (August 20th)
  20. The Nice Guys by Charles Ardai (August 27th)
  21. The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (September 7th)
  22. Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth (September 10th)
  23. The Institute by Stephen King (September 27th)
  24. The Cider House Rules by John Irving (October 7th)
  25. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (October 15th)
  26. The Dark Half by Stephen King (October 22nd)
  27. Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff (October 27th)
  28. Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman (October 27th)
  29. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (October 30th)
  30. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (November 7th)
  31. Lisey’s Story by Stephen King (November 17th)
  32. The Green Mile by Stephen King (November 22nd)
  33. Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick (November 27th)
  34. The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (November 29th)
  35. You by Caroline Kepnes (December 2nd)
  36. Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes (December 6th)
  37. The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl (December 14th)
  38. The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish (December 15th)

Quite a varied list, but you can see some patterns too. I generally stick to fiction, but there were two autobiographies, by Flea and Tiffany Haddish. I’d say Flea’s was the better of the two, by far. Haddish was entertaining and I really felt for her at times, but Flea’s writing was much more literary and compelling. Although not as explicitly autobiographical as the Flea and Tiffany Haddish books, Molly’s Game and Black Klansman were highly enjoyable real-life retellings of an interesting period of their lives from Molly Bloom and Ron Stallworth. It’s not all supernatural, murderous dystopias for me, I do read real things too. Sometimes.

You know I tackled a bunch of S.K.’s stuff this year too, I always do! Lisey’s Story was absolutely abysmal. I don’t know how that even got published. It could have been a great novel, if not for all the nonsensical supernatural elements that just weren’t necessary. I bought into the story of a famous writer’s widow being terrorized by a psychotic fan, I wanted more of that and less of the ridiculous imaginary world and so so so annoying made up “inner marital language” the couple shared. I get it, all couples do develop their own shorthand over time, but the reader didn’t need to be beat over the head with it on every single page. It got to the point where I was literally rolling my eyes every single time I had to read the word “smucking”. Just use the word FUCKING loud and proud like normal people do! I guess maybe he wanted to be certain it wasn’t just Misery again but dressed up in different clothes? The Institute, The Green Mile, The Dark Half, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon were wonderful though. I loved every minute of those stories. If you’re not on a quest to read all of King’s works, then save yourself the headache and skip Lisey’s Story.

You’ll also notice I took on some heftier books this year. Imaginary Friend, Swan Song, The Goldfinch, and The Institute all fight in the heavyweight division. I started reading Swan Song at the beginning of lockdown. It’s a 1000+ page epic about a handful of plucky characters (and some despicable villains too!) figuring out how to restart life after a nuclear attack decimates America. You know, very fitting lockdown reading content.

And of course Neil Gaiman makes two appearances as well. I just admire his mind and his creativity so much! I know that if I pick up a book with his name on the cover I will not be disappointed. It’s impossible for him to let me down. I read Fortunately, The Milk and The Graveyard Book because I bought them for Woody. I know it’ll be a long time before he’s able to read chapter books, but I look forward to the days when I can introduce him to one of my all-time favourite authors and maybe read these ones to him, if he’s into it.

There was lots of great short fiction too. You know I love Joe Hill and Richard Matheson, they’re always a good time. But the book that really wowed me this year was The Best of Roald Dahl. I don’t think there’s anyone else on this whole entire planet, past or present, who can craft a short story as masterfully as him. Every single story in that book impressed me. So many delightful surprises, dark unexpected twists, and uncanny happenstances converge in these stories.

Looking back over this list, I’ll say it again, it’s solid. But out of all the great reads I had this year, these ones were the absolute best of the best (in no specific ranked order):

  1. The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
    I hope I don’t oversell this book, but if you love good, well-crafted stories and sharp, witty writing you have to read it. If you aspire to be a writer, or if you’re already a writer and you want to up your game, read this book. You cannot go wrong. We all know and love Dahl for his whimsical children’s fictions like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, etc. Even if you don’t think it’s possible to love him more than you already do, you will. Your appreciation for his talent will deepen significantly when you read his short stories.
  2. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
    I love stories that take me back to the ’90’s. I love stories that have characters facing coming-of-age dilemmas. I love stories that are rife with interpersonal drama and tension. I enjoyed getting lost in 1997 again with Pearl and Moody and Mia and Izzy. And I had just gotten Amazon Prime and wanted to do my due diligence, reading the book before watching the miniseries. I like knowing the source material first.
  3. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
    This book is a lot like The Stand by Stephen King, so if you liked that book, then you’ll probably like this one too. Disaster annihilates pretty much all of the population and the handful of remaining survivors try to navigate their new post-nuclear strike worlds. Heroes and villains emerge, good clashes with evil, all that great stuff. Now is the time to pick up a giant book and immerse yourself in an epic tale. You’ve got nowhere else to go and no one to see, take a chance on a good long story.
  4. The Institute by Stephen King
    Just a really great Stephen King story where he does what he does best. I’ve read a lot of King, a lot. Not all of it yet, but I’m getting there. I find that modern era King books have been some of his best work. 11/22/63, Under The Dome, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties, and the Bill Hodges Trilogy are all excellent, in my humble opinion. These stories are more action/adventure and exciting thrillers than they are outright horror stories. And I like that a lot about his writing lately, King gives good action. If you’re in agreement, then you’ll like The Institute too.
  5. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
    I started reading this book before my son was born, but I didn’t get that far into it, maybe 100 pages or so. I didn’t have any time or energy for reading in the very early weeks of Woody’s infancy, but I eventually circled back to it. And oh look at this, it’s a story about a boy whose mom dies when he’s thirteen and his entire life is thrown into complete chaos. Jesus Christ! I felt like an exposed nerve the whole time I was reading it. I’d just had a baby boy and the dynamic duo themselves, postpartum depression and pandemic anxiety, came out in full force, wreaking total havoc on my soul. This book was a gut punch to me, but in such an incredible way. It was serendipity that this would be the first book I finished as a new mother. Having a baby is paradigm shifting in its own right, I know that. But reading this book at this exact time in my life in these exact circumstances made me realize how incredibly important it is for me to raise a good and decent man. I had some profound moments with it. I’m so glad I read this frigging book when I did.
  6. Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
    Mixing and melding the sci-fi/horror/fantasy genres with the openly racist 1950’s America? How’s that going to work? Can it be done? Oh it can be done, alright. The cunning way all of the individual character’s stories are woven together at the end, marvellous! It’s brilliant. I devoured it, couldn’t get enough. I can’t wait to watch the show based on this book when I finally decide to spring for a streaming service with HBO content.
  7. Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman
    Did you grow up with a dad who always had a ridiculous response for everything you asked? Who liked to embellish and make up ludicrous stories about the most mundane things? Who wouldn’t ever admit that Santa Claus is make believe? Even after you and your sisters caught him red-handed hauling in gifts from the garage one night? And even now, when you’re in your 30’s and he still insists that he was just picking those gifts up from his annual Parent-Santa conference? Seriously, he still will not give up that ghost! Then this book will remind you of him, and of all the fantastical far-fetched things he told you when you were growing up. Keep that magic alive, read it to your kids, you’ll have so much fun together.

I’m so grateful that even though I’ve gone nowhere and seen nobody, this year wasn’t a complete and total waste. I have all this reading to show for my lockdown life. (And my beautiful son too, of course!) I went on a lot of incredible journeys, and I saw the world in so many wonderful iterations. I escaped lockdown every time I opened a book. I fucking love reading, man. And I’m so glad that it’s one thing this pandemic hasn’t been able to take from me.

Books I Read: 2019

The reading adventures continue!

Although, there were fewer adventures this year. I did not cover nearly as much ground as I did in 2018. This past year I read a modest 24 books in total. I had every intention of keeping up the pace of the year prior, but I think I may have been feeling a bit burnt out. I intended to focus my 2019 on reading all of Paste Magazine’s 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time. I’d already read a few of the books from this list in the past, basically all of the Stephen King and Joe Hill stuff, and I read another 15 from this list at the end of 2018 as well. I think going into 2019 I had about 25 books on this list still to tackle. And some of them I just felt like I probably wouldn’t read because they were harder to find through the library and online. Some of them just by cursory review of the subject matter alone I felt might be better left unread, you know, for personal preference and psychological preservation.

I sort of meandered this year, and only wound up reading 7 of the books from the horror list. When I found out I was pregnant the first time, back in the spring, I obviously lost steam because I started reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting and spent more of my time researching all kinds of pregnancy shit. So, to be fair, that was a pretty reasonable disconnect from the goal. Then there was a whole flurry of activity around selling our place and moving, so I simply did not have the time to dedicate to reading. There was a brief lull in the summer between the condo sale and the move in June and July when I got to indulge a bit more. At that point I didn’t want to be bound by a required list and instead preferred to read whatever caught my eye at the library.

Anyways, here it is. Here’s the list of all 24 books I read in 2019:

  1. Vox — Christina Dalcher (January 6th)
  2. Ring — Koji Suzuki (January 13th)
  3. Night Things — Michael Talbot (February 13th)
  4. A Head Full of Ghosts — Paul Tremblay (February 19th)
  5. At the Mountains of Madness — H.P. Lovecraft (February 24th)
  6. Educated — Tara Westover (February 27th)
  7. Sleeping Beauties — Stephen King & Owen King (March 17th)
  8. An Object of Beauty — Steve Martin (March 24th)
  9. Food: A Love Story — Jim Gaffigan (March 26th)
  10. Dad is Fat — Jim Gaffigan (March 30th)
  11. Revival — Stephen King (April 8th)
  12. Supermarket — Bobby Hall (June 7th)
  13. Disappearance at Devil’s Rock — Paul Tremblay (June 14th)
  14. The Sisters Brothers — Patrick deWitt (June 20th)
  15. Let the Right One In — John Ajvide Lindqvist
  16. Final Girls — Riley Sager (July 5th)
  17. Alice Isn’t Dead — Joseph Fink (July 9th)
  18. Tell the Machine Goodnight — Katie Williams (July 24th)
  19. The Hiding Place — C.J. Tudor (July 31st)
  20. Rabbit Cake — Annie Hartnett (August 5th)
  21. Where the Crawdads Sing — Delia Owens (August 28th)
  22. The Outsider — Stephen King (September 10th)
  23. Little Star — John Ajvide Lindqvist (September 26th)
  24. The Exorcist — William Peter Blatty (October 4th)

I’m still very much obsessed with fiction, reading anything with the slightest hint of action, adventure, and intrigue. I’ve never been one for non-fiction. I get enough real life in my real life. When I read I want to be transported somewhere I’ve never been, live vicariously through someone else’s exploits. I want things to be outrageous and zany, intense and thrilling! I need strong, complex characters overcoming challenges and triumphing over evil. I think I got a fair amount of that this year. But I did have a few uncharacteristic real life detours, with the Tara Westover memoir and the two Jim Gaffigan books.

I enjoyed everything I read this year too, there weren’t any major disappointments. The Bobby Hall novel Supermarket was bizarre, but I liked it. The Steve Martin book, An Object of Beauty was alright. I don’t think I’d recommend it, but I didn’t hate it. If you’re wondering, yes it was written by that Steve Martin, the one we all know and love from SNL, Father of the Bride, and other comedy favourites. Vox was fantastic, it was hard to put down. Night Things was a read from the horror list that I actually liked way more than I thought I would. It had horribly cheesy cover art that wasn’t encouraging, but it wound up being a fun read. Reminded me of those quirky books I was always drawn to in the 6th grade like “My Teacher’s an Alien!” because they featured such outlandish cover art.

Stephen King naturally makes a few appearances as well. It wouldn’t be a reading list without him. The Outsider was awesome, I liked it a lot. Looking forward to watching the series when it starts airing. I think Jason Bateman is a great casting choice for this story.

My reading came to another long pause towards the end of the year. I started reading a book called Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky which started strong and then just couldn’t hold my interest. I finally picked it up again with the intention of seriously finishing it at the end of December, but that one has slipped on through to the 2020 list.

Of this list, here are my Top 5 Picks for Best Reads of the Year:

    1. Rabbit Cake — Annie Hartnett
      This book caught my eye because it was bright yellow and had an illustration of a cute rabbit on the cover. I immediately sensed that it was going to be unique and quirky. It did not disappoint. The main character is a little girl named Elvis who is very matter-of-fact and scientific in her approach to processing all of the grief and fallout in her family after her mother dies. It showed how people grieve differently, but through a hilarious lens. I needed this book. It was exactly what I needed to read after my miscarriage. Every word went right into my soul and I was so grateful it called out to me from that dusty library shelf. You can judge a book by the cover!
    2. Educated — Tara Westover
      I mentioned I don’t often read non-fiction, right? This book was actually gifted to me by a co-worker in a Secret Santa exchange. It’s not something I would have chosen for myself, but I am so glad I read it. It blew me away! This is a truly amazing story of a real life person who overcame insurmountable odds to get a formal education, something most people take for granted. School is just something we’re all accustomed to as a part of life from a very young age and I don’t know if many of us would have the same wherewithal to pursue an education if it wasn’t something we were forced to do. Tara Westover is an impressive and inspiring person and I’m so thankful she shared her story with the world.
    3. The Sisters Brothers — Patrick deWitt
      All the laughs! I loved this book so much because it was witty and wry. Much like Inherent Vice, there were multiple times I laughed out loud while reading. A good old fashioned cowboy romp with humour. Great characters, great story. The brothers were so real to me, I felt like I was on the trek with them. I could practically smell the cracked leather, dusty trails, and stinky boots as I read. Maybe that was just me though, who knows? I loved this book from the very first sentence through to the last.
    4. Tell The Machine Goodnight — Katie Williams
      Imagine someone ran a simple diagnostic test on you that resulted in clear directives you could follow to be happy. They could be easy enough to do, like go to yoga. Or they could be utterly absurd, like cut off your pinky finger. Would you do it? What wouldn’t you do to be happy? The premise was really intriguing and I enjoyed reading this story. It did feel like it could have unfolded in a more satisfying way, but overall the characters kept me interested.
    5. Alice Isn’t Dead — Joseph Fink
      Right from the start this book wasn’t fucking around. You’re thrust into a bizarre scenario in the first chapter and it just keeps getting weirder and wilder as you read. You feel compelled to uncover the conspiracy alongside Keisha. This book is actually the novelization of a podcast. I think that’s what made it so interesting. You’re reading a book, yes, but it reads differently. There are moments of fast-paced action, but also long stretches of inner turmoil while Keisha is on the road that make you feel like you’re on the same endless road trip. I still don’t even know if I fully understand how everything connected in the end, but it was an entertaining ride no doubt.

Even though my output wasn’t as prolific as last year, I’m amazed I managed this many reads at all, given what an absolutely insane year it’s been. As appealing as it can be to escape reality, sometimes you just have to face it head on instead. I might seek out adventures and epic struggles in my reading, but I realize that my life isn’t entirely devoid of its own adventures and epic struggles. It might not be to quite the same extent, but there are challenges to rise to, little evils to overcome, zany pals to provide amusement and support along the way. I have all the makings of a great story right here in front of me. Wherever my story may take me, I’m ready for it. Armed first and foremost with a good book to help me get by.

Books I Read: 2018

I decided to continue this habit I started in 2017 of keeping a record of all the books I read throughout the year. And for 2018 I decided to up the ante, considerably. I saw this article promoted on LinkedIn about how most CEOs read 50 books a year that piqued my interest. Did you know that Bill Gates reads anywhere from 50-60 books a year? Damn, son! That’s some impressive numbers. Afterwards I thought to myself that I’m a bad boss bitch myself, there’s no reason I can’t go toe-to-toe with ol’ Gatesy on this. I love to read! And I’ve heard that the more you read the better you write. (That’s some wisdom from Stephen King, who also reportedly reads anywhere from 50-70 books a year!)

The math on this checks out. There are 52 weeks in a year, so 50 books is an attainable goal. Those extra 2 weeks would give me the same supportive comfort I’ve come to expect from the finest pair Costco stretch pants money can buy. I decided that 2018 would be the year I read a minimum of 50 books.

And you know what? I fucking did it! I did it so hard. I read a whopping 63 books in 2018. And I loved every minute of it. In 2017 I only read 18 books, which I feel is a totally respectable number as well. I was questing for the Dark Tower during the last half of the year and truly savouring those stories.

But knowing that I was able to triple my reading made me feel good too. I read so many books I needed 3 pages in my notebook to list them! I also have this darling 12-pack of multi-coloured fine point pens that I used to spruce up my list. Because, yay pretty! I also started recording the date that I finished the book, which I hadn’t done the year prior. It allowed me to better track my trajectory.

Check it out dudes, here’s my reading list!

Here’s the complete and comprehensive list of all the books I read in 2018 so you don’t have to squint read it from the photos:

  1. The Fireman — Joe Hill (January 6th)
  2. Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury (January 10th)
  3. The Bat — Jo Nesbo (January 17th)
  4. Heart-Shaped Box — Joe Hill (January 23rd)
  5. Oryx and Crake — Margaret Atwood (January 30th)
  6. The Year of the Flood — Margaret Atwood (February 12th)
  7. MaddAddam — Margaret Atwood (February 17th)
  8. Love is a Mixed Tape — Rob Sheffield (February 18th)
  9. The Chalk Man — C.J. Tudor (February 19th)
  10. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — Ken Kesey (February 26th)
  11. Lord of the Flies — William Golding (March 2nd)
  12. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children — Ransom Riggs (March 13th)
  13. The Damned — Andrew Pyper (March 16th)
  14. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K. Dick (March 29th)
  15. The Rosie Project — Graeme Simsion (April 4th)
  16. The Killing Circle — Andrew Pyper (April 10th)
  17. Marathon Man — William Goldman (April 15th)
  18. Sharp Objects — Gillian Flynn (April 22nd)
  19. The Westing Game — Ellen Raskin (April 24th)
  20. The Executioner’s Song — Norman Mailer (May 13th)
  21. The Couple Next Door — Shari Lapena (May 14th)
  22. In a Dark, Dark Wood — Ruth Ware (May 19th)
  23. Luckiest Girl Alive — Jessica Knoll (May 27th)
  24. The Road — Cormac McCarthy (May 30th)
  25. Lost Girls — Andrew Pyper (June 10th)
  26. The Woman in Cabin 10 — Ruth Ware (June 17th)
  27. Neuromancer — William Gibson (June 30th)
  28. The Silent Wife — A.S.A. Harrison (July 2nd)
  29. Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut (July 3rd)
  30. Misery — Stephen King (July 6th)
  31. The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath (July 9th)
  32. The Heart Goes Last — Margaret Atwood (July 18th)
  33. The Demonologist — Andrew Pyper (July 25th)
  34. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald (July 28th)
  35. The Girl Before — J.P. Delaney (July 29th)
  36. Roadwork — Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman (August 3rd)
  37. The Running Man — Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman (August 9th)
  38. Truly Madly Guiltily — Liane Moriarty (August 19th)
  39. Anasi Boys — Neil Gaiman (August 26th)
  40. Dying Scream — Mary Burton (August 31st)
  41. Inherent Vice — Thomas Pynchon (September 6th)
  42. On Writing — Stephen King (September 9th)
  43. We Were the Mulvaneys — Joyce Carol Oates (September 17th)
  44. A Stir of Echoes — Richard Matheson (September 19th)
  45. Gerald’s Game — Stephen King (September 25th)
  46. My Best Friend’s Exorcism — Grady Hendrix (September 30th)
  47. Duma Key — Stephen King (October 12th)
  48. Coraline — Neil Gaiman (October 13th)
  49. The Other — Thomas Tryon (October 22nd)
  50. Gwendy’s Button Box — Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (October 22nd)
  51. The Shining Girls — Lauren Beukes (October 30th)
  52. Broken Monsters — Lauren Beukes (November 5th)
  53. Strange Weather — Joe Hill (November 10th)
  54. Something Wicked this Way Comes — Ray Bradbury (November 12th)
  55. The Girl Next Door — Jack Ketchum (November 14th)
  56. Bird Box — Josh Malerman (November 18th)
  57. Rosemary’s Baby — Ira Levin (November 21st)
  58. The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson (December 10th)
  59. Hell House — Richard Matheson (December 14th)
  60. Audition — Ryu Murakami (December 16th)
  61. The Devil in Silver — Victor LaValle (December 24th)
  62. The Woman in Black — Susan Hill (December 27th)
  63. The Summer is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved — Joey Comeau (December 29th)

So first off, I’m obviously not reading a bunch of business or tech books like Bill Gates probably is. My tastes are apparently quite murderous. Funny story actually, I was walking to the library in the fall and I had Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls in my hand. While I was waiting at the cross walk the woman next to me noticed my book and asked what it was about. I told her it was about a serial killer who stalks women through time and the one woman who survived his attack trying to hunt him down. She looked horrified and said to me “You must not read these kinds of things! The mind is so sensitive and these terrible things make such an impression on it. You don’t want to take all that nastiness with you into the next life.” I was genuinely taken aback by that response. It was so unexpected and unnerving. At that point in the year I’d already read my fair share of gory murders and heinous crimes to be solved by plucky heroines that I was starting to think this was the beginning of my very own real-life story! An ominous warning from a stranger is a classic horror trope and the people who buck those warnings are always in for trouble. I brushed it off though and continued on, next reading Lauren Beukes’s Broken Monsters which was even more fucked up than The Shining Girls. But I loved both books. Both are well-written and riveting, I would recommend them to anyone who doesn’t mind having terrible things imprinted on their brain.

There are a few books here that I’d read before but wanted to reread like Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, and Lord of the Flies. All three are excellent reads that I would also recommend. Looking back I see that I had quite a few little binges throughout the year where I just gobbled books up. There was a long weekend in February that was horribly cold and snowy so I literally read all weekend long, finishing up three books in three days. It was so lovely, and so needed. There’s nothing I needed more this year than solitude and books. It was good for my soul.

It’s amazing how much time there really is for reading if you make the effort. I was reading in bed late at night, on the subway when commuting, in waiting rooms at appointments, on my lunch break even. In the summertime I was reading in the park and it was absolutely delightful. I hit my goal of 50 books on October 22nd at 11:47pm EST when I finished Gwendy’s Button Box. October 22nd is special because I finished two books that day. I finished Thomas Tryon’s The Other on my Monday commute, then started Gwendy’s Button Box around 9pm as my nighttime read before bed. It was a quick read, and totally engrossing so those 171 pages were easily devoured.

Of everything I read this year there was only one real dud. It was Dying Scream by Mary Burton. What a shitty fucking book that was. I bought it off the 2 for $15 paperback rack at Indigo because I assumed it was another basic serial killer, crime solving caper. Buyer beware, amiright? I didn’t notice the “Romantic Suspense” label on the spine when I bought it. D’oh! It was also apparently the second book in a trilogy, and not having read the first book made it that much worse. But I powered through nonetheless and checked the rest of my book spines thoroughly to mitigate risk of another stinker like that one.

I would also say that The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum is a psychologically traumatic read, so please don’t read it. As someone who regularly faces down spooky, gory, and macabre stories without issue, this one genuinely unsettled me. It’s in a class all its own of awfulness. Any time I tried to convince myself that the situation couldn’t get any worse, it always did and went to levels of depravity that I couldn’t even fathom. It hurt my heart reading this book, truly.

Overall though, this is a list of awesome reads and I’m proud of myself. If I had to pare this list down to the Top 5 Best of the Best, it would be:

  1. Marathon Man — William Goldman
    Such an exciting read! I loved every minute of it. This is pure entertainment.
  2. On Writing — Stephen King
    The only non-fiction I read this year and frankly, long overdue. You know how much I respect and admire Mr. King, so learning about his approach was endlessly fascinating. Truly, this is a must read for anyone who writes. Any genre, any kind of writing, you have to read this book.
  3. The Fireman — Joe Hill
    First book of the year and it set the bar. A post-apocalyptic type of story with well-rounded characters that you care about and hope survive.
  4. Inherent Vice — Thomas Pynchon
    So many laughs! This is the wittiest writing I’ve ever encountered and I actually laughed out loud while reading, numerous times. Pychon is devious and masterful. Nobody writes like this, he’s divine.
  5. The Shining Girls — Lauren Beukes
    This one is a slam-dunk. It’s got a fresh, interesting concept, a perfectly vile villain, and is so fast-paced you can hardly stand to put it down. It’s fantastic.

Boss bitch status achieved! 2018 was one for the books alright, heh heh, pun intended. I proved that I could continue to live my normal life as a career obsessed woman who wants it all while reading just as much as the average CEO reportedly does. For 2019 I’m already underway tackling Paste Magazine’s 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time and I can’t wait to tell you all about it next year.

I leave you with this final thought: READ.

Reading is good for you. Do it. Make time for yourself, for stories, and for adventures or learning. Whatever it is you like to read, make time for it and do it.

Books I Read: Inaugural Year 2017

Sometime in April 2017 I decided to start keeping a list of all the books I’ve read since the start of 2017. I can’t remember why, but I did. It was easy enough to remember everything I’d read as of January because I’ve long run out of upright storage space on my bookcase and started keeping two distinct piles stacked on the shelves: books I’ve just read and books in line to be read. I got the list up to speed based on the books I’ve just read pile and then from there, whenever I finished a book, I wrote an entry for it in the list aptly titled Books I’ve Read This Year. 

Riveting stuff, surely.

And now I present to you, my readers, said list:

  1. What Alice Forgot—Liane Moriarty
  2. End of Watch—Stephen King
  3. All the Missing Girls—Megan Miranda
  4. Ready Player One—Ernest Cline
  5. Never Knowing—Chevy Stephens
  6. God-Shaped Hole—Tiffanie DeBartolo
  7. N0S4A2—Joe Hill
  8. The Good Girl—Mary Kubica
  9. The Perfect Stranger—Megan Miranda
  10. Horns—Joe Hill
  11. The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger—Stephen King
  12. The Dark Tower 2: The Drawing of the Three—Stephen King
  13. The Dark Tower 3: The Waste Lands—Stephen King
  14. The Dark Tower 4: Wizard and Glass—Stephen King
  15. The Dark Tower 4.5: The Wind Through the Keyhole—Stephen King
  16. The Dark Tower 5: Wolves of the Calla—Stephen King
  17. The Dark Tower 6: Song of Susannah—Stephen King
  18. The Dark Tower 7: The Dark Tower—Stephen King

I was hoping to get the list to 19 before the year was out, it’s a Dark Tower thing, but alas, my quest for the Tower took me right through to December 30th and I didn’t feel up to starting a new book so soon after that epic and heart-wrenching journey was done just for the sake of 19.

So 18 it is, not too shabby. That’s exactly 1.5 books per month. For someone who worked a very demanding job and has a lot of other varied hobbies, I’m glad I managed to find time for some good stories.

The year started out relatively light, with some Liane Moriarty. I like her. You might know her best as the author behind Big Little Lies, the book that the Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman HBO mini-series was adapted from. What Alice Forgot gave us a woman experiencing a Dickensian epiphany of sorts. She loses sight of what matters in life and a bonk on the head resulting in amnesia helps her revert to a decades younger version of herself, reliving the past decade secondhand, learning how she stumbled and gradually grew into an abhorrent version of herself. Then of course lessons are learned and Alice gains perspective. At least Ebenezer Scrooge only lost one night of sleep. Poor Alice lost a whole decade!

End of Watch was awesome, the final instalment in Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy. I liked the second story of that series best, Finders Keepers, but this one gave us a fitting end to the trilogy.

I got sucked into the Megan Miranda books by the Indigo hot-sellers displays and they were okay. Quick, entertaining summer reads. All the Missing Girls is the better of the two, with The Perfect Stranger feeling like a repetitive, watered-down contractual obligation by comparison.

Ready Player One seriously kicked ass! Man, that book was so cool and endlessly entertaining. From the very first page right through to the last I was hooked. Classic nerd sci-fi/80’s nostalgia mashup fun galore! I was excited to hear that it would be a movie in 2018, but then I saw the trailer and well… BOOOO! Just based on the trailer alone, there’s no way that movie is going to capture any of the awesomeness of the book. Read the book, get wrapped up in it, enjoy it. Afterwards, let’s all agree to pretend that a movie version doesn’t even exist.

Never Knowing is officially the worst fucking piece of garbage I’ve ever read. It is the current leader in the “How the fuck did this even get published???” championship bowl. For real. Whoever wrote the summary on the book jacket deserves a prize for being able to polish that humongous turd just enough to make someone like me, who has an exceptionally honed eye for bullshit, purchase it. I want my $6 back Indigo value bin. The concept was intriguing, it could have been good. A woman who was adopted goes looking for her biological parents and finds out that her mother was the only survivor of a violent serial killing rapist, who is still at large. Sounds like it could be really good, right? Unfortunately, all of that potential was spun into shit, not gold, by the most hackneyed excuse for a writer since E.L. James. Does this woman even understand how people actually talk to each other in long-term relationships? Here’s some free insight for you, Chevy Stevens: men and women in their fucking 30’s in a committed long-term relationship don’t call each other “baby” every single fucking sentence they speak to each other. Unless they’ve been lobotomized. And if you interact this way with your partner, you need to stop. Like, right now, because I guarantee you are annoying the absolute fuck out of everyone in your lives.

God-Shaped Hole was an emotionally draining read, but in the best possible way. I got deeply invested in Beatrice and Jacob’s relationship and loved that Tiffanie DeBartolo provided a recommended playlist for this book. My love for Jeff Buckley was reignited and I spent most of May and June listening to his album Grace on loop as a result of reading this book.

The Good Girl was another inconsequential thriller with a hyped up “you-can’t-see-it-coming-plot-twist” that was easily predicted within the first quarter of the book. Meh.

This year I discovered how fucking awesome Joe Hill is, and so much like his dad, Stephen King. Even if I had no idea who he was, his writing would immediately feel eerily familiar to me, having read as much King as I have. N0S4A2 is dark, creepy, thrilling, and exciting. Charlie Manx is as vile a villain as there ever was and the imaginative plot is immediately enthralling. Loved it, would highly recommend to anyone who wants a good spooky, action-packed adventure. Horns was stellar too, I read it the week we were in the Dominican, and while it might not be the general population’s idea of a “vacation read” I couldn’t put it down. I relished every minute spent with Ig while his newly sprouted horns compelled everyone around him to express and enact their innermost fucked up thoughts and desires on his path to uncover his beloved Merrin’s true killer. Read Joe Hill, he rules!

Then, towards the end of July, I felt compelled to finally start my quest for The Dark Tower. I bought the first four books a long time ago and they sat on my shelf, idling. I don’t think my heart or my mindset were in the right place to start an epic journey until the second half of 2017. The movie was coming out in August and I stupidly assumed it would be an adaptation of the first book, that it was going to be a Harry Potter kind of deal, 7 books = 7 movies, give or take. So I finished The Gunslinger, and I was halfway through book two, The Drawing of the Three, when D and I went to see the movie. Imagine my complete disappointment when I left the theatre after a 90-minute oversimplified, boiled down glimpse of the entire series.

That fucking sucked. As a standalone movie for D, who was never going to read the books and just wanted to watch it with me, it was fine. There were cool scenes, and good action. But there was no heart. There was no time to even get a sense of who Roland Deschain is, one of the greatest tragic anti-heroes I’ve ever come to know and love. That sucks, man. Most sacrilegious of all there was no ka-tet! No Eddie Dean, no Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker/Susannah Dean, and no Oy! We didn’t get to gear up for an epic quest at all. Shows over folks, make sure you put your garbage in the bins on your way out.

I carried on with my quest to read the rest of the series by the end of 2017 and I succeeded. I loved and cherished every single second of it. I know it gets a lot of flack from fans who read the series in painstaking real-time, waiting years between books for another instalment, but I especially loved book 4 Wizard and Glass. That was my favourite book of the series. People who complain about how it didn’t advance the quest because it was all Roland’s backstory disappoint me. Roland is our dinh and we get to experience a deeply insightful, formative period of his early life firsthand. We get to know his first ka mates, Alain Johns and Cuthbert Allgood personally! We get to experience his first love with Susan Delgado, and his first heartbreak. We get to learn more about how Roland strategizes, how he plans, how he outsmarts his opponents. What an absolute privilege to have a writer give you that rich backstory. If you’re not going to enjoy the journey, why are you even questing in the first place? That’s the reason guys like Stephen King take on these epic storytelling endeavours, because they have rapt readers who want to get immersed in the story right alongside them. We don’t care how long it takes, hell they can make it last even longer if they want and we’ll gladly savour every delicious morsel of tale they can provide. If you’re just reading something to know how it ends, I don’t think you understand the point of reading to begin with.

So there you have it, the list of books I read in 2017. I didn’t really start the year with a plan or a direction, I just read what appealed to me and added it to the list when I was done.

I’m going to start a list for 2018 as well and see how it goes. I think this year I’ll add a note for the date I finished each book, just to see how that looks. I love reading and doing this allows me to look back on a year of reading and appreciate all the adventures I had.

Just Like Phoebe Caulfield Would

I love my desk. I just love it so much for what it is and how it makes me feel. I’ve been madly in love with it ever since I saved it from impending landfill doom six years ago…

Just another muggy summer afternoon. The air was thick with humidity and I could feel beads of sweat rolling down my back as I walked home from the bus stop. I was living at home with my parents again for the summer, working the same crummy minimum wage job at the salon. Finishing a rare morning shift–usually I had to work nights and close the joint up–I was looking forward to an evening unburdened by that responsibility. As I walked home, pondering possible ways to spend my free time that night, I noticed a big brown rectangle up ahead. Something past it’s prime that had been put out to curb, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I suspected an old dining room table, but couldn’t be sure. I kept walking toward my house, I’d be able to see it more clearly once I got close. Sure enough, it turned out to be a desk. Just sitting on the curb in front of a house up the street from ours.

I needed a desk for my room, so maybe I could have this one. I tossed my backpack on our front lawn and wandered up the street to check it out. I wasn’t getting my hopes up, furniture that’s been sent to the curb is usually busted, disgusting, or horribly outdated. But once in a while you can rummage something good up at the curb, and it was in my broke student nature at the time to salvage things instead of buy them if I could. So, maybe it would be worth a look.

My jaw-dropped and my heart fluttered in breathless unity when I finally got a good look at it. It was absolutely perfect in every way. Not perfect in the pristine sense; I saw its perfection in both its remarkable size and in my immediate attraction to it. It had a couple of minor dings, but that was fine by me. Those little scratches and bumps only lent it more appeal. My eyes gorged themselves on the enormous fake wood panelled monstrosity before me. It was everything I’d always dreamed of in a desk. Ever since the first time I read The Catcher in the Rye I dreamed of having a ludicrously big desk, just like Phoebe Caulfield did. So I could spread out.

I must have stood there marvelling at it for a full five minutes before my brain kicked into overdrive. A million fragments of thought, all revolving around the desk, raced around inside my head: OMG! Desk. Need desk. Good desk. Want desk. Have to get desk. Fuckin’ great desk, man. DESK!

I hurried home, running down the street like a maniac. I burst through the front door, frantically looking for someone to help with the heavy lifting. I knew I’d never be able to cart a desk this big home all by myself, no matter how determined I was. I needed more muscle. My step-dad was at work and my mom was out shopping with my youngest siblings in tow. The only person home was my sister Erika. At four-foot-eleven and weighing in at 90 pounds soaking wet, she just wasn’t enough muscle for the job. I grabbed the phone and called our friend Phil who lived close by, hoping desperately that he was home. Phil is big and strong, the right kind of fellow for this sort of job. As luck would have it, he was home. I begged him to rush over and help immediately. And being the good friend that he is, he did. With a handy helper solidified, I wasted no time getting back across the street to guard my new treasure. Because, you know, clearly I have impeccable taste when it comes to curb-side cast-offs and an item of such unique beauty is bound ensnare the hearts of a thousand greedy rivals. It was a situation requiring extreme action, get or get got.

I sat on the desk, guarding it jealously and waiting for Phil, he would be along soon. And then all of my wildest desk-related dreams could come true.

It was gruelling work, but together we managed to manoeuvre the desk across the street, up the driveway and into my room. It was heavy and awkward, like trying to carry a piece of Stonehenge home. A desk from the days of yore, when backbreaking weight guaranteed the buyer quality and longevity. No lightweight modern bullshit here. This desk is a wood panelled boulder capable of withstanding a nuclear blast and requiring no less than three people to move it. Well, maybe two exceptionally strapping people could manage. Like Hulk Hogan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But then you’d have to buy them pizza for helping with the move, and they can eat a lot of pizza. But you don’t like to share… Ah well, it was never meant to be.

So, we had to make do moving the desk without the help of Ah-nuld and Hulk, and I had to shelve that daydream to focus on the task at hand. It was challenging, but worth every bit of strain. A thunderous thud onto the carpet announced the desk’s arrival in our home. And in that instant, my dream of owning an invasively large desk became a reality.

My mom hated my new desk almost immediately upon first sight. My step-dad did too. I don’t know why they hated it. The only semblance of a reason for their hatred that I can remember is an arbitrary claim that it was “too big” for my room. Which it wasn’t, at all, so their claim made no sense. I got relocated to the old master bedroom after they completed renovations on our house, and it was plenty spacious. I think they just hated it for the sake of hating. Their hatred was accompanied by threats to get rid of it when I went back to school, much to my chagrin. Empty threats, but nonetheless, worthy of inciting hysterics. Every threat to turn my precious desk into refuse was met with one of the following desperate pleas on its behalf:

  1. “You know how much I love this desk, so if you throw it out then you do so knowing that I will NEVER speak to you again!”
  2. “I’m going to pen an epic tome from this desk one day, so if you throw it out you’re basically throwing out my future.”
  3. “The only thing worth living for is that desk, don’t take it from me or you’ll be sorry”

Option number one, usually shouted instead of spoken, was used when I was feeling agitated or annoyed. Option two was a nugget of pure guilting gold. And option number three relied on the perfect amount of pitiable menace to convey my distress. Which isn’t always easy to muster in the heat of the moment, so I resorted to it less frequently than the others.

As it turns out, my parents aren’t total monsters and they didn’t do away with my beloved desk. It stayed exactly as it was, year after year, until I finally moved out on my own for good. And you can be damn sure I moved that desk right along with me. We’ll never part abodes again. Wherever it is that I decide to hang my hat for the remainder of my meager life, the Phoebe Caulfield desk will be there too. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I love it so much. It’s my sanctuary. I clock some solid hours at this desk every week. Writing, brainstorming, watching Netflix, colouring, making mixed CDs, having FaceTime chats with my BFF on the other side of the world. I do everything at this desk. Nay, I do everything with this desk. We’re a team, we’re destined for greatness, and we’re in it for the long haul.

The Phoebe Caulfield desk has allowed me to spread out farther than I ever could have imagined possible. There’s something about this big clunky lug that has become a part of me. Sometimes you’ll put on a coat or a shirt or a fucking toupee, whatever, and the people you know will be all like “Oh blah blah, that whatever that you’re wearing is just so you!” Well that’s how it is for me and my desk. We go together.

my desk

Man, that Caulfield chick sure knew what she was talking about.

New Project!

Hey dudes, I’m very excited to announce that I have started a new project. This is something that I’ve been working on for a little while now, and I’m ready to launch.

The Kingdom

So head on over to The Kingdom to check it out.

Basically, I’m just working my way through the entire Stephen King library, reading and reviewing it all. And hey, maybe we’ll even watch a couple of the movies and T.V. shows too. My hope is that this project will accomplish two things:

1) I’ll have a shitload of fun

and

2) I’ll actually start using my brain cells again instead of drowning them in booze

So if you decide to come along for the journey, you’re super awesome and I dig your style, man.