What Matter? Words, Times Three
Dec. 29th, 2009 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustOkay. 2009 Best Ofs, take two: Books. As always, I read a hell of a lot of crap, even while writing my brains out—maybe I should try to do less of that, this time ‘round. Heh, yeah; like that’s likely.;)
Anyhow. The cream, as follows—
The Bone Woman, by Clea Koff—A nonfiction account of Koff’s work excavating human remains in Bosnia and Rwanda. Absolutely unexploitative and matter-of-fact, it still produces a curt poetry: Grotesque, fascinating, awful in a classic sense.
The Cutting Room, by Louise Welsh—Ostensibly a mystery, though little is revealed, let alone solved. Our estate-sale auctioneer protagonist, a hard-drinking gay man of a certain age, drifts through Glasgow aimlessly hooking up and fucking up, while ineffectively trying to figure out if the shitload of pornography his latest client left behind contains “real” snuff photos. This is slacker noir, and not even small-“r” romantic.
The Lovers, by John Connolly—One more installment in the continuing saga of how Charlie Parker destroys everything he touches, this time with surprise Grigorim action. Exactly what I want from Connolly: Apocrypha made flesh Down These Mean Streets P.I. style, with an extra helping of dour Maine fatalism on top.
The Music of Razors, by Cameron Rogers—More bad angels, more worse people. This is like Gaiman with far less sentimentality; magic saves you from nothing, especially not the inevitability of making mistakes and then having to live with them, to the extremely bitter end. Still, some of the most gorgeous and depressing writing I’ve ever encountered.
The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan—A ghost story (amongst other things) which takes place mostly inside its very unreliable narrator’s head. The Lovecraftian sensibility is, as always, strong here—as well as a Fortean sense of the weird, the inexplicable—but it’s all very modern and far more vulnerable, more human, than I’ve ever seen Kiernan be before. The confessional suits her, as does the first person (which is funny, given her avowed distaste for it); ambiguity and dusk, with horrid flashes of alien light.
White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi—An experimental fairytale, an aural echo-chamber, a haunted house story told alternately from the points of view of hauntees, haunters and house itself—pica-suffering protagonist Miranda Silver’s Dover mansion, perched on chalk, whose inhabiting spirit (known as the “Goodlady”) embodies all the poisonous cant and racism of a dead Empire.
The Monstrumologist, Rick Yancey—Supposedly a children’s book (or a Young Adult book, at least), but actually a despairing and Gothic tale of monster-hunting which reads like it was written by Edgar Allen Poe in an alcoholic haze, after which he realized he’d never be able to sell it, so he just shoved it in the back of his drawer and drank some more. For example: One of the only admirable adult characters turns out to be Jack the Ripper. Also: Anthropophagi!
The Demon’s Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan—You could denigrate and reduce this by saying it’s a bit like Supernatural colliding with a Harry Potter analogue where all magic is done with demonic aid, full stop, so suck it fucking up. But the final twist is fascinating, as are the characters: Nick Ryves, the magic world’s resident Dexter, his gentle but ruthless older brother Allan, and two innocents abroad—pink-haired Mae, who’ll do whatever it takes to save her brother, Jamie, from having to turn into any of the things currently menacing them. I can’t wait for the sequel.
And…I’m tired, so here’s the rest of the list, quick-like-a-bunny: The Hidden World, Paul Park; Far Dark Fields, Gary Braunbeck; Audrey’s Door, Sarah Langan; The Scent Trail, Celia Lyttleton; Color: A History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay; The Judging Eye: The Aspect-Emperor I, R. Scott Bakker; 2009 Rhysling Anthology, ed. Drew Morse; The Drowning City, Amanda Downum; The Best Horror of the Year One, ed. Ellen Datlow; The World More Full of Weeping, Robert J. Wiersma and The Choir Boats, Daniel A. Rabuzzi. Again, feel free to ask for elaboration, in comments—these were all worthy/brilliant, in their own ways.
Trustworthy comfort-food authors whose back-stock and/or newest offerings I breezed through, meanwhile, included David Wellington, Jack McDevitt, Cherie Priest, S.L. Viehl, Justine Musk, Rob Thurman, Tom Piccarilli, Carol O’Connell, T.A. Pratt and Cassandra Clare. I also stumbled across a bunch of 1990s/1980s horror novels in second-hand stores, the highlights of which were these: The Good House, Tannarive Due; The Punishment, Doris Shannon; Headstone City, Tom Piccirilli; Bad Dreams, Kim Newman; Abyssos, Raymond Hardie; The Ancient, Muriel Gray; Night of the Seventh Darkness, Daniel Easterman; The 37th Mandala, Marc Laidlaw; The Night Boat, Robert R. McCammon; The 6 Messiahs, Mark Frost.
In terms of graphic novels, my year literally began and ended with Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s unbelievably freakish Locke & Key series, which confirms my general observation that Hill’s surrealist leanings place him far further in Unca Peter Straub’s camp than he is in Daddy Steve’s, except in terms of similarly enjoying the creation and destruction of small-town bottle societies. At any rate, Hill’s latest revelations about trickster villain(ess) Dodge—the ambiguously-sexed creature who we first met imprisoned in the Locke family’s old well, given to steering sociopaths around by whispering to them through drains and removing people’s memories of “her” by literally unlocking the tops of their heads, like a flip-top Pez dispenser—have me signed on for the duration, annoying magical Autistic boys/plot devices or not; these titles may be expensive when they first come out, but wait and hit ‘em in trade paper, because they’re well worth the check checking.
Otherwise, though I continued to pursue my various regular manga, Dark Horse and Marvel/D.C. Essentials purchases, my three favorite new indulgences were Gail Simone’s Secret Six (never disappointing), the Luna Brothers’ The Sword (always wrenching), and the Easy Company vs. Nephilim pulp craziness which is Light Brigade (Peter J. Tommasi and Pete Snejbjerg). I also finally began reading Planetary in earnest, too, but I haven’t quite made my mind up about it yet—does it ever become more than an endless stream of multiverse in-jokes? I mean, I guess I can take it if it doesn’t, but…
Big sigh: Okay, done. Next up, music. And TV. And New Year’s!
Anyhow. The cream, as follows—
The Bone Woman, by Clea Koff—A nonfiction account of Koff’s work excavating human remains in Bosnia and Rwanda. Absolutely unexploitative and matter-of-fact, it still produces a curt poetry: Grotesque, fascinating, awful in a classic sense.
The Cutting Room, by Louise Welsh—Ostensibly a mystery, though little is revealed, let alone solved. Our estate-sale auctioneer protagonist, a hard-drinking gay man of a certain age, drifts through Glasgow aimlessly hooking up and fucking up, while ineffectively trying to figure out if the shitload of pornography his latest client left behind contains “real” snuff photos. This is slacker noir, and not even small-“r” romantic.
The Lovers, by John Connolly—One more installment in the continuing saga of how Charlie Parker destroys everything he touches, this time with surprise Grigorim action. Exactly what I want from Connolly: Apocrypha made flesh Down These Mean Streets P.I. style, with an extra helping of dour Maine fatalism on top.
The Music of Razors, by Cameron Rogers—More bad angels, more worse people. This is like Gaiman with far less sentimentality; magic saves you from nothing, especially not the inevitability of making mistakes and then having to live with them, to the extremely bitter end. Still, some of the most gorgeous and depressing writing I’ve ever encountered.
The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan—A ghost story (amongst other things) which takes place mostly inside its very unreliable narrator’s head. The Lovecraftian sensibility is, as always, strong here—as well as a Fortean sense of the weird, the inexplicable—but it’s all very modern and far more vulnerable, more human, than I’ve ever seen Kiernan be before. The confessional suits her, as does the first person (which is funny, given her avowed distaste for it); ambiguity and dusk, with horrid flashes of alien light.
White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi—An experimental fairytale, an aural echo-chamber, a haunted house story told alternately from the points of view of hauntees, haunters and house itself—pica-suffering protagonist Miranda Silver’s Dover mansion, perched on chalk, whose inhabiting spirit (known as the “Goodlady”) embodies all the poisonous cant and racism of a dead Empire.
The Monstrumologist, Rick Yancey—Supposedly a children’s book (or a Young Adult book, at least), but actually a despairing and Gothic tale of monster-hunting which reads like it was written by Edgar Allen Poe in an alcoholic haze, after which he realized he’d never be able to sell it, so he just shoved it in the back of his drawer and drank some more. For example: One of the only admirable adult characters turns out to be Jack the Ripper. Also: Anthropophagi!
The Demon’s Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan—You could denigrate and reduce this by saying it’s a bit like Supernatural colliding with a Harry Potter analogue where all magic is done with demonic aid, full stop, so suck it fucking up. But the final twist is fascinating, as are the characters: Nick Ryves, the magic world’s resident Dexter, his gentle but ruthless older brother Allan, and two innocents abroad—pink-haired Mae, who’ll do whatever it takes to save her brother, Jamie, from having to turn into any of the things currently menacing them. I can’t wait for the sequel.
And…I’m tired, so here’s the rest of the list, quick-like-a-bunny: The Hidden World, Paul Park; Far Dark Fields, Gary Braunbeck; Audrey’s Door, Sarah Langan; The Scent Trail, Celia Lyttleton; Color: A History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay; The Judging Eye: The Aspect-Emperor I, R. Scott Bakker; 2009 Rhysling Anthology, ed. Drew Morse; The Drowning City, Amanda Downum; The Best Horror of the Year One, ed. Ellen Datlow; The World More Full of Weeping, Robert J. Wiersma and The Choir Boats, Daniel A. Rabuzzi. Again, feel free to ask for elaboration, in comments—these were all worthy/brilliant, in their own ways.
Trustworthy comfort-food authors whose back-stock and/or newest offerings I breezed through, meanwhile, included David Wellington, Jack McDevitt, Cherie Priest, S.L. Viehl, Justine Musk, Rob Thurman, Tom Piccarilli, Carol O’Connell, T.A. Pratt and Cassandra Clare. I also stumbled across a bunch of 1990s/1980s horror novels in second-hand stores, the highlights of which were these: The Good House, Tannarive Due; The Punishment, Doris Shannon; Headstone City, Tom Piccirilli; Bad Dreams, Kim Newman; Abyssos, Raymond Hardie; The Ancient, Muriel Gray; Night of the Seventh Darkness, Daniel Easterman; The 37th Mandala, Marc Laidlaw; The Night Boat, Robert R. McCammon; The 6 Messiahs, Mark Frost.
In terms of graphic novels, my year literally began and ended with Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s unbelievably freakish Locke & Key series, which confirms my general observation that Hill’s surrealist leanings place him far further in Unca Peter Straub’s camp than he is in Daddy Steve’s, except in terms of similarly enjoying the creation and destruction of small-town bottle societies. At any rate, Hill’s latest revelations about trickster villain(ess) Dodge—the ambiguously-sexed creature who we first met imprisoned in the Locke family’s old well, given to steering sociopaths around by whispering to them through drains and removing people’s memories of “her” by literally unlocking the tops of their heads, like a flip-top Pez dispenser—have me signed on for the duration, annoying magical Autistic boys/plot devices or not; these titles may be expensive when they first come out, but wait and hit ‘em in trade paper, because they’re well worth the check checking.
Otherwise, though I continued to pursue my various regular manga, Dark Horse and Marvel/D.C. Essentials purchases, my three favorite new indulgences were Gail Simone’s Secret Six (never disappointing), the Luna Brothers’ The Sword (always wrenching), and the Easy Company vs. Nephilim pulp craziness which is Light Brigade (Peter J. Tommasi and Pete Snejbjerg). I also finally began reading Planetary in earnest, too, but I haven’t quite made my mind up about it yet—does it ever become more than an endless stream of multiverse in-jokes? I mean, I guess I can take it if it doesn’t, but…
Big sigh: Okay, done. Next up, music. And TV. And New Year’s!
