2015 Book list (asterisk indicates books I really enjoyed)

• In the Miso Soup – Ryu Murakami
• Game of Thrones and Philosophy – edited by Henry Jacoby and William Irwin
• The Crash of 2016* – Thom Hartmann
• The Martian* – Andy Weir
• Super Justice Force – David J. Walker
• Hitler’s War – Harry Turtledove
• Black Girl Dangerous** – Mia McKenzie
• Girl in a Band* – Kim Gordon
• Anger is An Energy – John Lydon
• The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues* – Angela Davis
• A Death at Diamond Mountain – Scott Carney
• Wandering Son: Volume One* – Shimura Takako
• I Was the Cat – Paul Tobin & Benjamin Dewey
• Wandering Son: Volume Two* – Shimura Takako
• Wandering Son: Volume Three* – Shimura Takako
• Wandering Son: Volume Four* – Shimura Takako
• Wandering Son: Volume Five* – Shimura Takako
• Wandering Son: Volume Six* – Shimura Takako
• The Day the Country Died – Ian Glaser
• Wandering Son: Volume Seven* – Shimura Takako
• Here – Robert McGuire
• Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia* – Sindre Bandstad
• Octavia’s Brood* – Adrienne Maree Brown & Walidah Imarisha, editors
• Lost Boi*** – Sassafras Lowrey
• American Apocalypse* – Matthew Avery Sutton
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up* – Marie Kondo
• Wandering Son: Volume Eight* – Shimura Takako
• The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction – Richard Curt Kraus
• Dead Wake – Erik Larson
• Sisters of the Revolution – Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, editors
• Quiet Rumours * – Various (collected by Dark Star Collective)
• Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables* – Michael Stewart Foley
• Escape to Gold Mountain* – David H.T. Wong
• Operation Ajax* – Daniel Burwen, Mike de Seve
• Through the Woods – * Emily Carroll
• SuperMutant Magic Academy* – Jillian Tamaki
• Joe Steele* – Harry Turtledove
• A Wizard of Earthsea* – Ursula K. LeGuin
• Wind/Pinball – Haruki Murakami
• The Tombs of Atuan* – Ursula K. LeGuin
• Nimona* – Noelle Stevenson
• Between the World and Me** – Ta-Nahesi Coates
• The Years of Rice and Salt *– Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Farthest Shore – Ursula K. LeGuin
• Live Through This*-Anwen Crawford
• Aurora* – Kim Stanley Robinson
• Blogging for Dummies – Amy Lupold Bair and Susannah Gardner
• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms* – George R.R. Martin
• Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comic Anthology* – Sfé R. Monster, editor
• Exile in Guyville* – Gina Arnold
• Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl* – Carrie Brownstein
• The Long Earth* – Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
• Empire of Imagination* – Michael Witwer
• The Long War – Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

 

ABOUT THIS LIST

Since I graduated from college over 20 years ago, I’ve kept a list of every single book I’ve read. About six years ago, every January, I began posting a list of books I’d completed the previous year on Facebook, along with some basic reviews of a few selected ones as well. I tend to read at least a book a week (sometimes more, sometimes less), averaging about 54 a year, with 2014 being my biggest year at 64.

A few years after I started doing these lists, I also began doing a breakdown of authors by gender, as a way of cultivating some self-awareness around that, and push myself towards reading less male authors. What’s been most interesting about that is that I’ve come to realize that I can’t entirely trust my perception of an author’s gender without actually knowing them. But I still make my own best guess. Two years ago, I added in genderqueer/genderfluid authors into my breakdown. Doing a breakdown by ethnicity would likely also be interesting, but I’ve yet to take that on.

A few more things to know, regarding the gender breakdown of this list, the counting of books in general as “books”, and how this all gets kind of thorny:

• When books are co-written, I usually consider each author as half in considering the gender breakdown of the book. Same with editors, though obviously a book edited by a women (or two women) likely has authors of different genders (a prime example this year being Octavia’s Brood).
• I read lots of trade paperback/hardcover collections of comic book series, but don’t count those as discrete books (see more below). I only count books that were written as single works, like a graphic novel.
• That said, I have included the volumes of Wandering Son, a manga series, on this list. That’s because the books have the feel more of chapter books, not of a collection of individual issues. I realize that’s possibly cheating (particularly since it significantly impacts the gender breakdown), but it felt like the right thing to do.

I also started several books this year that I put down when something more exciting or less intense came along and I needed that…

• The Half Has Never Been Told – Ed Baptist
• Taking Sides
• Race in American Science Fiction – only a few pages away, but didn’t finish it until this month

My gender breakdown of the above list author-wise is as follows:

• Men – 27
• Women – 25
• Genderqueer – 2 (included in this count are Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey and the Beyond Comics Anthology edited by Sfé R. Monster)

The number of comic book series trade paperback collections and graphic novels I read this year is down to 60 from the 111 I read last year. This was likely the result of a couple of factors: 1) I moved cross-country, and I had some less free time with prep work like packing, 2) I read a lot of longer books this year, and 3) the library in my new college town home has substantially smaller holdings when it comes to comic book collections compared to the bounty of the Seattle Public Library.

TOP TEN HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS YEAR (in order read)

• The Crash of 2016 by Thom Hartmann – since Occupy (and yes, of course before, but I’m talking about a large mass of folks) talk of how the middle class is struggling, wealth and income inequality, etc. has become more and more part of mainstream public consciousness. Unfortunately, there is rarely a good depth of context to these discussions. But Hartmann (a progressive commentator who used to be on Air America and now does his own show five days a week) has done some valuable excavation and analysis of the past 50 years of American history, to detail the variety of ways that the American economy was specifically rigged to produce the moment we find ourselves in. Want to know more? Check this book out. Only warning is, while his analysis is pretty great, Hartmann is a progressive Democrat, so don’t expect a radical lefty perspective (though as a listener of his program, I do note that he actually struggles to understand and challenge both his own white privilege and that of others, and uses the words “white supremacy”, which is refreshing for a middle-aged progressive). The information is worth it, though. http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/thom-hartmann/the-crash-of-2016/9781619696471/

• Black Girl Dangerous by Mia McKenzie features several pieces from the radically brown, consistently insightful and intersectional blog she created. This book felt critically important this past year, with black death seemingly everywhere, and really helped me see the possibilities that blogs offer to provide deep, unapologetic perspectives on injustice. Black rage, especially black queer women’s rage, is more essential now than ever, and Mia delivers. blackgirldangerous.org

• Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey, a queer, kink-tinged, squatter punk reimagining of Peter Pan. It’s nothing less than amazing, where magic and dumpster diving comingle, new family is created, destroyed and recreated through the alchemy of love. Check it out. http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.php?index=416

• Octavia’s Brood, edited by adrienne maree brown & Walidah Imarisha is a book I’ve been waiting for forever. Taking inspiration from Octavia Butler, brown, Imarisha and others have been exploring the liberatory power of speculative fiction for years, through workshops, conference sessions, writing and music. This anthology is the end product of years of work, bringing together voices from various diasporas and specificities to tell stories of resistance, resilience and survival through different, yet familiar forms of apocalypse and oppression. https://www.akpress.org/octavia-s-brood.html
• Through the Woods by Emily Carroll is a gorgeously hideous and creepy series of horror comics. If Edgar Allan Poe had been a comic artist, he might have told stories like these. And the artwork is stunning, and the book has won numerous awards, all well-deserved. I’d suggest you don’t read before bedtime, though. http://books.simonandschuster.ca/Through-the-Woods/Emily-Carroll/9781442465954

• Between the World and Me** – Ta-Nahesi Coates. Not much else can be said about this book, other than that it felt like a temporary space of sanity this past year. This book told me truths I’ve always known but not known how to properly name about the pervasive, soul-destroying experience that is American anti-black racism. http://www.powells.com/book/between-the-world-me-9780451482211

• Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson is a book about a generation ship, meaning a spaceship sent out with the intention of several generations being born, living and dying on a ship as it travels to another world. This book – one of my favorites by Robinson, a really stellar author – looks at how various subcultures, political perspectives, and other differences might play out in such a space, while also speaking to the real-life challenges of making such a journey. It’s nowhere near as nerdy/wonky as The Martian, but really underlines that space travel is far more difficult than usually depicted, with that difficulty creating interesting plot twists and possibilities. http://www.powells.com/book/aurora-9780316098106

• Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comic Anthology* – Sfé R. Monster, editor. I heard about this anthology at Emerald City Comic Con last year, during an incredible panel on diversity in speculative comics that Sfé was on. Two of the crucial points made during that panel were that if you want to see more diversity in comics and pop culture, you need to support those creating things you like, and/or you need to create yourself; it’s not about asking Marvel or DC to create more diversity in the mainstream, but doing things and supporting things wherever you are, so those things can grow. This anthology, which ranges from fantasy to sci-fi, finds creative ways to explore gender, colonialism, technology, magic and above all, people. https://www.beyond-press.com/

• Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold is one of the 33 1/3 series of books published by Continuum. These books tend to take one of three tacks: 1) focusing on a specific album by a musical artist and building some level of band/musician biography around that, 2) using a specific album by an artist as a stepping-off point to discuss larger issues of culture, or 3) something totally different (like a novel that doesn’t really explore the album at all, such as Colin Meloy’s Meat is Murder volume). This book, by music and culture writer Gina Arnold, takes the second tack, using Liz Phair’s debut album and the cultural ruckus it caused to examine how we define value in music, how we define feminism, and what feminist art look and sound like. Most crucially, she asks who sets the terms around these, and what does that say about power and culture, and possibilities for subversion and change. This book helped me think a lot about how art and culture is centered around norms primarily focused on white male cultural production and how art and culture created by those with less social power is always “othered” as inferior as result, which informed my piece on #BoycottStarWars. http://www.powells.com/book/liz-phairs-exile-in-guyville-9781441162571

• Empire of Imagination by Michael Witwer: Hey nerds (aka my friends), this book is a really enjoyable and informative biography of E. Gary Gygax, one of the main creators of Dungeons and Dragons. It provides an engaging history of how the whole role-playing subculture grew out of strategy gaming, comics, and genre storytelling to become the massive phenomenon it is today. http://www.empireofimagination.com/