In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik—still maybe best known for her “Napoleonic Wars, but there are dragons now” series Temeraire—has built up a considerable practice in the fairy tale trade in recent years, offering up emotionally intelligent, egalitarian, and endlessly twisty takes on ancient folk tales in the form of books like Uprooted and Spinning Silver. Now Novik has set her sights on the biggest fantasy whale of them all, daring to ask, what if the Harry Potter books took place in the Cthulhu mythos? Her answer to that question, A Deadly Education (September 29, Del Rey), is exactly as brutally violent as that premise might suggest, featuring as it does a local Potter stand-in who’s wrecking the Hogwart equivalent’s grading curve, not by doing well in potions class, but by keeping an unusual number of his fellow students alive in the face of constant attacks from the hideous monsters that infest their school in vigilance-demanding numbers. As with her last two books, Novik grounds this blend of low fantasy and horror by situating the book within the voice of an instantly winning narrator, in this case a young witch who’s trying to survive her hellish semesters without becoming the apocalyptic, fire-hurling world-breaker she’s prophesied to be. That outsider perspective also allows Novik to create a compelling satire of the capitalist underpinnings of even the most magical of societies, crafting a world where the difference between the haves and the have-nots is literally who ends up getting their soul sucked out by a tentacle monster from hell. [William Hughes]
Ghoster by Jason Arnopp
We need more smartphone horror. No more period pieces. No more age-old curses. No more palatial mansions haunted by doomed lovers from the 17th century. We need more horror stories about dopey millennials spiraling into the nightmare transmitters in their pocket. We need more books like Ghoster. Jason Arnopp’s 2019 follow-up to The Last Days Of Jack Sparks (published by Orbit) is spooky, funny, and, perhaps most importantly, in touch with the way young people use technology. It follows Kate, a millennial paramedic who gets ghosted by her boyfriend on the day she moves across the U.K. to live with him. That’s horrifying enough, but what she finds inside the smartphone he left behind—DM philandering, ominous journal entries, hours-long videos of sleeping acquaintances—paves the way for all kinds of supernatural fuckery. Kate is also just a great protagonist, someone who is wry and self-aware but not immune to the obsessive urge to trace the digital footprint of whoever it is they’re dating. The person you’re seeing IRL, after all, is probably a lot different online. [Randall Colburn]
A Field Guide To Internet Boyfriends by Esther Zuckerman
Nonfiction books about the internet can be a tough sell—how can the printed-and-bound written word possibly keep up with the frenzy of cyberspace, with hot takes flying faster than you can flip a page? Astoundingly, A Field Guide To Internet Boyfriends: Meme-Worthy Celebrity Crushes From A To Z (November 10, Running Press) manages to feel both incisively of-the-moment and refreshingly holistic, tracing the intricate details that lead to the emergence of each crush à la mode while placing them within the broader context of the internet’s evolution. The playful guidebook doubles as a marker of shifting cultural mores, a tribute to the new era of thirst largely shaped by women and queer folks, celebrating compassion and sensitivity just as much as good looks and charm. All credit is due to author Esther Zuckerman, a senior entertainment writer for Thrillist (and former A.V. Club staffer), who clearly spends a lot of time on Twitter. Zuckerman’s informed approach is both frank and funny, chaperoning her readers through seemingly niche moments that launched each celebrity to “Internet Boyfriend”—or girlfriend—status. For example, the section on Oscar Isaac (a personal favorite) spends equal time lauding his dashing turn as Poe Dameron in the recent Star Wars trilogy as it does heralding a photo of the actor eating Hot Cheetos with a pair of chopsticks. It’s a breezy read, but each object of affection is lovingly rendered in handsome illustrations from artist Louisa Cannell, and the entire book has a crisp look that makes it a perfect coffee table addition to reference (and swoon over) again and again. [Cameron Scheetz]
17 Comments
Deadly Education was really good. Despite it being the first book in a series (I think it’s a trilogy but who knows) it worked incredibly well as its own stand alone book. The characters, especially El are interesting, even some of the a-hole rich kids develop some depth. I’m currently finishing up The Boneshard’s Daughter (Andrea Stewart) and it’s also been a fun ride. It too is part 1 of a trilogy but the book itself has a lot of good twist and turns that it hasn’t seemed like a waste. Hopefully this one also ends well, which is one issue I have with these planned series. I generally want my series books to stand on their own (at least the first book) and so I’m always worried that it’ll just be a “To Be Continued”. The book Witchmark (C.L. Polk) did a pretty good job of this. It’s part 1 of 3 but it’s done as more like the original Star Wars. Part 1 is fairly stand alone so in theory you can just stop there and get a full story. Part 2, Stormsong, is more like Empire Strikes Back where you get a decent story but its very much TBC for the final book. Which is okay for book 2 of 3 since you’re already invested in the story but if I’m just going to check something out (especially a new book) I really want that first story to work as a single book.
I’m actually getting my reading chair ready so I can stare at my Kindle Scott Pilgrim-style until Rhythm of War appears on it.
Finishing up the second of Bill Carter’s two books The Late Shift and The War for Late Night, about how stupid the people at NBC are. The first one shows how they monumentally screwed up the whole Carson/Leno/Letterman thing in the 90’s and then how they made all of the same mistakes over again, plus some new ones, in the Leno/Conan fiasco from 12 years ago. And Leno is a slimy hack. And of course I’ve got my kindle charged and ready for Barack Obama’s book tomorrow.
I just finished The Living Dead by George Romero and Daniel Kraus, and it’s a fitting end to Romero’s zombie oeuvre. It takes place over the span of two decades, the beginning within the first two weeks of the zombie outbreak, then quickly covering twenty years, and then spending time on a single day twenty years in. I keep on saying that I’m sick of zombie movies, but for whatever reason the genre keeps on dragging me back. And Romero kept on doing new things with the genre, even if his later movies were less successful. Ultimately, I think the novel is about thinking about communication and empathy. The end asks us to consider how we might recreate society in order to avoid all the mistakes that were made. While not everything in the Living Dead is successful, it’s a quick read for a 650 page novel, and I genuinely loved the characters. And it’s also a corrective to the survivalist fetishism that so many zombie stories have become. It’s a wonderful end to Romero’s career and a touching tribute by Kraus.
I started reading the second book in The Book of Dust series (The Secret Commonwealth), and boy howdy is it odd to see the HDM world reflect our the current US sociopolitical climate. It’s very good.
Just finished Ruth Gilligan’s The Butchers’ Blessing and it was BRUTAL. Loved it.
Currently reading Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher by Max Collins, which deals with Ness’ post-Capone career as Safety Director of Cleveland. He had some surprisingly modern ideas about what police could and should be to their communities, which sadly was eventually overshadowed by his inability to catch (although it wasn’t, strictly speaking, his job to do so) a local serial murderer who was hacking up the city’s down-and-outs and scattering their parts all over town. Listening to Dead in the Water by Penny Farmer, which came free with my Audible subscription. It’s not terribly riveting and I may chuck it and just read the Wikipedia entry.Also read in November:We Sold Our Souls, the only Grady Hendrix book I hadn’t yet readThe Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha ChristieAarushi, Avirook SenThe Night Swim, Megan GoldinWe’re Not Here to Entertain, Kevin Mattson
We Sold Our Souls is so good.I don’t like metal. At all. I just never got it. I still don’t like it but now I get why people love it so much.
Me neither (with a few exceptions of super low-tempo sludgy stoner doom metal like Sleep’s Holy Mountain), and he totally made me understand why some people love it. Kind of related, I’m not really into punk but I love reading non-fiction about it, which is what We’re Not Here to Entertain is about; the full title is We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America.Horrostör is still my favorite Hendrix novel, but We Sold Our Souls is a very close second.
How did you like My Best Friend’s Exorcism? I’ve heard really good things about it.
It was good! I’ve liked all of his books. His non-fiction book about the horror fiction boom of the 1970s and 1980s, Paperbacks From Hell, is also a fun read. Have you ever read Michael McDowell? If you like Hendrix you may enjoy his work, too. My favorites are The Elementals and Gilded Needles, and the audio book of Blackwater: The Complete Saga (it’s 5 separate books) is still my favorite audio book ever. Hendrix called it “the One Hundred Years of Solitude of horror fiction”.
I’ve heard of him but haven’t read him. The Elementals has been on my TBR for years.
They’re Made of Meat, by Terry Bisson Google it, read it, takes 5 minutes. It’s hilarious.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear. Couldn’t resist that title. I’m not far into it but it gets right to the bears.
As of right now and until further notice, I’m with Brandon Sanderson’s Rhythm of War. Fourth bok in The Stormlight Archives series, I’ve been waiting for it for a couple of years.It’s a beautifully crafted world (from its magic system to it’s political structure).
I’m about finished with Julie Kagawas’ The Shadow and the Fox #1. It’s pretty formulaic, but I like Eastern fantasy enough that I’m into it. I also read The Priory and the Orange Tree which is an epic fantasy standalone novel (rare), and really develops some surprising relationships between characters.On the graphic novel front I finished both volumes of Black Road, which were a little underwhelming. Great premise and setting, uneven execution in storytelling and art. I also read Glass Town, which was a really lovely semi-fictional look at the creations of the Brontes as children and the lasting impact it had on the rest of their lives. Coming up the third book in the Poppy War series is dropping as well as the sequel to Rage of Dragons. Gonna be a busy end of the year for audiobooks for me.