A Year in Reading, 2012 Edition

For the past couple of years, I've posted my end of year reading summary. It's not necessarily books published only in 2012, it's simply what I've read in 2012. It's not even the best of what I've read in 2012. It's simply a reading retrospective with a few words about each. Since I've read about 75 books or more this year, this list will be a bit more summary than in previous years. (Which will probably be a good thing because in 2011 I don't believe I finished my retrospective — oh my!)

The most awesome book series I read in 2012: Grave Witch by Kaylana Price (Series title: Alex Craft, Grave Witch, Grave Dance, Grave Memory). These are great, fascinating, urban fantasy novels featuring a witch PI in a world that's not really comfortable with the overt magic it's soaked in. The fae are omnipresent, but humans would rather believe the glamour they see than reconcile the creature beneath — ditto for the witch-made charms. Top that off with the personal struggles of Alex Craft — she's estranged from her family, barely making rent, and the only thing she's good at monetizing is her Grave Sight, an ability that leaves her night blind and sometimes worse. Oh, and there's a love triangle that gets more and more and more tangled as the series continues. The closer Alex Craft gets to accepting a relationship, the more alone she finds herself.

I actually read these books before I read Kim Harrison's The Hollows/Rachel Morgan series (more on that later) but once I had, I found Grave Witch extremely similar yet much more mature in world and premise. The Grave Witch world and character development leaps into the arena that the world of the Hollows only achieves in books six and on.

Favorite YA series of the year: I was surprised to fall in love with the YA sci-fi Cold Awakening Trilogy by Robin Wasserman this year. In this not-too-far-future dystopia, a rich, spoiled, self-centered teen ends up in a near-fatal accident that leaves her “skinned” — her brain is sliced, scanned, and uploaded into a synthetic body. I have a problem with whiny teenage characters (even if the whining is realistic) but the fascinating science and technology milieu pulled me through Frozen, and once we got into the larger social and political issues of Shattered and Torn, I found myself staying up way past my bedtime to gobble up this series.

Series that made me gain over 5 lbs. in a month: I read Janet Evanovich's One for the Money because the movie looked cute. Truth. I loved this book and snapped up Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, Four to Score ... all the way through Fearless Fourteen before I stopped because I realized they were all awesome, but they were all the same. I have no doubt I'll go back and visit the Berg and the Plum family, Morelli, Ranger, and Stephanie Plum's inexplicable ability to destroy cars and read through the latest Notorious Nineteen. But I had to stop reading and take a break. Take a breath. Stop my constant reading about doughnuts, fried chicken, and pot roast — a devastating trio to have on the brain in the middle of winter.

Although the endless pot roast discussion did lead me to find a great, easy, pot roast recipe for crock pot: trim roast, place in a crock pot that's been lightly coated in PAM (for clean up), and then for every 2.5 lbs. of roast add one can cream of mushroom soup and a half-packet of powdered onion soup. Cook on low for eight hours. Don't add water! The roast will create its own gravy from this concoction. And it comes out super tender. The pot roast wasn't as debilitating a factor in my Evanovich inspired weight gain, it was more the doughnuts and fried chicken cravings that did me in.

So later, when I came across The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama by Susan Abel Sullivan, I immediately recognized the protagonist Cleo Tidwell as a Southern, thrice-married Stephanie Plum. The humor's spot on, the crazy-but-lovable family is there, the zany problems that emerge in the course of solving the mystery and staying alive in the process — all the things that made Janet Evanovich's novels something which I felt like I read without breathing, were there in deep fried package from Susan Abel Sullivan. I highly recommend The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama to anyone who's read and enjoyed One for the Money and the other Stephanie Plum mysteries.

The series with the devastating emotional roller coaster: JC Andrijeski's Allie's War, Book Four Shadow. I've posted before about this series. Everything I know about fiction tells me this series shouldn't work, yet oh-baby does it work. I read the first three in a madcap dash then waited for book four — a whopping 200,000+ words in length — and kept biding my time to start it because these books are an emotional roller coaster. I have a copy of book five, Knight, but every time I go to start it, I take a deep breath and ask myself are you ready for this? So far, I've not been prepared. Part near-future dystopia with some aspects of a tech thriller, part paranormal romance. These books are — and this doesn't often get said about PNR — epic.

Holy hell, how did I manage to ignore this series this long? Actually, I know how. Book one of Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan/The Hollows Novels, features cover art of a half-naked red head with handcuffs dangling off the belt loop of her hip hugging leather pants. Excuse me? You want me to believe your urban fantasy is a strong ass kicking chick when she's depicted wearing a bandeau bikini top on the streets of Cincinnati? Yep. That's the idea. Except the funny part about this depiction (and my subsequent reaction to it) is that Kim Harrison actually writes the character Rachel Morgan as dressing in precisely this fashion ... and then having people try to proposition her because they think she's a hooker. Oops! In later books in the series, Rachel's vampire friends and roommate try repeatedly to class her up. Her taste level is constantly in question and Rachel's not thrilled to hear it. So I zipped on through this great nine book series (book ten out this spring) starting with Dead Witch Walking of the bikini top infamy, then up through The Outlaw Demon Wails before I took a break from the series for a bit. Even then I caught myself saying "crap on toast" anytime something went wrong in my life.

After (not a spoiler) one of the main characters dies, Rachel loses a sense of focus, and I lost a bit of my interest. But after reading a half-dozen other novels by other writers, I started to wonder what happened next. So I happily turned back to the series and cruised on through to Pale Demon. These more recent titles bring Trent back more interestingly into the picture and I actually loved the cross-country road trip which allowed us to see just how different this post-genetic-crisis world is from our own — not something we were really able to see in the previous urban Cincinnati and touristy Mackinac locations. I'm looking forward to Ever After coming out January 22, 2013.

Because fairy tales are pretty. Opal is a YA fantasy by Kristina Wojtaszek that features multiple, nested fairy tales (some of which you'll recognize) within a fantasy world. The prose is lyrical and rich. Fans of Patricia McKillip take note of this new voice in the world of fantasy and fairy tale retellings.

Books I re-read. Elizabeth Vaughn's Warprize is just an absolutely stellar example of romantic fantasy (second-world setting). The rest of the books in the trilogy don't live up to the awesomeness of this first installment. I've not read the further books set in the same world, but might yet one day.

I also re-read the Others Series by Jess Haines as Stalking the Others was coming out during summer 2012 and I could remember that I liked the series but I couldn't remember what all the rules of that particular urban fantasy world were. Hunted by the Others (book one) was just okay. It took me two years before I bothered looking around to see if there was more in the series. Books two and three get more interesting. No longer does the main character think all vampires are Evil and most werewolves are okay but really the only species you can trust are humans — sorry, but that sort of thinking in a book is boring. Anyhoodle, book three ended with a doozy of a cliffhanger: the heroine might have been changed into an otherworldly creature against her will! So I was going to relish the fourth book, damnit, and that meant re-reading, re-skimming the previous three.

Promising beginnings. Silver by Rhiannon Held is an interesting, slightly grittier, werewolf urban fantasy. The two main characters aren't your typical heroine and heroine a la paranormal romance, rather they remind me of The Fifth Element's Corbin Dallas and Leelo. (My full review of the novel can be found on NewMyths.com.) Book two, Tarnished, comes out this spring. I'm hoping this series delivers on its promising beginning.

I used to love the Katie MacAlister series with the dragons. Actual, this is her third series of books featuring the same world/characters just switching narrators. But Sparks Fly completely lost me. Maybe I skipped over the previous book, because I constantly felt like I didn't know what was going on. Maybe it'll all make sense to me if I go back and re-read all ten books...?

Another promising beginning that's petered out, is Thea Harrison's Elder Races novels. Romances set in a modern world with were-creatures that can shift into giant animals like dragons, griffons, and thunderbirds. Dragon Bound, the first in the series, was awesome. Loved it. Read Storm's Heart, the second in the series, and it was okay. Read a novella out of order that I really had no idea why I finished. Sadly, I'm done with this series that had previously shown so much promise.

Matriarchal fantasy world — a bit like Scott O'Dell meets Anne McCaffery. Shards of History by Rebecca Roland is a fresh new fantasy world where the main civilization puts one in mind of southwest Native American cultures. The heroine, Malia, finds out a truth about the hated and feared creatures that live on the fringes of their civilization, one that can save them from the dragon-riding army that's poised on the edge of the valley, waiting to kill, capture, and enslave Malia's people. Of course, if she can't get her people to believe this newly discovered truth, it'll be their destruction. Time is running out before the sky — literally — falls down on them.

A return to Jeaniene Frost. I adored the first two Cat and Bones books. Halfway to the Grave was so good it made me want to hate Jeaniene Frost for her storytelling ability coupled with her writing skills. But as the series wore on, the spin-offs and one-off novels appeared, and the vampires become and and more powerful (an annoying problem that means they have to go to extreme lengths not to have other vampires in a half-mile radius overhear their conversations), I sort of slipped away. Since Cat became a vampire, I let the series go on without me. But then along came Vlad. And more importantly, Leila. I like Leila. And I like that she's not becoming an all-powerful vampire. She doesn't know much about the vampire subculture she's been sucked into, so we get to go on the journey all over again. I'm down with that. Once Burned brought me back to the Night Huntress franchise. I look forward to Twice Tempted coming out in late-March.

Non-fiction. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a fabulous braided narrative of Skloot's research and her research process into the life of Henrietta Lacks — the African American woman from whom HeLa research cells were derived — and her surviving family. Henrietta never knew that she was "donnating" cells, and it would be decades before her family knew that their mother's cells had been instrumental to 20th century health science, having been key to producing a functional polio vaccine among many other advances. Skloot keeps a human interest angle to her book even when she's discussing science and legal precedents. Eminently readable and jargon-lite in spite of its science rich content.

Books I picked up for free and was happy to have found! Delilah S. Dawson's Wicked as They Come is vampire, steampunk romance FTW. The dialog is quick and witty (sometimes too quick as I love a good angsty brood), the heroine is spunky and capable, and the world of Sang is fascinating. An alternate dimension where the reasons for steampunk are simple: there's magic and vampireish Bludmen so you better lace up that stiff collar and cover your neck! Not to mention the hero is equally fascinating as our tour guide through the world. I'm willing to forgive this book its trespasses because reading it was just plain fun. The teaser scene from Blud Book #2 shows us a different first person protagonist in a different city, which saddens me only because Criminy and Tish's storyline did not feel finished. I'm holding out hope for Criminy & Tish the Sequel! I've also picked up the novella in this series, The Mysterious Madam Morpho, which is a cute, brief tale of the traveling caravan show that Criminy runs. Liked it. Will likely pick up Wicked as She Wants this April. Bludbunnies — now there's something I can't get out of my head!

The Scottish historical romance, Claire Delacroix's The Beauty Bride, was a free ebook download (I think it's still free at most major retailers and is the first in Delacroix's series). I admit that I judge books by their covers, especially in the age of free and cheap ebooks, a shoddy cover is often a sign of shoddy writing within — but don't let this cover fool you! Delacroix's writing and historical research are fabulous. I believe this ebook version is a reissue of an earlier title which was published by a major publisher, and since it went out of print the author has brought it back on her own (that's my speculation at least). I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. I didn't expect to stay up reading all night only to look at the clock and say, "How the hell did it get to be 5:00 AM?" I'll likely be seeking out the rest of the series in 2013 when the historical mood strikes me.

Books I picked up for free ... and sort of wish I hadn't. Waking Up Married. Harlequin is promoting this book as the banner carrier of their new KISS line. From all the hype I expected something youthful and fresh, like if the KISS line was a dessert, it would be a crisp and sassy, low-cal dessert. With citrus. Instead I got a Diet Coke. With lime. At the very least I expected it to feel more "youthful" because that's how it's being promoted. But except for the fact that the heroine isn't in a work/family position where she's subservient to the hero (he's her boss, etc.), this felt exactly like the PRESENTS novels I used to read. The heroine has a career. Bravo. But she didn't feel any more like a modern twenty-something than any other Harlequin heroine does (Harlequin's selling point for KISS). And I happen to be something of an expert on modern twenty-somethings: I am one.

Nora Roberts. Yes, Nora Roberts is her own category of reading. Her shelves are my go-to section of the library whenever I'm feeling glum or overwhelmed by life. I know that I can escape into her worlds and that the books are always satisfactory — they'll never rock my world, but I know they'll never disappoint me either. In 2012 she wrapped up her Inn BoonsBoro trilogy with The Last Boyfriend and The Perfect Hope. The cool part about these books? A hefty component of each is running a small business (bookstore, pizzeria  bed-and-breakfast) and decorating/building the inn. So it's a bit like reading a romance and simultaneously leafing through a home fashion magazine. Still not as cool as the Bridal Quartet which was like reading a romance and leafing through a bridal magazine.

Also in the Nora Roberts category this year, I read the Key Trilogy and most of the Dreams Trilogy. The Key books involve three women helping otherworldly creatures free three women who are sort of trapped in a sleeping beauty spell and was among the more memorable of Nora Roberts stuff (although when it comes to her novels with paranormal elements, my favorite is still The Jewels of the Sun trilogy).

The unmemorable odds and ends. I picked up The Wrangler as part of a free promotion. I'd never read a western romance before. It's not likely to become my genre of choice. Marked by Elisabeth Naughton is another title that I only know I read because I wrote it down on my list of finished books. I vaguely recall something about the Greek gods. Another paranormal romance that's selling well that didn't catch my fancy. Ditto for Goblin King  and Kiss of the Goblin Prince by Shona Husk. I will give these goblin books props for choosing a more original  paranormal creature (the goblin) than the majority of casting for paranormal heroes and heroines out there.

There were other books I read in 2012. I've recently started but not finished Clean by Alex Hughes which seems promising. I can't forget to mention all the ghost stories I read in 2012, published and submitted for publication, as I worked on editing the anthology Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales. There are books of poetry such as Jay Nicorvo's Deadbeat and the poem a day I get to open courtesy of NPR's Writer's Almanac, along with numerous short stories from Daily SF and other magazines and anthologies.

What of note have you read in 2012? 

Bookstores

Found via GalleyCat.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and Bloodfever, in review

We had a long weekend here for MLK day and that meant I got to read not just one, but two books this weekend. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin and Bloodfever by Karen Maire Moning.

It's been a long time since I read a second world fantasy*.  Probably a year or more.  And it took me reading Hundred Thousand Kingdoms to realize that.  I used to consume these kind of novels and only these kind of novels in a near gluttonous fashion, but lately I've been on an urban fantasy  and old science fiction kick.

Anyway, back to the book.  There's something about it that really puts me in mind of Sara Douglass's Wayfarer Redemption books.  I think it's the closeness of the world of the gods with the world of men and that notion that the distance between gods and humans is vast, but the line that divides them is thin and porous.  The spends a great deal of time learning about her own world, getting sucked into political intrigue (some of it a generation old, some of it millennia old), and trying to decipher what people's true natures are -- a worthwhile task as all is not as it seems.

The writer has an incredibly successful and unique, if abrupt, way of structuring the narrative.  She mixes the more immediate storytelling method of being "in scene" with the characters, with recapitulation of history and need-to-know information which interrupts the scene with section breaks to deliver the knowledge, with sections of conversation not enclosed in quotation marks.  And for probably four fifths of the book we're not allowed to figure out who the narrator is talking to in those sections or if she's talking to herself.  The narrative also stops and starts as the narrator remembers things, which made the first chapter feel jerky but intriguing.  The narrative intrigue however, doesn't start until two or three chapters in once the narrative style has been established.


It was a good read.  It kept me up through most of the night on trying to finish it (I didn't succeed), and then awake midmorning the next day, trying not to nod off before I could get to the end. Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was put out by Orbit, and I have to say that every fantasy novel I've picked up with their little orbiting orbs logo on it has been really good.  This series goes on, but it's main characters change, so I'm not running out to get the next one just yet.

I needed something to pick up immediately or I was going to be thinking about and rehashing Hundred Thousand Kingdoms for the next few days.  So I went and grabbed a copy of Bloodfever.  Bloodfever is the second book in the "fever series" of five books, starting with Darkfever and ending with Shadowfever (which comes out today coincidentally).  This is an urban fantasy series (shelved under paranormal romance because that's where Moning's career is most stable) set in contemporary Dublin and an extension of Moning's Tutha De / sidhe-seer world.  The series stands on its own, but by the end of book two you can already see that it's going to come crashing into the plot lines left open with her previous characters.  And news is that she's writing another series set in this world with different main characters.  Hey, whatever makes you comfortable.

One of Moning's books was the first romance novel I ever picked up -- it was on assignment for my feminist theory class.  I picked up The Highlander's Touch because the cover (the original cover) had no nudity (male or female) and no compromisingly positioned anything.  There was no way I was going to bring in something embarassing to a college class that was (at the time) way above my head.  Meanwhile, some of the students not struggling with the theory aspect of the class had gone for the attitude of the-trashier-the-better.  In the end the class had a good conversation.  I was annoyed because the book sets up one supernatural premise -- time travel -- and then 4/5 of the way through introduces the thing that will save them all!  Not time travel, but a fairy.  Major WTF moment.  I despise books where the author establishes a premise, solidifies it, then changes it when it's convenient for her.  (JR Ward, I'm looking at you.*cough*ghosts?srsly?*cough*)

But with the fever series, Moning has a world that is fae-centric.  Of course a fairy's going to show up, they're here to destroy the bloody world!

These novels are good enough that I keep reading them but I'm coming to think that I may have learned many of the habits Odyssey tried to break me of from one author.  Particularly that of having a character alone thinking about her life.

I went Monday night to buy the third book and they didn't have it.  Poo!  But they had dozens of copies of the fourth one because it just came out in paperback.  And the helpdesk chick was a fricking fluff head who didn't understand the layout of the fiction area.  Why the hell is the person who doesn't understand how the store is laid out manning the help desk?  Shouldn't she be shelving and shelving until she realizes that the "new arrivals" are face out under the sign "new arrivals" and the "regular" books are spine out in a different section? Whereas she told me that only two sections of the "regular" books are "regular" and then proceeded to be confused with why the "regular" books section ended with J-named authors.

I am calm.

So I went home and downloaded the nookbook version.  I like the nook-for-iPod software much better than I like the kindle-for-iPod software.  I figure I'll try it out on the computer as well.  Nook also has the advantage of retaining the original page numbers no matter how you change the font, and it doesn't reconfigure the page ever time you go to your bookmarked page -- hey, finding where I was  has a lot to do with visual/physical memory.  I remember where I left off spatially because that's the way paper has trained me to be.  And you're supposed to work with my paper-trained brain.

Heh, paper-trained.  :)

In other news this weekend, I changed the blog layout.  As you may have noticed by this point.  The old look had begun to feel too cluttered.  I'll be updating and tweaking this look in the near future; for one, I'm definitely redoing my header graphic so it centers.  Though I love that it's updated, and cleaner feeling right now, I mean to find an interesting -- simple -- photo for the background.  I looked through Blogger's options but just wasn't feeling any of them.  I thought about making it the old school washing machines but then decided not to go there no matter how semi-amusing I find that.  But I've got a few ideas, so we'll see how it works out ... unless anyone knows of some great coffee mug stock art.

*Second world fantasy is the term for fantasy located in a world that is not our own.  So Lord of the Rings is a second world fantasy, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not.  Actually, I think "second world fantasy" might be a term coined by Tolkien, or at least one he used in his seminal essay "On Fairie-Stories."

Faith, Literature and the Box Set

Day 9 total: [18,262 / 50,000]

I went to Barnes & Noble last night and walked through the shelves and found the places where my novels will live once I write them. For the most part, the places are in good spots. I looked at the boxed sets the store has placed at the end of isles in anticipation of Christmas gift buying and thought what my series novels will look like in a box set, particularly what their packaging will be. I'd like spines with just a little bit of shine; something more metallic than matte.

When I did the Artist's Way this summer one of the realization/visualization tasks was to figure out what success means to you and not use anyone else's standards. My standards involve walking into a bookstore and picking up a book with my name on it. After my grumpy, angsty, anxious feelings of the past few days, getting back in touch with that realization/visualization was good for me.

I realized that yesterday's "grass is greener" ranting was more symptom than malady. Whenever my tolerance for pretentiousness (in relation to writing) is reached I lash out snidely about my intent to write commercial fiction and having nothing to do with things literary once I'm done with school. It really has nothing to do with commercial vs. literary fiction; it has only to do with my tolerance for BS being surpassed.

I am a writer. I do not see myself as an Artist, or (god help us) an Artiste. I am a storyteller. And I am in an MFA program to learn how to be a better writer and a clearer, more dramatic storyteller. The storytelling bug is something I've had for a long time and the writing inclination is only slightly younger as I didn't have my alphabet down when I first started making up stories that I very much believed.

That said, I get worked up (and weary) when distinctions are made between the audience you want and the typical reader. These discussions usually end up going down the gutter of no one reads today and that's just fucking depressing and untrue. Someone is still reading or there would be no Barnes&Noble and no more books. I see B&N and I see books. I even see lovely little independent bookstores (although their economics are perilous at best and I really should support them more it's just they don't have very convenient hours for me). Someone is obviously still reading something. I get even more weary when people start bad mouthing one institution or another, (a press, a school, a school of thought, a journal, a paperback writer, etc.)

I read the introduction to How to Be Alone and half of "Why Bother?" a reworked essay by Johnathan Franzen that most people know as the 1996 "Harper's Essay," I came to the realization (greatly influenced by Franzen's notions) that there is a reason for the fanaticism of the no one is reading! panic, and the I must write the Great American Novel!, or save the short story from death! and there's a disconnect between American culture and the desperately good work of novels who try to capture, engage and comment on American culture! The reason is simple: whether they know it or not, these people are practicing the religion of Literature.

Logic does not breed that kind of passion and fanaticism: faith does.

I'm not trying to make a judgment on the practice of the religion of Literature or it's simultaneous co-existence with other religions, I'm just saying that it all gets easier to understand when I look at the rhetoric on Literature as faith not necessarily part of the academic discipline (nuts and bolts and practical stuff) of write.

Literature (note my repeated use of the capital L) does seem to be the predominant faith in academia. I don't think it's a bad thing, I just don't practice it. Just like I don't practice Christianity or Judaism but I don't think they're bad things, they're just not my things. If I could survive deep in rural Indiana as a non-church goer among Bible-thumpers then I can learn to let this rehtoric roll off my back as well.

I am a writer and I want to see my name on the books in the store; I don't need an NYTimes book review. I need a box set of paperbacks with a slight shimmer and my name on every one of them. :)