Last year’s thread: Best books of 2024
Doesn’t matter when they were published, but you read 'em and loved 'em in 2025. And please tell us, in a sentence or two, why you liked 'em.
In no special order.
I Must Be Dreaming: Chast, Roz
What can I say? I find Chast’s cartoons terribly deadpan and funny. Cartoon.
Good Bones: Smith, Maggie
A fine collection of Smith’s poetry. Poetry.
An Excellent Thing in a Woman (Sparks and Bainbridge, #7): Montclair, Allison
Female detectives in post-war London. Good plots, good character development. #8 comes out on January 6. This is a pseudonym for Alan Gordon, who wrote the Fools’ Guild mysteries. Mystery.
Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction: Leckie, Ann
A solid collection with a good range of Leckie’s subjects. Speculative, mostly.
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection: Green, John
Non-fiction, a mix of conversational exposition and personal anecdote. History, Memoir.
The Mimicking of Known Successes (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #1): Older, Malka Ann
The first of three, it takes place on habitats around Jupiter after something has happened to Earth; queer content. Speculative. Mystery.
Penric’s Demon (Penric and Desdemona, #1): Bujold, Lois McMaster
A re-read. I deeply love the World of the Five Gods, and Bujold has been great about consistently publishing a new Penric and Desdemona novela at least every year. Fantasy.
The Strange Universe of Nathan W Pyle: Pyle, Nathan W.
I enjoy Pyle’s Beings cartoons. Cartoon.
Hollow Kingdom (Hollow Kingdom, #1): Buxton, Kira Jane
What’s not to like about zombie apocalypse Seattle, narrated by a crow named Shit Turd? Speculative-ish. Fantasy-ish.
The Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women: True Stories of Nuns, Maidens, and Not-So-Merry Widows Who Made Their Own Way in the Medieval World: Gilbert, Rosalie
Suffers editing problems, but pretty systematic and has references available online. History.
I see from my journal that I read 54 books this year, a little better than one a week, on average. My Top Ten in no particular order:
Starter Villain by John Scalzi - Very funny, clever spoof of supervillainy, written with Scalzi’s usual snarky wit.
Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin - I re-read this favorite vampire novel, set along the Mississippi River before the Civil War. There are characters and scenes which have stuck in my memory for decades now.
Twenty-Six Seconds by Alexandra Zapruder - Nonfiction about the strange journey of her grandfather’s film from Dealey Plaza in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 to the present, and how it changed both her family and the very course of history.
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White - Deservedly classic kidlit about the unlikely friendship between a pig and a barn spider; I really enjoyed an unabridged 1970 recording of the author reading it aloud (he confessed he had to do many, many takes of the scene of Charlotte’s death). TERRIFIC!
The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides - Interesting look at Capt. James Cook’s third and final voyage around the world, with lots on exploration, imperialism, navy life and the clash of cultures.
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow - I read this murder mystery and courtroom drama again for the first time since it was published in 1987. Outstanding.
Absolutely American by David Lipsky - Nonfiction about the West Point Class of 2002, the first to graduate after 9-11: the careerists, the true believers, the jocks, the nerds and, yes, even the screwups.
The Fate of the Day by Rick Atkinson - Second in his planned trilogy about the American Revolution, covering 1777-1780. Atkinson’s work reminds me a lot of David McCullough’s: highly detailed, scrupulously accurate and engagingly written.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan - His latest novel, about a literary historian in a poorer, flood-diminished England in 2119 trying to find out what happened to a famous but read-only-once poem from a celebrated 2014 dinner party.
The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes by June Thomson - A masterful collection of stories written in the Conan Doyle style. Particular standouts for me: “The Vanishing Head-Waiter,” “The Amateur Mendicants,” “The Itinerant Yeggman” and “The Abandoned Lighthouse.”
Honorable mentions: God Save the Queen by Dennis Altman (nonfiction about “the strange persistence of monarchies”), Orbital by Samantha Harvey (lyrical novel about the astronauts on the ISS), The Pursuit of Happiness by Jeffrey Rosen (how the ancient philosophers influenced the Framers), The End of All Things by John Scalzi (sixth in his Old Man’s War series), What If? 2 by Randall Munroe (absurd science), The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graf (compelling, sometimes heartbreaking oral history of 9/11), Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (pretty cool sf adventure, soon to be a movie).
In no particular order:
Well everything really of T.Kingfisher but most especially Hemlock & Silver and Swordheart. Both feature manly protective men who are just a bit exasperated at their women always running head first into trouble, usually in defense of another but still! Kingfisher writes wonderfully masculine me who know when to step back and be quiet.
A Man with One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell. The book was weird and funny and adventurous with a dark gruesome twist at the end.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. What if someone wrote a buddy cop movie set in outer space? I really enjoyed the characters and the “world building”. I can’t wait to see Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace.
All of Us Murderers by K. J. Charles. I tend to love everything she writes but this was a great gothic mystery with a rather high body count. Her two main characters were very well written.
Death at a Highland Wedding by Kelley Armstrong. Murder and a wedding? The book was well paced with a twist that Agatha Christie would have approved of, again I love her characters, I feel like I could sit down and enjoy spending an afternoon with them.
Murder on the Orient Express by Dame Agatha Christie. An oldie but a goody and the twist still holds up, even knowing what it was I still caught myself thinking “Nah, that can’t be right?”
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo. Very short, but pulled me in and made me cry more than once, ultimately a book about revenge, it was the small side story that touched me the most.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T. J. Klune, this and it’s predecessor House in the Cerulean Sea are what Miss Peregrine’s School should have been, a school for different/odd/freak children and a book about love and taking care of each other.
The Watchmaker’s Daughter by C.J. Archer. A magical watch, bandits, women in trousers (okay only one woman) in Victorian London. Magic, mystery and some well written characters.
Who killed the Ghost in the Library? by Teresa Watson. A ghost hires a young woman to solve his murder, initially I thought it was going to be a paint by numbers mystery but it had some surprising twists and a lot of great characterization.
After years of finishing 90-95 books a year - one of those dumb Goodreads goals - I dropped Goodreads and decided to mix longer-form fiction with whatever else I was reading. As a result, I finished 28 books this year. I’m about halfway through Proust’s main books, and partway through S. by JJ Abrams and Doug Forst. Among those I finished:
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski. A metafictional, 720-page psychological horror account of a guy wading through the analytical texts of a (now dead) guy who was writing about a documentary that was about a family moving into a house where things didn’t quite fit right. It also, while detailing the horrors, manages to make fun of scholarly over-analysis and excessive (David Foster Wallace-like) wandering footnotes. I read it in three days and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I do not recommend it…this is not for you.
Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson. A first re-read since it came out. The story of what happens if you select a bunch of very smart people, put infrastructure and hierarchy in place, and then send them to Mars - where you can’t enforce any of it. Slow, in a mostly good way.
2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke. Another reread of this (plus 2010) since who-knows-when. 2001 is better than I remembered? I won’t bore you with plot details, you know them.
The Tainted Cup/A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett. Holmes and Watson type characters in a universe structured as though the author dropped acid and then read a bunch of fantasy novels. Weird stuff, but I liked it.
I read House of Leaves a few years ago. It was baffling and sometimes scary, but very worthwhile, I thought.
This thread may interest you, too, Maserschmidt, about the movie and later books about it: 2001: A Space Odyssey
The scent of a lie: paolo da costa
A book of intertwining short stories set in northern Portugal. A strong writer who deserves a bigger audience.
Human Acts: Han Kang
Nobel Prize winning Korean writer more famous for The Vegetarian. This novel deals with the Gwangju tragedy of 1980 and I think is a better novel.
Selected Poems: Conrad Aiken
An underappreciated American poet from the last century. My favourites: Senlin: A Biography; Preludes for Memnon; And In The Hanging Gardens.
MAC-PAP: Ronald Liversedge
A memoir of a Canadian who fought in the Spanish Civil War. 1,200 Canadians went to fight fascism and only 600 returned. For those who returned, they were designated as ‘premature anti-fascist’ and to this day have never been properly recognised.
All Hell Can’t Stop Us: Bill Waiser
A scholarly account of the Regina Riots of 1935. Reading this and the book above, one can see the forwarding echoes of history.
OEUVRES COMPLETES: ARTHUR RIMBAUD
I found this beautifully bound Editions De Cluny (exemplaire No 3007) in an antique store. It reminds me how books used to be a work of art - and that they are still decently bound in Europe and Asia, but less so in North America.
The Home Physician and Guide To Health
Found in the same antique store as the one above, this 1935 book on human anatomy and health has great colour plates and gives a fascinating insight as to how health was looked at in those times. Chapter headings such as: Facts on Diet for All Classes; Religion and Health; Intestinal Worms.
Oishinbo: Tetsu Kariya, art by Akira Hanasaki
A manga collection of five: Japanese Cuisine; Sake; Izakaya; Fish, Sushi & Sashimi; Ramyan & Gyoza. A must read for anyone who is going to visit Japan for the first time and wants to learn about their food and drinking culture.
These are some standouts for 2025 for me.
Top Ten Books 2025
Best Book I Read This Year: (Fiction/Non-fiction): Dinner With King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-Creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations, by Sam Kean: Fascinating historical information and settings, plus excellent historic short stories illustrating the former.
FICTION:
- Flyaway, by Kathleen Jennings: Plot, language, worldbuilding, and characterization.
- Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones: Plot, setting, characterization, language, and humor.
- Not Quite a Ghost, by Anne Ursu: Characterization, language, and setting.
- Death Without Company, by Craig Johnson: Characterization, setting, plot, and humor.
- A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke: Plot, setting, and characterization.
- Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire: Characterization, plot, and language.
- Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem: Worldbuilding, humor, characterization, and language.
- Patently Absurd, by Bradley Schenck: Humor, plot, worldbuilding, and characterization.
- Rose/House by Arkady Martine: Language, worldbuilding, plot, and characterization.
- Learning the World by Ken Macleod: Language and worldbuilding.
NON-FICTION
- What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds, by Jennifer Ackerman: Fascinating scientific facts, language, setting, characterization (of both birds and scientists) and excellent photos. This would have been my favorite this year if I hadn’t read Dinner with King Tut.
- The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland, by Nan Shepherd: Interesting facts, excellent characterization, setting, and language.
- Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting, by Michael Perry: Characterization, language, setting.
- TreeNotes: A Year in the Company of Trees, by Nalini Nadkarini: Scientific facts and setting.
- My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew, by Abigail Pogrebin: Interesting facts, language, and humor.
- Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know, by Malcolm Gladwell: Interesting facts, characterization, and settings.
- The Velocity of Honey: And More Science of Everyday Life, by Jay Ingram: Interesting facts.
- Sandbows and Black Lights: Reflections on Optics, by Stephen R. Wilk: Interesting facts.
- The Secret Life of Hidden Places: Concealed Rooms, Clandestine Passageways, and the Curious Minds That Made Them, by Stefan Bachmann and April Genevieve Tucholke: Language, beautiful photos, and interesting geographic facts.
- In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World, by Simon Garfield: Interesting historical facts, humor, and characterization.
Best First Line: (From M. T. Anderson’s novel Nicked) “The monk heard that a ship had arrived carrying one of the dog-headed people whom travelers speak of when they tell tales of the one-eyed and the winged, and he went to the docks to see if it was true.”
I didn’t read as much this year, since I’m sitting with Madame P. in her assisted living room half the time, but here goes, in chronological order:
- Koheleth: The Man and His World by Robert Gordis. Extensive commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes from the point of view of a masterful Jewish OT scholar.
- What Are They Saying About New Testament Apocalyptics? by Scott Lewis. One in a series of Catholic commentaries that attempts an unbiased look at significant biblical sections and policies. It’s a mostly historic look, with the only problem being it needs updating (30 years old now).
- Words, Words, Words, A History of the Dictionary by Kory Stamper, who’s an editor with Merriam-Webster. A fun behind the scenes look at editing dictionary articles. Only for those who think lexicography is cool.
- The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. Probably the best written fiction I’ve read this year, with fascinating, unforgettable characters.
- The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher. I do enjoy her fantasies.
- When The Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi. I discovered Scalzi through an earlier version of the Top Ten Books, and love him. This one has the moon turning into actual cheese.
- Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. A Dungeons & Dragons related, sophomorically-humorous romp. I understand the audiobook is better.
- Anima Rising by Christopher Moore. This time Moore has us meet the Bride of Frankenstein, who is being assisted by the artist Gustav Klimt as well as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. If you liked Sacre Bleu, you’ll like this.
- Anno Dracula by Kim Newman. I’ve been meaning to read this one for quite awhile, and it’s worth the read. Dracula has married the widowed Queen Victoria and vampires are taking over England.
- How To Dodge A Cannonball by Dennon Dayle. The humorous, but insighful, story of a young white man posing as a black man serving in the Civil War, first for the Confederates and then for the Union.
Yeah, I was just riffing on the foreword to HoL: “This book is not for you.”
I read the thread! Thanks for posting that, and happy new year!
In order that I read them:
- She Loves Me by Joe Masteroff, Sheldon Harnick, and Jerry Bock. I was unfamiliar with this early sixties musical until December 2024, and I love everything about it…this is the playscript. Two co-workers who don’t like each other discover that they are secret pen pals with a romantic interest.
- The Secret Life of the American Musical by Jack Vierling. How musicals are constructed and what makes the great ones great, with lots of details from musicals such as Guys and Dolls, The Music Man, and Gypsy.
- The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. Macon is in many ways a very stuck fellow, set in his ways and overly unemotional, but after his wife leaves him new experiences and emotions start up. Well written and fun; I loved the quirky characters.
- Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. Well plotted, well written, with memorable characters and twists galore, including a potentially unreliable narrator…a terrific novel.
- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. The AIDS epidemic in Chicago’s “Boys Town” during the eighties, with some venturing into the present day as well. Sad but inspiring; I thought it was wonderful.
- James by Percival Everett. As is well known by now, a reworking of Huckleberry Finn. A remarkable achievement–a gripping plot with well realized characters and settings.
- Innocent by Scott Turow. A sequel to Presumed Innocent, above. Again, narrators who may or may not know what we know, fully dimensional characters, and lots of suspense and twists.
- Three Days in June, also by Anne Tyler. A sixty-something woman who isn’t good at people and her efforts to deal with them the day before her daughter’s wedding, the day of the wedding, and the day afterward. Funny and real.
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. A reread after fifty years, notable not just for its twist ending but for its excellent narrative voice and its intricate plotting.
- The Gales of November by John U. Bacon. Everything anyone ever wanted to know about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, exhaustively researched, full of interesting information about the Great Lakes, shipping, the people who crewed on the lakes, weather, and more.
- Sociopath by Patric Gagne - It changed my perspective while keeping me entertained.
- The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America by Amy Chua and Jedd Rubenfeld - A gracious and well-reasoned look at a topic that most people won’t touch with a 10 ft. pole.
- The Moonlight School by Suzanne Woods Fisher - What could easily have devolved into a self-righteous, didactic story is instead laced through with kindness and compassion towards all the characters, even the “bad guys.”
- First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston - Grifters make the most fascinating and entertaining protagonists!
- The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis - I love the strong characters, deception, and drama in this book.
- None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell - The author’s strategic unveiling of information made me simultaneously revile and pity the different characters, which was a fascinating reader experience.
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - I wasn’t expecting a horror story to be so intensely tragic and emotional.
- Our Last Night by Taylor Adams - This psychological horror novel was reminiscent of some of my all-time favorite books and movies - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dark Matter, and 1408.
- The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young - This is a novel in the magical realism genre. I find a lot of authors way overdo it on the magic, or occasionally don’t add enough of it into the narrative, but the author achieved a great balance here.
- Stories from Suffragette City - This is a collection of short stories by a bunch of different authors that take place on the day of the Women’s March on October 23, 1915. I thought it was a really cool idea to look at the same event from a whole bunch of different perspectives, and very well-executed with the all-star team of writers that were recruiter for the effort!
This is a genre thriller, but with some extra fun - we quite enjoyed it!
Hellhound on His Trail A very informative history of the giant manhunt for MLK’s killer by the FBI, and a good bio of the killer.
To Kill a Mockingbird Nothing more needs be said.
The Wide, Wide Sea, Hampton Sides. A very meticulously researched book about the travels of Captain Cook that challenges previous accounts.
The Slough House series from which the “Slow Horses” TV series comes. Well-written for its genre, very droll.
Into Thin Air - John Krakauer. This was a re-read for me. An excellent account of a tragic attempt to scale Everest.
A favorite of mine. For those not familiar, Krakauer was a journalist scaling Mt. Everest on an expedition to write an article for Outdoor Magazine about the increased commercialization of mountain climbing. He was one of the few survivors of the disaster, and his book is exceptionally well-written, compelling, and, since he was writing just six months after the ordeal, wrought with survivor’s guilt.
In no order:
1& 2: I’m putting books 3 and 4 of The Expanse science-fiction series on my list. Abbaddon’s Gate and Cibola Burn. They were both fantastic. I’m in book 5 now.
- Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. A funny and poignant surrealist take on life as a Chinese immigrant, played expertly by Jimmy O Yang in the Netflix series by the same name. A man used to living life on the sidelines unwittingly becomes the protagonist of a procedural crime drama. Literally, his life is a TV show.
My favorite quote from the novel:
“If you don’t believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying “Country Roads,” try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to “West Virginia, mountain mama,” you’re going to be singing along, and by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.”
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I read this year’s Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, The Vegetarian by Han Keng, because I was curious what kind of book wins a Nobel Prize for literature. Turns out a very good one. Also surprisingly short and accessible. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you’re up for something surreal and sad, I recommend it.
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Kraken by China Mieville. This is a book I started, stopped for a few years, and finally finished this year. Mieville is wild and funny, and his prose is unrivaled. This book is about trying to stave off the squid apocalypse. I love squids. Easy pick.
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Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, author of another wonderfully named book The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. Four Thousand Weeks is a deeply philosophical take on modern productivity.
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Meditations for Mortals, his 30-day reader deriving key principles from the book. Fun to go through a month reading a short little tidbit every day.
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The Mercy of Gods by James SA Corey (authors of the Expanse.) Holy crap is this a great book. Holy crap.
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Stephen King. You Like it Darker. This collection of Stephen King short stories reflects a more mature King meditating on the darker aspects of mortality. It’s not really horror, but there are some great stories in here, including Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream which I would rank as one of my favorite Stephen King things ever.
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I haven’t finished it quite yet, but I’m in the middle of Corey Doctorow’s Enshittification, and it’s really good, in an enraging way.
He was also castigated for not endangering his own life in order to try to find others. It’s easy to second-guess someone’s actions, but at that altitude, when you’re oxygen-deprived and dehydrated, your decision-making abilities are severely limited.
I think he also misremembered and misunderstood a lot of things, which is natural when you’ve experienced a traumatic event, but it did cause a lot of drama for the survivors and loved ones, and I think ultimately he ended up regretting writing the book. I’ve also read Into the Wild and I think he’s just a bang-up writer. For some reason, despite having zero wilderness survival skills whatsoever, I am really drawn to this kind of man vs. nature story. Often man loses.
Thanks for starting this thread, @Elendil_s_Heir!
I use Goodreads to track my books, but I might switch away, given my disgust with parent company Amazon. Still, I’ll pull that up and give my best shot at a best-of list, in order of most-recently-read to the beginning of 2025:
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Lone Women, by Victor Lavalle. A Black woman in the early 20th century leaves her family farm behind to start a new life homesteading in Montana. I’m leaving out all the supernatural horror, because you should get to discover that on your own. Lavalle’s prose is just lovely, and his characters are interesting, and oh so creepy.
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Children of Time/Memory/Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Cheating by putting a trilogy in, but that’s kind of okay, because I love these books in aggregate. The first one was among the best explorations of alien intelligence I’ve ever read. The second had a phrase – “We’re going on an adventure!”–that will haunt my nightmares forever. The third didn’t do as much for me, but had a fascinating exploration of AI and consciousness. I wish the books had more dialog, but I understand his choice to tell the stories in summary for large segments.
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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones. My book of the year. Told from three perspectives, it’s a complex and twisty story about historical atrocities and monsters, and in the best horror tradition, blurs the lines between humans and monsters. So, so good; I think it’ll redefine the horror genre, or at least expand it significantly.
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The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, by HG Parry. I kinda thought I was over the “British boarding school for teenagers who can do magic” genre, but it turns out there are new things to say in the genre. Beautifully written, with some nods to Lev Grossman and Naomi Novik.
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Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. As you can maybe tell, he’s become one of my favorite authors. I’m a lefty with a wry sense of humor and a fascination with ecology and science fiction, so it’s like this book was written exactly for me. A political prisoner is sent to a hostile planet as a slave laborer, and things don’t go according to plan. Very wryly funny and terrifying and fascinating.
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The Mercy of Gods, by James SA Corey. Echoing what @Spice_Weasel said above. In the first thirty pages, I was like, “Oh. Yay. Petty academic politics, in spaaaaaace. I hate everyone.” Then…things happened, and the politics didn’t exactly go away, but transformed in a fascinating, terrifying manner that I loved.
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The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen. A military bureaucrat for the South Vietnamese army is evacuated with his boss, to America, only he’s really a communist double-agent. Beautifully written, scathingly satirical, hilarious and devastating and horrifying by turns.
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Between Two Fires, by Christopher Buehlmann. Horror novel set during the Black Plague in France, written with supernatural horror that would’ve seemed entirely plausible to yer average French peasant. Buehlmann is fantastic and any fan of fantasy and/or horror should read him.
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The Inquisitor’s Tale, by Adam Gidwitz. This was a reread, and probably the last bedtime read-aloud I’ll do for my kids ever. It’s a joy: also set in medieval France, it’s a very funny and VERY strange adventure story with lots of ties to actual historical events, managing to deal with the horror of the nobility, antisemitism, xenophobia, and farting dragons all at the same time.
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Embassytown, by China Mieville. Another reread, and just as delightful the second time around. Humans have an uneasy relationship with the aliens on a far-removed planet, aliens whose speech and thought are precisely equivalent and are unable to lie or conceive of lying, leading to their downfall, or transformation, depending on how you see it. Mieville is a master writer, and this is among his best.
I love the premise. This goes on my list.
Mieville is a bit of a tough read. He’s dense and surreal, but his prose is so lovely it’s like wandering through a piece of abstract art.
Yeah, the first 25% is a slog. And then The Thing happens and everything gets amazing. I haven’t read every science fiction thing under the sun, so maybe they are retreading old ground, but for me it was wonderfully inventive and original with all the juicy existential questions that makes science fiction great.
100% agreed about Mieville. Some of his stuff leaves me flat, but when he’s good, he’s so freaking good. I read this one for a book club, and I recommend that: it’s a great one to talk about.