I treasure books and my list of recent reads. These reads appeared on the landing page in the past, and they are too good to throw away, even as I make room for even-more-recent reads. I’ve given these old friends their own page. Browse the shelves; you may find your next favorite read!

• Andor, Disney Plus. This Star Wars universe “side story” was one of the best things I watched in 2022 and among my favorite properties in the portfolio. Gritty and political with both amazing worldbuilding and character development.
• Recipes for Love and Murder, Acorn. Food porn, social issues, compelling characters, and starkly gorgeous South African landscapes. What’s not to love?
• The Two-Headed Lady at the End of the World by Mark Miller. I got to read this one as an advanced reader. Coming at the end of November, be sure to catch this zany take on love in the end times.
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, audiobook. Sassy and snarky self-help book full of Buddhist-tinged wisdom and a few deep thoughts. Not long, and I did get a few things out of it.
• The Kracken Imaginary by James Wright. Amazing collection of three linked, fantasy novellas. a deep dive into gender, sexuality, sentient existence, and more told with plenty of action, humor, and love.
• The Wolf and the Woodsman, audiobook by Ava Reid. A fantasy, YA romance, except the characters are in their mid-twenties (they just act like teenagers.) I ended up liking this story, after the bickering enemies-to-lovers travel to the big city and all the juicy political intrigue starts up.
• Coil Rift Quake by Nathan Elias. A science fiction book with literary sensibilities. Or, a literary novel exploring human relations stress by science-gone-awry apocalypse. Either way, a wonderful story you won’t soon forget.
• The Starless Sea, audiobook, by Erin Morgenstern. I adored this celebration of storytelling and books.
• Southern Spirits by Angie Fox. A romance with ghosts. Ghosts more charming than the love story, but that’s just me.
• We Take Care of Our Own by Chris Clancy. In a society not so different than our own, a mega corp manipulates a healthcare provider and her patients with a chilling goal. The most effective, scary sort of dystopia book for me, because its all so plausible.
• Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson. Wonderful coming-of-age and magical-identity story about a teenaged boy in British Columbia. I can’t tell if meant to be YA or not. Pretty gritty with substance use, people in peril, and sexual situations. Older high schools would enjoy, I think. See my blog for review.
• The Magicians, season 5, Netflix. I was underwhelmed by this material as a novel, but found the television series adaptations awesome.
• Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, audiobook. A wonderful tale by a master storyteller, entirely from the POV of a sweet and charming artificial intelligence–“AF,” your Artificial Friend.
• All Stirred Up: Suffrage Cookbooks, Food, and the Battle For Women’s Right to Vote. a mixture of a number of research topics without going into depth on any of them.
• Psych, seasons 1-8. My family has had an interesting reaction to pandemic stress: All the cozy mysteries, all the time. We powered through this oldie but a goodie this summer, including the two Psych movies.
• Loki, season 1, Disney Plus. Loki was really the best, wasn’t it?
• The Searcher by Tana French, audiobook. I’ve somehWhere the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, audiobook. I loved this sentimental yet dark story of a neglected child of nature.
• Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher. by Paul d. Miller. Paranormal, a bit of horror, lots of laughs. See my review and author interview blogs.
• Booklife: Strategies and Survival tips for the 21st-Century Writer by Jeff VanderMeer. Things change fast now in the digital life, and this book already seems dated in its specific advice. But in general, its a wealth of good information about the mindset a modern author needs to both be a creative and an entrepreneur.
• The Resurrectionist by A.R. Meyering. A historical horror-fantasy. Completely different than my historical horror-fantasy by the same name. See my review, here.
• The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King. An essay collection about the ramifications of story—the stories we tell about ourselves and our culture as well as the burden of story the dominant culture places on those deemed “outsiders.” Powerful.
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I seem to be undergoing my romance writing education via audiobook these days. I listened to this one on my daily walks over the past months. It’s a vampire romance and behaves exactly like one would expect a vampire romance to behave. I got pretty irritated with main witch woman for being exceptionally obtuse, but otherwise found it entertaining.
• I bought about half a dozen e-books during #indieApril. I’ve read the ones that held my attention and reviewed on Amazon.com and Goodreads. (I have many thoughts about book reviews on commercial sites. Read some of them, here.) I discussed my favorite books read in 2020 in a blog post, which includes thoughts on the #indieApril purchases.
• WolfGirl: Finding Myself in The Wild by Doniga Markegard. I reviewed this interesting memoir/environmental action handbook for Independent Book Review. Recommended for nature buffs, farming fans, and sustainable living aficionados.
•  The Sound On The Page: Great Writers Talk About Style And Voice In Writing by Ben Yagoda. Style and voice are a couple of the more challenging aspects of writing well. Yagoda does a good job of analyzing just what is meant by style and voice. The author also interviewed numerous successful writers and lets them explain it to us in their own words. Thus, we get to hear their style and voice.
• Outlander, by Diane Gabaldon, audiobook. This book was a huge time commitment and some aspects haven’t aged so well. I almost abandoned it about half-way through (wife beating is never okay), but stuck it out due to time invested. I think any writer wanting to understand the romance genre needs familiarity with this one. Overall, it was a decent story (but, I’m still hung up on the wife beating), and I appreciate the storytelling skills on display in this book.

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It’s been a long time since Clarke published Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Her new novella Piranesi was worth the wait. Accessible yet experimental, hopeful in the face of breathtaking evil, it’s a clear remedy for 2020 angst.
• Dread Nation by Justina Ireland. The American Civil War ends abruptly with a zombie uprising, and young people of color are recruited to fight the undead. First book of a young adult (YA) series. Started a little slow, which is often the case with series, what with the alternative-history, fantasy world building needed. I got hooked about half way through. Recommended if you like first-person narrative and smart, brave, and reckless young people taking on a world that wants to destroy them. And then there are the zombies.

• The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, editors. I was fortunate to have checked this out of the library right before the stay-at-home order started. Over a thousand pages long with hundreds of stories from around the world and across the years, it’s a smorgasbord of the weird. I didn’t finish it, but this is one I need to own.
•  The Last Wish: Introducing The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski. My fantasy reading isn’t wide, especially the epic, sword-and-sorcery type, so I’d never heard of these books when the Netflix series started. And I don’t play video games, either, which is where many people first encountered these stories. Anyway, late to the party, I bought the e-book of this collection of linked short stories. Enjoyable takes on classic fairy tales. The author is from Poland, so the source material is a bit different than I grew up with. Which is an interesting and good thing.  

•  After Image by Naomi Hughes. This is a young adult science fiction novella. Present-tense tales usually distract me, and this one was no exception. But that’s just me. The point-of-view character is a young woman with a severe panic disorder, which makes being an action-hero extra hard. The book is well done, and the main character, initially a pretty whiny teenager, grows on the reader.
•  Pity The Reader: On Writing With Style by Kurt Vonnegut & Suzanne McConnell. Many, many “advise from famous writers” articles and books are around, but this is one of the best. McConnell is a writer and former student and friend of Vonnegut. The book intersperses Vonegut’s famous list of tips (Creative Writing 101) with his writing and biographical details, her memories from classes and conversations, and interviews with other colleagues.

Not-So-Recent Reads, But Recommended

(The section below originally appeared on my landing page, summer of 2020.) I thought I’d give over this space for the summer to a short reading list of fiction/creative nonfiction sure to create healthy discomfort in the privileged white reader. (Based on my personal experience.) Please consider ordering a book from an African-American bookseller. I’d love to hear your book or film recommendations, too.

• Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. (See my review, here.) Combines weird fiction tropes with the ingrained racism encountered in the day-to-day lives of an African-American family in the 1950s. Jordan Peele’s HBO series coming in August.
• The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle. The 1920s is the setting for this novella of weird magic. The story takes one of Lovecraft’s most racist offerings, “The Horror At Red Hook,” and turns it on its head.
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. Folkloric and myth-evoking. A unique take on epic fantasy.
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. A young slave woman in the antebellum American South escapes to freedom, of sorts, in the north by traveling an actual underground railroad. This book reminded me of Pilgrim’s Progress in its use of allegory.
• The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea. Saga of Mexican-American immigrant family gathering in San Diego for their patriarch’s final birthday party. Eye-opening and heartbreaking.
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. Yet another shameful and little-known chapter in American history. In the 1920s, members of the newly oil-rich Osage Indian tribe were systematically murdered for their wealth. Martin Scorsese is currently pulling together funding for a feature film of this book.
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. This frequently banned middle-grade story is presented as the diary/sketch book of Arnold, a young person living on the Spokane Indian Reservation but attending an all-white high school in a nearby town. Funny, tragic, and heartbreaking.
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. This memoir was one of “those books” to my adolescent self: the books that touch and change you in a fundamental way, and you are still recommending them to people fifty years later. The girl of the memoir was about my age when I read the book, living in my city, St. Louis, and couldn’t have had a different life. The story came to me at a teachable moment.

Recent Reads page updated October 13, 2023.