I read some great stuff this year!
History Can Be Fun Sometimes
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
Incredible work of historic fiction. This is potentially my favorite thing I read this year. I haven’t read much about the 19th century it’s a real gift to have something that so solidly places the reader there, among this cast of absolutely haunted characters including a homely older sister who can see ghosts, two aspiring actors, and a Hot Girl who beat a man at horse racing so bad he took back his crush on her, plus the most insane account of what being A Famous Actor was like back then.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
This book really is as good as everyone says it is. Stunningly well reported at a truly impressive scale. It’ll leave you indignant and sad and furious and desperate for justice.
Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch by Rivka Galchen
THE COW DOES NOT DIE THE COW DOES NOT DIE no guarantees for any other character but Chamomile the Cow is fine the whole time I swear to god. This is an account of Johannes Kepler’s mom who was put on trial for witchcraft, told in an eldritch tone that really places you there. Really interesting and captivating read.
‘Good For Her’ Literary Universe
Outlawed by Anna North
BOY, is this book going to become a big part of my personal canon. Girls and nonbinos escaping religious hegemony in an alternate timeline Wild West to become a gang of outlaws? What’s not to love! A great second addition to my #girls-being-boys shelf on Goodreads (Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett was getting lonely).
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
If a girl wants to be a dragon named Elizabeth who feasts on rich people in the Wild West and lives with her sister and their lesbian bootlegger neighbors that’s absolutely her prerogative.
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
I know this book is about a man but his irrepressable urge to take a fuckin silverwork goblet out of a museum case is so girl-coded so he stays. Also I know I JUST SAID “good for her” but this book does a really good job of taking you along this crazy ride and then driving home how much ART THEFT does NOT SLAY.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Look. Is it unreasonable to put a 200-year-old book on a reading list? That almost certainly everyone read in high school? Well if you don’t like it THERE’S THE DOOR. Please, consider with me the concept of Jane Eyre if you weren’t familiar with it. I feel like if you take a second to forget how famous the plot of this book is, the idea of becoming a governess in a remote country mansion and falling in love with your handsome bachelor boss and then randomly starting to hear insane laughter coming from the walls and mysterious fires is a top-notch horror premise. Reading it as an adult, Bronte’s ability to instill Jane with a bunch of characterizations that we would now consider trauma responses or coping mechanisms, plus being constantly called plain to her face and being completely hard-headed and stubborn despite what anybody said to her made me really really root for her. Also Jane and Rochester’s incredibly antagonistic relationship where she forbids him from speaking too sweetly to her because it’s gross and he dresses up like an old fortuneteller woman to try and trick her into saying she likes him is simply chef’s kiss.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
I may be in the minority here but I love a wretched little goblin girl just being horrible. Hate a guy who’s staying with you? Light his room on fire. What’s that you say? His room is actually in your house so doing that will also ruin your things as well? Who cares, fuck him!
*Shakes Fist* Society
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
If you’ve talked to me at any length over the past few months I probably have found an opportunity not to shut up about this book. I think about it constantly. It was really enlightening and also enraging to see how the bulk of the ideology I was exposed to growing up, which was sold as apolitical, was actually explicitly shaped by a completely political agenda. If you were raised Christian (especially as a woman) I beg you to read this so we can talk about it.
Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam
I tried for 45 minutes to find the part of this book that had a quote and I couldn’t do it but the gist of it was that womanhood is more of an assignment than something you’re just born as (because of all the work that is expected of you to maintain it), and I think about it every day. This book does a lot in the way of pushing back on the shortsighted idea that the kind of boys-wear-blue, girls-have-a-bow-in-their-hair gender binary is somehow hard science and eternally objective.
Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear by Erica Berry
I thought this was an incredibly interesting, well-organized exploration on everything from conservation to lore to fear, anxiety, and victimization. I’m really thankful that Berry didn’t hedge when it came to exploring anxiety in her life and the way it’s shaped her experiences and her journey to step out from under it; I think it would have been really easy to downplay her own anxiety as unimportant but the entire thing about anxiety is that you know the worry is likely stupid and inconsequential and yet it has power over you and blurs your ability to parse reasonable risk-management from paranoid bunker behavior, especially as a Woman in the World. I appreciate reading anything from someone who has clearly lived under the same existential fears for the future of the globe that I do and has found a way to feel hope and connection through it. I really liked her exploration of fear as a burden, both on the being who is afraid but also on the one who is feared.
It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, ed. Joe Vallese
This was everything I’ve ever wanted in cinema/Horror criticism, specifically as someone whose main forays into horror involve listening to podcasts that describe what happens in horror movies and also as someone who is constantly leaning over to Danny during scenes in movies from the 80s featuring two performers of the same gender and going “they love each other.”
Spooky Corner
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
Quintessential Atmospheric Spooky Coastal read. Starts out as a vibey read about teens in a quaint New England fishing town, then becomes a grisly murder mystery, then wraps in on itself in ways I couldn’t describe to you even if I wanted to ruin the book for you like that.
Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
I cannot believe how deftly this book is able to explore shame, religious trauma, and the pain of conformity with something as over-the-top as actual demons wearing polo shirts, and from the author of “Buttception,” no less. Gonna be thinking about this one for a long time.
Dead Eleven by Jimmy Juliano
I’ve read a lot of books this year that deliver a super compelling and mysterious premise where the payoff is… a little goofy (see the entire section devoted to said below). But his one, where the setup is “my sister disappeared in an insular island community where everyone is obsessed with the year 1994” really only gets better the more it unfolds.
Mexican Gothic by Silva Moreno-Garcia
INSTANT Gothic classic. Another one that really holds up well under the weight of its premise (weird in-laws, bad dreams, and a decrepit, once stately house that seems to… breathe?). You will not ever be able to guess where this one ends up.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The only Shirley Jackson I’d ever read was The Lottery and I’m so mad at my school for not telling me to read her more compelling stuff. This book has everything: Queer-coding. Impossible-to-navigate mansion. Eerie backstory. Paranormal activity happening so frequently it becomes mundane and everyone does little jokes about it. Character who experienced a paranormal weather event in her childhood but she doesn’t even talk about it, like it isn’t even a thing. W̶̢̯̚h̷͕͂͠at̷̫̊̊e̶̗̒v̸̯͔́er̸̳̄̒ ̶͎̍̍ḧ̷͍́̑app̷̖̯̀en̴̟̄͐e̶̥̾d in̴͍̒ ̵̠̈́̃t̴̤̼̓h̶̖̍̽e̴̤̭̕ ̴̢̉g̸̜̼͑aȓ̶̨͉ď̶̺͔en̵̟̆. 10 stars.
A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand
“Haunting of Hill House but everyone is (more) queer and (more) annoying” is a million-dollar idea well played Elizabeth Hand
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
This might be one of the best-executed ghost stories of all time. I am in awe of Susan Hill, in 1983, dreaming up the most terrifying experiences in the most effective prose imaginable, on top of some of the best names I’ve ever seen. Eel Marsh House? Nine Lives Causeway? A terrier named SPIDER??
I can’t believe I hadn’t read this before. Every beat feels so familiar and yet so mysterious and compelling. All-timer for the haunted house genre.
Goofy Ass Thrillers:
The Only One Left by Riley Sager
Percent of the book where it’s atmospheric and foreboding before an off-the-rails twist that keeps getting progressively goofier: ~65%
The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell
Percent of the book where it’s lighthearted and intriguing before we get full-on secret passages and false identities in our ensemble baking show murder mystery: ~30%
The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz
Percent of the book where it seemed like it is taking itself seriously and then someone wakes up in a SECRET ON-PREM SUB-MANOR HOLDING CELL: 60%
Humiliating part where I beg you guys to crack open some YA
Look, growth and change are important parts of life. But sometimes you just have to admit that everything you liked at 16 is still truly excellent.
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
OK. OK. OK. I HEAR YOU. BUT. I read this entire trilogy PLUS the fourth book set in Japan and it still belongs in its own class of dystopic YA along with Hunger Games (WHICH I ALSO REREAD SO I KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT). The surface-level premise (everyone gets A Surgery when they’re 16 to be beautiful for life) is the least interesting thing going on here among themes like environmentalism and fascism and the relationship of fear to control and wilderness defying predictability and what it means to be human and what being a girl would mean if you were able to exist outside the ecosystem of desire GOD i love these books.
The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty
I can’t recommend Jaclyn Moriarty’s books enough: Year of the Secret Assignments makes you get so invested in a group of teenagers through their letters to each other via a school-sponsored pen pal program, and Ghosts of Ashbury shows you where they’ve gone, the heartbreak they’ve gone through, and somehow weaves in historical fiction and parallel universes without tipping the boat. But right in the middle of the trilogy is this book about a girl who tries too hard at everything and is deeply, deeply annoying before making you care deeply about what she’s going through and where she’ll go from here (while she also gets embroiled in a murder investigation). Moriarty is so talented at blending really plotty real-world high stakes with small, deeply personal stakes and every time I read these books I want to bash my forehead into a wall until my synapses somehow get reconfigured so I’m able to write characters like her.
Also:
The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett
This was such a special book. A mystery that’s trying to solve itself as you read it, and a historical treasure hunt that swept me away instantly. Hallett became my new favorite author this year. Did I mention it’s epistolary?
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Whether you get hooked by the best-executed Enemies to Lovers I’ve maybe ever seen, the endearing slightly alive magic house, or the Southern Gothic of it all, there is truly something in this one for everyone.
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
I’m not trying to be dramatic but I think Helen Macdonald might be the best writer who’s ever existed. I feel like I can read about one of her books a year because I can’t afford to spend more time in the emotional headspace her books transport me to- her writing is so intense but so beautiful and, like, enveloping. I’m also thankful for this book for giving me my latest Bird Clip to make everyone watch. Last year Genius of Birds sent me down a rabbit hole that ended in this video of a crow demonstrating an understanding of water displacement. This year it’s a goshawk, the kind of hawk in this book, flying through increasingly smaller openings. I’ve never thought any bird had a resemblance to a cat but boy does this one ever.