I read a total of ten books in English this year, including prose and comics. Which gives us a top 5. I found this list MUCH more difficult to compile. Also, this year I read a lot of essays, almost without noticing. Once again, these aren’t so much the very best books I read this year, but those that made much more of an impression on me.
Arranged in alphabetical order:
1. Amphigorey. Edward Gorey. Gorey’s first fifteen… books? Comics? Illustrated books? Under the same roof. Very unusually for a chronological compilation, all of them already display the author’s themes, interests and virtues in full. A quintessentially Weird artist, in the sense of delving into unusual themes and techniques, very much for those looking for something original. He is about everything I had heard and a lot of things I had not.
2. Bad Feminist. Roxane Gay. One of the best essay collections I read this year, at once candid and carefully researched. Gay’s voice is a delight to read even as she guides us through hauntingly dark torments, both personal and social.
3. Before I fall. Lauren Oliver. One of the best current YA novels I have read yet. If the plot is quite familiar, this is one of those books that prove it’s all in the execution.
4. Love is love. A powerful anthology of short queer comics, ranging from the tear-jerking to the thoughtful to the puzzling. The best way I can describe the impact this comic had on me, warts and all, is that it was one of the many factors that contributed to my actually attending the local Pride parade this year.
5. So you’ve been publicly shamed. Jon Ronson. This is the one entry I wasn’t completely sure about. I definitely enjoyed reading this book and it did give me plenty to think about. At the same time, it does have a certain exploitative tone, being as it is primarily a collection of lurid cyberbullying cases wrapped in a cautionary warning. Yet it holds a fascination for me beyond the morbid, because of Ronson’s intimation that the problem is not the tool (the internet) but the ways in which we can use it to foster our worst instincts. Thought-provoking, for better, for worse and for something unexpected.
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