I woke up this morning all "Woo-Hoo, January 3, It's Saturday, let's go!" then was rudely reminded that I'd actively chosen to become a citizen of a country that always has seemed intent on living up to all the worst elements of its DNA instead of trying to celebrate the best parts. We did what to Venezuela now? How is this life?
So, obviously, I'm going to retreat back into reading. Here's what I read in the last quarter of 2025 and I'm sad to say that although there were some brilliant moments, much of it was not as good as it should have been. Kind of like the good old US of A.
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| Broome County Public Library |
Jon Hickey, Big Chief, 2025. The setting (a modern-day Indian reservation in Wisconsin) was great, the characters were okay, the plot wandered around and I think the whole thing could have done with another couple of drafts.
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| Odyssey Books, Ithaca (new) |
Becky Chambers, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, 2014. This was on a few Best of Sci Fi lists and I'm just wondering if there's some sort of drought on good sci fi because this ... wasn't a favorite of mine. Another wandering plot, a couple of potentially interesting characters lost in the narrative and the whole thing didn't live up to the promise of the first few pages. I just learned that it is the first in a series and that kind of makes sense because this did feel like the first season of a TV show. Actually, it felt like a really long pilot episode.
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| A gift from Michael's mother, if I remember correctly |
Helen DeWitt, The English Understand Wool, 2022. Now this, this was very good. It's a slim vol and after I got it I put it on the shelf and it kind of disappeared in there among the bigger books and I forgot to read it. Then Michael re-found it while sorting through the clutter, and raved about it and said I had to read it. Yes, damn, DeWitt knows how to tell a story. Tonally brilliant.
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| Maybe I also bought this new at Odyssey Books in Ithaca. I should keep better track of these things. |
Khadija Adballa Bajaber, The House of Rust, 2022. This actually won the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, so good for it, but I wish it had had a bossier editor. There were many imaginative and cool images and scenes and characters but they didn't tie together strongly enough and there were many places where I literally didn't know what was happening. I don't think it's too much to ask, to know what's happening in a book.
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| I think this was a library book. |
Samantha Harvey, Dear Thief, 2014. This book grew on me. The more I read it and sat with it, the more I was impressed by the disciplined architecture of the whole thing. She's one of those writers whose characters make off-hand observations about the world that cut right to the heart of everything in a way that doesn't seem strained or pretentious. I don't know how you do that with regularity.
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| Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, used |
Olga Ravn, The Employees, 2020. Points to Ravn for telling a story in an imaginative and original way. I didn't mind not always knowing what was happening here, because I wasn't supposed to and the whole thing ran on vibes in a way that I think ultimately worked.
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| This is the edition we happened to have on our shelves. |
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925. Because I did not go to school in the United States, I did not read this before I was ready for it. Honestly, I can't believe they give this to children to read and then teach them that it is about the American Dream or whatever. Okay, it's about fraud, and I guess that is at the root of the American Dream. But it is also people drinking and driving and having affairs and shooting each other. How does it get past all those school-library-book-banning types? Anyway, it's Gatsby, and it was great.
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| Broome County Public Library |
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race, 2021. Tchaikovsky is prolific and uneven. This is better than others I've read of his, it was clever and well-paced and brought fantasy and sci-fi together in an imaginative way. But it wasn't the best thing I read this year. Like, B+, probably.
I read more books that I realized this quarter. I don't know how much patience you have to get through all this, so I wouldn't be offended if you took a break and came back later.
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| Broome County Public Library |
Catherynne M. Valente, The Past is Red, 2021. Apparently the first part of this was published as a short story called The Future is Blue, then she extended it. I didn't notice any disconnect between the two parts, the whole thing was well done, well-structured, clever, kind of funny, not genius, but very acceptable. I'd be happy to write a book as solid as this. It's post-apocalyptic climate fiction and is remarkably hopeful considering it's set on a floating island of garbage the size of Texas.
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| Autumn Leaves Books, Ithaca, used |
Matt Bell, Appleseed, 2021. More unbridled-technocapitalism-and-climate-denial-will-be-the-end-of-us fiction. A really clever idea with some imaginative and beautiful writing but the story didn't quite come together at the end for me. He left a huge question unanswered that should have been answered. Not fair to the reader, that ending.
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| Broome County Public Library |
John Banville, Venetian Vespers, 2025. I did not finish this. I couldn't. I mean, I'm okay with the unlikeable protagonist, but I just wasn't able to go any further with this one. Banville is respected and has written a lot, I might give him another try, but I won't be going back to Venice with him.
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| Autumn Leaves Books, Ithaca, used. |
Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory, 2023. I think this was YA. Or is everything just YA now? Solid for what it was. Did not blow my mind.
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| Chapter 2 Books, Winona MN, used |
Sheri S. Tepper, Sideshow, 1992. Turns out I bought the third book in Tepper's Arbai series without even realizing what I'd done. This is what happens when you decide to buy any and all Tepper you find. Also, this is a first edition hardbound with a slipcover in good condition, meaning I now own two such Teppers. Am I a Tepper collector now? Anyway, it was nice to discover I owned it because I went searching the world for a copy after I finished the second book and no libraries within hailing distance had it and then I was looking on our shelves for something else, and voila, there it was! The story was a tiny bit bloated but the characters were great and Tepper tied the Arbai universe together with a bow for her faithful readers, and then, spoiler alert, kind of blew it all up.
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