Thoughts on reading in 2021

It wasn’t a book, but an author I fell in love with in 2021.

S.A. Cosby is the author of Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears; two

powerful works of noir that received both critical and popular acclaim.  In Razorblade Tears two men — one black, one white — reluctantly team up to avenge the death of their sons, a gay couple.  

Without abandoning the tropes of noir, Cosby deftly explores themes of homophobia and racism.  It is a remarkable literary high-wire act resulting in one of the most satisfying reads in years.  Razorblade Tears is an instant classic. 

Here's my highest praise: I will purchase Cosby's next book without hesitation and it will immediately find its way to the top of my reading list.

(Otto Penzler on noir in literature: “The people in noir fiction are dark and doomed— they are losers, they are pessimistic, they are hopeless.”)

Two other books worth exploring: Harlem Shuffle by the genre-busting Colson Whitehead and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.  

In Harlem Shuffle, Whitehead dips into crime fiction with just a tinge of noir. 

Chambers makes science fiction fun again with a space opera featuring an entertaining multi-species crew. The aliens are fully drawn and not mere sketches.  Chambers’ skill in developing credible aliens rivals that of sci-fi grandmaster Larry Niven.

In the final three months of 2021 a wallet-stretching number of novels by notable authors hit the bookstores.  Many of those books ran to 600 pages or more, and, sadly, most of those books fell short of my expectations.

The best of the bunch -- Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen.  

Worth exploring:

The Lamplighters, Emma Stone

Matrix, Lauren Groff

Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles

Bewilderment, Richard Powers

Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout

Silverview, John Le Carré

Billy Summers, Stephen King

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

The Magician, Colm Tóibín

The Sentence, Louise Erdrich

Much of my reading in 2021 was devoted to crime novels, which, like my grandmother’s homemade candy, I find irresistible; graphic novels; and non-fiction on the subject of comic books, comic strips and cartoons.  

Finished the year with 112 books read. That’s the lowest total for me since reading 114 books in 2010.  

2021 Reading List

“The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon.”

Umberto Eco--

January

1.     The Martian, Andy Weir

2. Steve Canyon, 1949-1950, Milton Caniff

3. Tomorrow’s Kin, Nancy Kress

4. The Marvel Legacy of Jack Kirby, ed. Brian Overton

5. A Big Storm Knocked It Over^, Laurie Colwin

6. Music: A Fold-Out Graphic History, Nicolas O’Neill, 

Susan Hayes & Ruby Taylor

7. Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan

8. Sabrina, Nick Drnaso

9. The Man In The High Castle, Philip K. Dick

10. Brune Hogarth’s Lord of the Jungle, Brune Hogarth

11. Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object^, Laurie Colwin

12. Home Cooking, Laurie Colwin

13. The Unfinished Presidency, Jimmy Carter’s Journey

Beyond the White House, Douglas Brinkley

14. Crazy Blood, T. Jefferson Parker

February

15. Dead Lies Dreaming, Charles Stross

16. The Last Good Guy, T. Jefferson Parker

17. Skim Deep, Max Allan Collins

18. The Lone Pilgrim^, Laurie Colwin

19. Then She Vanished, T. Jefferson Parker.

20. The Dream Is Real, My Life on the Airwaves,

Bob Davis & Jeff Bollig

21. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Will Eisner,

Robert Greenberger

22. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Neil Gaiman,

Steven P. Olson

23. Family Happiness, Laurie Colwin

24. Godric^, Frederick Buechner

25. The Winter of Frankie Machine, Don Winslow

26. Three Hearts and Three Lions, Paul Anderson

27. Changing Planes, Ursula K. LeGuin

28. Satori, Don Winslow

March

29. Another Marvelous Thing, Laurie Colwin

30. How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan

31. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay^, 

        Michael Chabon

32. Brendan^, Frederick Buechner

33. My Ántonia^, Willa Cather

34. Echo House^, Ward Just

35. A Marvelous Life, The Amazing Story of Stan Lee, 

        Danny Fingeroth

36. The Ice Harvest, Scott Phillips

37. Not Dark Yet, Peter Robinson

38. Way Down on the High Lonely, Don Winslow

39. True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, 

        Abraham Riesman

April

40. The Many-Colored Land^, Julian May

41. The Finisher, Peter Lovesey

42. Wild Minds, The Artists and Rivalries that Inspired 

        the Golden Age of Animation,  Reid Mitenbuler

43. Gahan Wilson’s America, Gahan Wilson

44. The Golden Torc^, Julian May

45. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Colleen Doran, 

        Aaron Rosenberg

46. California Fire and Life, Don Winslow

47. The Non-Born King^, Julian May

48. Dark Sky,  C.J. Box

May

49. Invisible Men, The Trailblazing Black Artists of 

        Comic Books, Ken Quattro

50. The Adversary, Julian May

51. Smoke, Joe Ide

52. The Night Always Comes, Willy Vlautin

53. Machers and Rockers, Rich Cohen

54. Win, Harlan Coben

55. The Big Bang, Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

56. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Joe Sacco, 

        Monica Marshall

57. The Dead Hour, Denise Mina

June

58. Intervention^, Julian May

59. I Feel So Good, The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy,

Bob Riesman

60. Jack the Bodiless^, Julian May

61. The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel

62. Diamond Mask^, Julian May

63. Magnificat^, Julian May

64. The House In France, Gully Wells

July

65. How Lucky, Will Leitch

66. Big Hair and Plastic Grass, Dan Epstein

67. Theories of Everything, Roz Chast

68. The Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris

69. The Heathens, Ace Atkins

70. The Cover Wife, Dan Fesperman

August

71. Dream Girl, Laura Lippman

72. I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya, My American Blues Story, Bobby Rush

73. Blood Grove, Walter Mosley

74. The Night Gate, Peter May

75. The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Richard Flanagan

76. Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Cosby

77. The Lamplighters, Emma Stonex

78. Monsters, Barry Windsor Smith

79. Razorblade Tears, S.A. Cosby

September

80. Heavy Weather^, Bruce Sterling

81. In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, Peter Matthiessen

82. A Slow Fire Burning, Paula Hawkins

83. Matrix, Lauren Groff

84. Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead

85. Black Smoke, African Americans and the United States of 

        Barbecue, Adrian Miller

86. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

October

87. When Ghosts Come Home, Wiley Cash

88. The Speckled Beauty, A Dog and His People, Rick Bragg

89. Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

90. The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles

91. Poet Warrior, Joy Harjo

92. Daughter of the Morning Star, Craig Johnson

93. Run, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, L. Fury & Nate Powell.

94. Bewilderment, Richard Powers

95. Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout

96. Silverview, John Le Carré

97. All of the Marvels, Douglas Wolk

November

98. Billy Summers, Stephen King

99. Guarded By Dragons, Rick Gekoski

100. Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen

101. Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

102. On Animals, Susan Orlean

103. The Dark Hours, Michael Connelly.

104. Better Off Dead, Lee & Andrew Child

December

105. The Judge’s List, John Grisham

106. The Magician, Colm Tóibín

107. Hell of a Book, Jason Mott.

108. The Madness of Crowds, Louise Penny

109. The Sentence, Louise Erdrich

110. Rizzio, Denise Mina

111. The Marvel Art of Joe Quesada, Joe Quesada

112. Savages, Don Winslow.

^ Re-read

“To be truthful, I always wanted to write about a dog with a story to tell. I think a lot of writers do, the ones who have a soul; the rest are cat people, I suppose.”

Rick Bragg

The Speckled Beauty

A Dog and His People

“(Sunday) Strips . . . show the Metropolis Marvel in a predicament familiar to longtime Superman readers: super-obesity.  (DC editor Mort) Weisinger, bald and overweight, was famously self-loathing about his appearance.  It’s no coincidence that, under his long tenure, the Superman characters presumed that the absolute worst, most repulsive fates any of them could suffer were getting fat or losing their hair. It was, in all seriousness, a bizarre recurring theme in Weisinger’s books.”

Mark Waid, in an introduction of The Atomic Age Superman

(featuring 13 Super Sunday Adventures, 1956 to 1959.

“To lend each other a hand when we’re falling . . . Perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.”

Brendan by Frederik Buechner

“You can’t get over things you do to other people as easily as you can get over things they do to you”

Louise Erdrich

The Sentence

On re-reading in 2020

I’m going to channel Stan Lee and insist on going full bore with hyphens.  Reread is an ugly word, difficult to parse. Re-read is clumsy, but has the benefit of clarity.

Re-reading books has its pleasures and its pitfalls.  The pleasure comes in re-reading a much-loved book, rediscovering its charms, taking away a new insight each time. As with most life-long readers, I have re-read numerous books through the years. Willa Cather’s My Antonia, for example, is a book I return to every other year or so.

Walter Wangerin’s Book of the Dun Cow and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy are also books I cherish and re-visit regularly.

A pandemic offers little opportunity to browse local bookstores, and on-line purchases have limited appealed. Fortunately, I have thousands of books here at home and maintain a list of books I have entertained re-reading.

Here’s where the pitfalls appear. Whether a decades-old sci-fi novel or a classic of English literature, some books simply don’t hold up well. 

I re-read Why Call Them Back From Heaven and City by Clifford Simak, Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein, Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz, The Peripheral by William Gibson and Lilith by George MacDonald.  Four works of sci-fi and three of fantasy. (Side note: Bradbury is impossible to categorize, but fits best in fantasy.)

Sci-fi of the ‘50s and ‘60s tends to be outdated. Predictions fall wide of the mark and cultural advances leave some older texts feeling awkward and tone deaf, i.e. a husband jocularly threatening to spank his wife for lack of obedience. Women, in these older works, are rarely fully drawn, appearing as stereotypes — the Madonna, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the shrewish wife, the empty-headed blonde.  

When I was a kid, Simak was one of my favorite sci-fi writers. I can’t say that now. The same is true for Heinlein.  I did find The Puppet Masters mildly humorous compared to the horror it evoked when I first read it at 14. And I was pleased to see that a line I vividly remembered from that first decades-old read was just as I remembered it, and still carried a frisson of horror.

Admittedly a newer work, Gibson’s The Peripheral was fine.  I primarily re-read it to set up Gibson’s newest novel, Agency.  Gibson is always worth a spin around the block.

By its nature, fantasy avoids the problems inherent in sci-fi.  Bradbury’s book was mesmerizing. MacDonald’s eerie and with its magic duels and court intrigue, Kurtz’s novel — her first — was just plain fun.

The classics, and I think each of the books that follow warrant that description, were also a mixed bag, although to a much lesser extent.  I re-read Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, They Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson. (Note: maybe I should have included Bradbury here. He does transcend genres.)

Among all these books, only Catch 22 fell flat.  A satirical look at war and the military, it felt like a one-trick pony.  It was clever, until it wasn’t.

I’m curious how broadly read Ken Kesey is today.  I found One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was a powerful, insightful book that warrants a wider audience.  Perhaps a new generation will discover this merry prankster.  (Year ago, I read Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion, and loved it.  I need to track down a copy and re-read it this year.)

Slaughterhouse Five, They Things They Carried and The Long Ships cemented their status as favorite books.   (Note: Anyone who is a fan of Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom series is advised encouraged to read The Long Ships.)   

I plan to re-read more books from my home library.  Pleasures and disappointments await.

Further thoughts on 2020 reading -- Ursula K. Le Guin & the 33 1/3 series

 On Discovering Ursula K. Le Guin

Despite the vast amount of science fiction and fantasy that I read as a kid, and as an adult, until this past year I had never read a book by Ursula K. Le Guin. (For that matter, I never read Philip K. Dick, either, but let’s leave that for later.) 

I am at a loss to describe this lapse in my reading.  All the criteria is there for a successful author-reader rapport:

• Le Guin wrote (and I read) both science fiction and fantasy.

• Several of her books, notably A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness enjoyed critical and commercial success, and are now rightfully considered classics.  (The Left Hand of Darkness won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel. Le Guin was the first woman to earn that achievement.)

• She influenced many writers that I have, and do, read, including Neil Gaiman, Iain Banks and David Mitchell. 

• In 2003 she became the second woman named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

The great covid pandemic of 2020 brought us together.  I quickly plowed through the stack of books I planned to read this past year, and, limited in my ability to purchase new books, I raided the shelves of my personal library. There I found nine books by Le Guin. 

Yes, nine.  Waiting patiently to be discovered.

There was nothing for it, but to read these books: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling, Orsinian Tales, Rocannon’s World, The Dispossessed, Tehanu, The Beginning Place, Gifts and The Other Wind.  

I loved them. I absolutely fell in love with this writer.  Le Guin is a powerful and luminous writer who explores sexuality, feminism, social and political systems, race, gender and coming of age themes set among alien worlds or fantastic worlds filled with magic, dragons and fantastic quests.

I especially liked Tehanu and The Other Wind  — fantasy of the first order. (Note: these books are closely connected. Tehanu should be read first.)

There are a number of books by Le Guin I have yet to read.  I will continue to address that oversight in 2021. 

The 33 1/3 Series

I like music, lots of styles from blues to rock to country, and I like reading about music, so it is no surprise that I both enjoy and recommend the 33 1/3 series from Bloomsbury Academic.

These are small books (rarely more than 150 pages in length) about popular music, focusing on individual albums by artists.  I’ve read 11 books in the series, ranging from Murder Ballads, the album from Nick Cave and Bad Seeds, to Dusty In Memphis, featuring Dusty Springfield, to Workingman's Dead, my favorite album by the Grateful Dead. Other books I've read feature John Cash, AC/DC, Jethro Tull and Neil Young.

I like to listen to the album, read about a particular track, and then listen again.  

It’s an ideal series for music lovers.  Currently, there are 151 books in the series.